One way channel from Ubuntu to Vista?

[Runwiththewolf]

Hey everyone,

I'm new to Ubuntu (and Linux in general). I have been dinkering with it all evening, and I noticed something I can't quite make sense of.

When I'm on Vista (I dual boot by the way) I see that my hard drive is about 13Gb smaller than it used to be, but I have no access to Ubuntu's files.
However, when I am on Ubuntu I have access to a drive (is it a drive?) I believe is called OS and when mounted it lets me access all of Vista's documents.

Also I do not understand the difference between /home, OS, and System Files (It might be named something else, but the icon looks like a hard drive I believe).

I realize all this is pretty vague, but do you know a way to block this connection? I feel like Harry Potter looking into Voldemort's mind (lol).

PS Despite the Voldemort reference I am not a MS Windows hater.

[devils casper]

Windows based OSes do not recognize Linux based filesystems by default and you can not access Linux files or partitions from Windows OSes. On the other hand, Linux recognize FAT32 and NTFS filesystems and gives full access.
There are a few tools available to enable Linux filesystem ( ext3 ) read/write access in Windows OSes too.

Best way is, create a separate partition ( NTFS ) to share data between both OSes instead of enabling read/write access of Linux File system in Windows OSes.

Also I do not understand the difference between /home, OS, and System Files (It might be named something else, but the icon looks like a hard drive I believe).

I would suggest you to check these links. Wiki page, TLDP page. Linux File structure is different from Windows OSes.

[Rubberman]

Here is a web page that tells you how to enable Windows to mount Linux ext2/ext3 file systems. Caveate User! Only use this for read-only access! A lot of current Linux systems use ext4 file systems, which while readable with ext2/ext3 tools, should NOT be written to by systems that don't deal directly with ext4 journaling.

Mount an Ext2 or Ext3 partition in Windows | All about Linux

[rokytnji]

I realize all this is pretty vague, but do you know a way to block this connection? I feel like Harry Potter looking into Voldemort's mind (lol).

PS Despite the Voldemort reference I am not a MS Windows hater.

If not wanting access to Windows Vista in Ubuntu. Go into Synaptic Package Manager and search for ntfs-3g. Uninstall it and you won't be able to access Vista any more.

[Rubberman]

Re. ntfs-3g - unless ntfs support is built into the kernel... With 3g, this is usually not the case since the kernel-level support isn't as robust as the 3g driver.