Sharing a drive with Windows7

plisken · 04-16-2013, 12:29 PM

I already have a drive mounted which is accessable to both windows and linux, but I'm wondering what the best practices are, should I be formatting in fat32 as opposed to ntfs?

Generally I only read files from these shares when I am in linux but I am wanting to perhaps have my dropbox folder shared between the two and possibly my Virtualbox VM folder too.

All comments appreciated, thanks...

John VV · 04-16-2013, 01:53 PM

Use NTFS

every Linux dostro can read/write to it using ntfs-3g

fat32 has limitations that make it very unattractive on modern LARGE drives

plisken · 04-17-2013, 02:01 AM

I've used fat32 in the past but as you point out, not the large drives of today (was likely on a 6.4gb drive) and I seem to mind that ntfs support was read only or "experimental", so quite a while ago. But more recently, I've only shared a windows/ntfs drive for reading files in linux.

Is it definately OK to read/write to an ntfs partition with both windows and linux? Don't you run into permission issues?

I would ideally like to have a dropbox folder shared between the two installations.

John VV · 04-17-2013, 03:16 AM

I have not had any issues with NTFS in the last 5+ years
ntfs-3g dose it's job

most current distros will automount a ntfs partition as
root - read/write
normal user - read only
but this is easily changed in "fstab"

Among other things ,this is to keep any possible windows virus OFF that partition .