Why I can't read my files that are stored in Windows? 1

[pistachi0]

Hi guys,
I happened to be a Linux newbie. I am currently using WinXP Pro, and just installed Mandrake 9 last week. I use LILO from Mandrake to go with dual boot. I browse files with Konqueror in KDE. Why I can't read my files that are stored in WinXP? Is that because I'm using NTFS partition for WinXP so Linux can't read my files? Is there any way I can read my files from Linux? Thanks.

 

[RhythmAce]

You need to mount your Windows partition so linux can use it. First, create a mount point for it. Usually it's a directory under /mnt. If you look in /mnt, you'll see there are directories already there, floppy and cdrom in most cases. Just add a name for your Windows partition. i.e. "mkdir /mnt/Win" for example. The next step is to edit /etc/fstab to tell linux that it would be groovy to use that partition. You'll need to add a line that looks like this:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/Win vfat defaults 0 0

I'm assuming hda1 is what linux calls your Windows partition. If you are not sure, run dmesg at the command line. /mnt/Win would be what ever mount point you created. File system type is vfat. You can "man mount" to see what the rest of them do. This should get you up and running though and should be able to manipulate files on it just like you would a real linux partition.

 

[pistachi0]

Thanks a lot RhythmAce. I've done your way and it works after I modified vfat with ntfs. Similar question: I can't see files in Linux from WinXP. How to see them? Even my 2nd HDD that contains Linux is not detected from Windows Explorer.

 

[RhythmAce]

If you wanted linux to share files and printers with windows, you would use samba, but linux must be running for the samba server to work. By default, linux uses the ext2/ext3 file systems. I don't know how to get windows to read those.

 

[clonny2]

I think there is a utility out somewhere on the net that will allow you to mount ext paritions using windows. But I have never used it. Typically, if you want to have shared space on a dual cual-boot box I have a common partition formated in windows that I use. I format it fat32 or fat16. Then linux can mount it and windows can mount it. Try that approach.

>---------------------------------------Lawrence Feldman
SR. QA. Engineer SNAP Appliance
lfeldman@snapappliance.com