Accessing Windows and Linux partitions

[Guest German]

Hello again!

 

I've just installed Mandriva 2007 Power Pack. Now, my machine starts with a dual boot (Win XP and Mandriva).

 

How do I access Linux partitions from Windows XP? If possible, what should I install?

 

I have one FAT32 partition in order to be accessed by both (win and Linux). Is it also possible to write (safely) to NTFS partitions from Linux? How?

 

Well, thanks in advance for your help,

 

G. Lorenzo.-

[jboy]

Explore2fs is a portable app (so you can put it on a USB flash drive and use it anywhere) that provides an ext2 and ext3 filesystem explorer for Windows:

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/explore2fspe/

 

NTFS-3G provides read/write support in Linux for NTFS partitions:

 

http://www.ntfs-3g.org/index.html

 

For other possibilities, see the Fileystem topic on SourceForge.net:

 

http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_l...hp?form_cat=142

 

Note: I haven't used either Explore2fs or NTFS-3G yet, so I can't give you any actual experience comments.

[tyme]

explore2fs isn't really trust worthy, it kind of works but you're better off just using that Fat32 partition to transfer information in between. You should be able to access the Fat32 partition by default from Mandriva - if not, let us know, we'll have to set it up.

 

IIRC, NTFS support should be included in Mandriva 2007, but I'm not 100% sure on that, and you may need to set it up differently in /etc/fstab to get access. If you post the contents of your /etc/fstab file we may be able to give better advice.

 

If you're unsure of any of these directions, just ask and we'll try to be more specific.

[Ixthusdan]

I have always pulled data from ntfs, but I still do not write anything to ntfs. I have it both on my laptop and in my main desktop. Other distros besides Mandriva do a better job at this, but they are not as gui freindly as Mandriva's tools. The fat32 partition is really best. Also, I recommend doing all share activity from linux, as windows is just plain messed up when it comes to this sort of thing.

[jboy]

I just came across this interesting-looking article about the ext2fs driver for Windows for accessing ext2/ext3 file systems from Windows. I'm going to try using it but won't be able to for a couple days. But it looks interesting. Maybe it's a better choice than explore2fs.

 

Access ext2/ext3 file systems from Windows

[coverup]

ExtFS2 Anywhere from Paragon Software works quite reliably for me. Only problems I encountered were

 

(1) restoring form suspend to disk was not always clean;

 

(2) MS office screwed files when writing to ext3 directly, but saving to the NTFS partition and then copying files across always works fine;

 

(3) After crash (a totally unrelated thing, the ATI driver and the mouse not always get along), you should always first recover journal before booting to Windows.

 

Not that I still use version 2.5 which has been superseded with more advanced versions.

[scarecrow]

The most trustee solution (since it's read-only) is the ext2fs addon (it can also read resiserfs 3.X volumes) for Total Commander. Total Commander is the ultimate filemanager for windows, and never-expiring shareware, as well as the best thing to happen in windows since version 3.1, some fifteen years ago.