Is there anyway to put a linux file on the Windows partition of my hard drive (I use Mandrake 9.0)? I was able to copy a windows file onto the linux partition, but that's when I had 2 hard drives. Also, is there anyway to see the Windows files on the windows partition of my hard drive. Thanks.

You can view and modify windows files quickly and easily from linux without much trouble, provided that the correct kernel module was compiled. If your Windows partition was formatted with Fat32 filesystem, then you can mount that partition in linux and read/write to it. If your windows partition was formatted with NTFS (Windows 2000/XP) then you can only read information not write (provided there are methods, but they are not safe). First, you need to know what partition your Windows is installed on. If it was installed first, then chances are, it's located in /dev/hda1 . If this is the case, you can follow these steps:



This will: a) make the windows directory, AKA "Mount Point", Mount the windows partition to your mount point useing the vfat (fat32) kernel module, c) enter into the windows directory and get a directory listing.

If you want this to be mounted on each linux boot, add the following to your /etc/fstab :



Note: IF you would like your users to be able to write to the partition, then you will have to read the 'mount' man page to learn more.

If you're Windows drive is an NTFS filesystem, then you can replace "vfat" above with "ntfs", but remember, you cannot write.

This is very useful for sharing data between windows and linux. For example, I have Quake3 and Urban Terror installed on my windows partition, but rather then having duplicate data (such as the 400MB pak files) on both partitions, I install the Quake 3 point release for Linux, then I do something like "ln -s /mnt/windows/Program Files/Quake III Area/baseq3/pak0.pk3 /usr/local/games/quake3/baseq3/pak0.pk3", this way, i don't have to copy any information, it just links directly.

If you want to have access to your Linux files from Windows, then that's a little more tricky, unforunatly, Microsoft is not too friendly with foreign operating systems such as linux, so you will have to use some third-party tools. The best I've seen thus far is called LTools and you can check it out here. What this does is creates a "webserver" of your linux partition in which you can access with either your own webbrowser, or a java program. I prefer the web browser because it's more user friendly, and resource friendly.

Actually. I installed Windows second. Would that most likely be hda2?

The quickest way to find out from linux is by issuing the command:

fdisk -l (that's an dash-L as in Linux)

This will give you a list of the partitions on your hard drive and in the far right column it will say what filesystem the corresponding partition is. If i was on a linux box, i would give you some sample output, but i'm at work. It's pretty self-explanatory though.

If you're having trouble reading the output, just post it in here, and we can clarify.