Anyway to create a FAT32 partition in a ML10 HD

[ral]

I am running a dual boot system with ML10 installed in one hard drive and Windows XP in the other. I installed ML 10 in a unpartitioned drive by telling the installed in the available free space. Windows XP is installed in a separate hard drive with two partition (boot NTFS). I just realized that I FAT32 partition would have been useful for transferring files from Linux to Windows. Is there anyway to create a FAT32 partition in the hard drive where ML 10 is installed?

 

I could just reformat on of the Windows partitions to FAT32 if there is no other way though.

[Ixthusdan]

Yes.

Explain your lay-out, and I'll give you a plan. I've actually done this before!

[ral]

I have hda (30GB Maxtor HD) with two NTFS partitions. Windows XP and programs is installed in one partition (20GB) and doucments and files in the second (8GB).

I have hdb (30GB) with ML 10 installed there (3 partitions created by the Mandrake Installer).

 

Ideally it would have been good to have a 2-4GB FST32 partition in hdb. I probably shoudl have formatted this first as a fat32 partition and allowed ML 10 to resize it.

 

TIA

[Ixthusdan]

For a layout, I also need to know the linux partition names and their sizes, along with how much data is in the partitions.

What you are going to do is create a partition in one of the linux partitions, provided you have room to do it. Anytime you mess with partitions, there is a chance that you will lose your data! Please keep that in mind. I have successfully messed with partitions in a live system 5 or 6 times, but once I lost the data and had to reinstall. If you can back up your stuff, that would be best. B)

[ral]

Mounts points = 3

 

/;

Swap; and,

/home.

 

/ = 5.8GB

SWAP = 499MB

/home = 22GB

 

If I need to reinstall... its no biggie... just installed it today so nothign to back up and installation was fast (10-20minute) and a breeze =)

[Cannonfodder]

I would just install again and this time, use CUSTOM PARTITIONING so you can define your partitions yourself. Try it, you will like it :)

[ral]

I think I will do just that. Should Ip ut the FAT32 partition before or after the Linux partitions?

[ral]

I was about to reinstall Linux, but notice that during the install process I could resize the / partition so I just resized it instead. I created at FAT32 partion in the empty space created. All seems to be working well, except that I only have read access to the FAT32 partiton.

 

When I try to mount it in the console, it says:

 

[ral@localhost ral]$ umount /mnt/win_e

umount: only root can unmount /dev/hdb3 from /mnt/win_e

[ral@localhost ral]$ su root

Password:

[root@localhost ral]# umount /mnt/win_e

[root@localhost ral]# mount /mnt/win_e

 

 

This is what my fstab file looks like:

 

/dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults 1 1

none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0

/dev/hdb6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2

/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0

none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850 0 0

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0

/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0

/dev/hdb3 /mnt/win_e vfat defaults,umask=0,quiet 0 0

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

/dev/hdb5 swap swap defaults 0 0

 

Still cannot get wirte access though. Any ideas?

Edited May 2, 2004 by ral

[ral]

By the way, I have read access to all my windows partions without having to do anything so it appears that they are all mounted at boot.

[ral]

Started a new thread on the problem here:

 

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=13737

[AussieJohn]

So far as having read capability of all the Windows partitions is concerned, I have always played it safe by creating the kind of seperate Fat32 type of Partition you first enquired about and called it Exchange. In windows it is detected and I name it Exchange there also and as a symbolic middle finger raised to Microsoft I change the ICON to a TUX penguin.

 

Back in Mandrake I ALWAYS go into MCC (Mandrake Control Centre) then into Mount Partitions and deliberately UNMOUNT ALL the Windows partitions other than the newly created EXCHANGE. After having done that I go to /mnt and right click on each of the win shown and right click on each one in turn and select Properties to make sure it is only about 4 or 5kbs and then delete them (this has to be done as Root) This check is essential or you could accidently delete windows data residing on those partitions.

 

The reason for all this is I had a bad experience with Red Hat a number of years ago where with my playing around with Red Hat to learn things and experiment, that I screwed up Red Hat so bad that it was unusable. I found to my horror that it had screwed up my Windows OS as well ( No it was not an MBR problem -- I had already learnt how to solve that problem) .

 

I realised that if the partitions are of the two OS are actively connected then Screw up Linux and you can screw up any other connected OS (windows or Linux) even if they are supposedly Read Only and should not be effected.

 

 

Cheers. John

[ral]

Thanks for the warning Aussiejohn.

[Cannonfodder]

If you do a search of the board for

 

fstab /dev vfat

 

You can find example fstab files with read/write all access permissions for the windows partitions.

[ral]

All is working well now :)

 

Thanks cannon.