New To Linux: A Few Questions

[laughter]

Hey guys,
I'm new to linux and have recently downloaded and installed the newest mandriva distro. I really like, but i've run into some problems that i'm not experienced enough to handle.
So here it is: I installed mandriva and used free space on my hard drive to partition, the majority of the drive is windows xp, what is the best way to transfer my files from linux to windows and then possibly wiping windows leaving the entire disk for mandriva?

thanks for all the help

[Geeth]

Hey guys,
I'm new to linux and have recently downloaded and installed the newest mandriva distro. I really like, but i've run into some problems that i'm not experienced enough to handle.
So here it is: I installed mandriva and used free space on my hard drive to partition, the majority of the drive is windows xp, what is the best way to transfer my files from linux to windows and then possibly wiping windows leaving the entire disk for mandriva?

thanks for all the help

Ummm, did you mean that you want to transfer files from windows to linux. Or did you actually mean from linux to windows?

[laughter]

ahh, from windows to linux. yes
thanks

[Geeth]

ahh, from windows to linux. yes
thanks

You need to mount your windows partition first of all.

You will need to know the device that you want to mount. In the terminal.

fdisk -l

thats a little L not a 1 or I.

you will see a line like

/dev/sda1   *           1        4998    40146403+   7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda1 is the device.

You will then need to mount it. You will have to be root to do this

To be root

su

Then you need a place to mount it.

mkdir /mnt/windows

Then you need to have it be able to be accessed by normal users

chmod 777 /mnt/windows

Then mount it

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows

After that, you should then be able to access your windows partition normally through your file manager and copy the files across.

Having 777 access isn't secure for the folder, but if you just going to delete the partition anyway shouldn't matter.

[laughter]

This is what it gave me:

[root@localhost manning]# mkdir /mnt/windows
[root@localhost manning]# chmod 777 /mnt/windows
[root@localhost manning]# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
mount: /dev/sda1 already mounted or /mnt/windows busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda1 is mounted on /media/hd

I also only have about a gig of hd space in my mandriva partition and all of the files i would want to tramsfer wouldn't fit. any solutions there?

[Geeth]

Ok

mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda1 is mounted on /media/hd

If you go to /media/hd you should see you windows stuff then.

df -h

should confirm it.

did you run fdisk -l first of all to double check? just want to make sure that its the right drive.

I also only have about a gig of hd space in my mandriva partition and all of the files i would want to tramsfer wouldn't fit. any solutions there?

Hmmm, not to sure on that one. Burn to a dvd maybe, depending on the amount of stuff you actually want.

[laughter]

[root@localhost manning]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 4.7G 2.6G 1.9G 59% /
/dev/sda12 973M 973M 0 100% /home
/dev/sda1 48G 45G 3.7G 93% /media/hd
[root@localhost manning]#

So that's what it gave me. ???
when i try to move anything from it says "could not write file "blank" disk full"

yeah, i'll figure it out
thanks for all your help