Partition for both linux and windows documents

[msmithy12]

ok so i set up linux, yeah i erased my entire hard drive trying to partition it but i now have linux and windows XP booting on my laptop.

i would like to share my music i`ve got on windows with linux can i create a partition and use it to save both windows and linux things and acess MP3s and videos with both OS`s? please?

[Dark_Stang]

Create a partition and call it "share" or "media" or something like that. For windows' sake make it FAT32. Then just have both windows and linux automount it at startup.

To automount it on linux at startup edit the file /etc/fstab.
Here is a small guide.
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

Not sure how to do make windows automount it though.

Edit:
Or, you could just mount your windows partition and give yourself write access to the music folder on the windows partition. This would probably be easier.

[techieMoe]

NTFS partitions are readable by either MS Windows or Linux, but if you want to be able to write to a partition from either OS, you're going to need to make a FAT32 partition.

[devils casper]

OR install ntfs-3g package to enable NTFS write access.

[Zelmo]

Or make it an ext3 partition, and install fs-driver in Windows.
(Augh! So many options! How to choose?)

[devils casper]

(Augh! So many options! How to choose?)

thats the beauty of Linux.

[carlosponti]

if you are going to make the partition fat 32 you are limited to 40 gb as well. I would go with having the ntfs drive if it is over 40 gb and install the ntfs drivers so that you can write to it. I have a 120 gb ntfs drive and have the support for writing to the ntfs partition on it.

[IsaacKuo]

if you are going to make the partition fat 32 you are limited to 40 gb as well.

No, FAT32 can be as big as you want (well, there is a limit but they don't make hard drives that big...yet).

Windows XP's partitioner won't let you create a FAT32 partition bigger than 32gigs, but that's merely an example of MS crippleware trying to impose NTFS on the rest of the world. This is actually really annoying when it comes to reformatting portable USB drives.

Still, Window's SCANDISK may get seriously confused with FAT32 partitions bigger than 127gigs. I think this is only a problem with Windows 98/ME, but maybe it's an issue with XP also.

[ryptyde]

No, FAT32 can be as big as you want (well, there is a limit but they don't make hard drives that big...yet).

Windows XP's partitioner won't let you create a FAT32 partition bigger than 32gigs, but that's merely an example of MS crippleware trying to impose NTFS on the rest of the world. This is actually really annoying when it comes to reformatting portable USB drives.

Still, Window's SCANDISK may get seriously confused with FAT32 partitions bigger than 127gigs. I think this is only a problem with Windows 98/ME, but maybe it's an issue with XP also.

I agree with using ntfs-3g to read/write from Linux to NTFS!
FAT 32 you cannot write a filesize larger than 4GB eg: video files so if you have DVD video that are >4GB you will have to segment the file.

You can use "explore2fs" in Windows to access your Linux ext2/ext3 file system.

Works for me.

.