Partition compatability between windows and linux

scottie · 01-02-2004, 05:22 AM

what kind of partition would be best for an 80gb harddrive?

i want to be easily be able to view it in linux and windows. windows struggles with reading a ext2 fs. I know a FAT fs can be viewed in both but it can only do smaller partitions.

I am thinking of creating 3 FAT partitions on it, 1 for music, 1 for films and 1 for TV but if theres anyway of creating just 1 larger partition i'd prefer it. Does anyone know of a better way?

cheers scottie

Bruce Hill · 01-02-2004, 05:43 AM

When you create the partitions, what program do you have available for your use? And, have you installed a Linux distribution yet? For a good partition that both OSes can read and write to, use FAT32. Windoze cannot read any *nix filesystem partitions.

scottie · 01-02-2004, 05:48 AM

yeah i already got windows and linux installed on my 1st hard drive, on my second I got all my music tv etc.. stored on a ext2 fs. I wanna repartition it so i can view it in windows and linux.

How big can a FAT 32 partition be made to be? I thought 80gb was too large for a FAT 32 partition to support?

scottie

Bruce Hill · 01-02-2004, 05:56 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by scottie
yeah i already got windows and linux installed on my 1st hard drive, on my second I got all my music tv etc.. stored on a ext2 fs. I wanna repartition it so i can view it in windows and linux.

How big can a FAT 32 partition be made to be? I thought 80gb was too large for a FAT 32 partition to support?

scottie

FAT32 supports drives up to 2 terabytes in size.
But read these 2 links before proceeding ->
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fat32.html
http://support.microsoft.com/default...NoWebContent=1

And Scottie, why don't you put your Linux distribution in your control panel. It will help those offering you suggestions.

dukeinlondon · 01-02-2004, 06:04 AM

On my PC at home I have configured a 30Gb FAT32 partition to store my music collection so that I can access it from both Mandrake and Windows. Since I have done it on a new disk, there was no data to move.

I used harddrake to create the partition (and other reiserfs partitiions). Harddrake is a bit confusing so I screwed up first time but got it right on the second attempt. I've now about 11Gb stored on the partition and have written and read from both Linux and Windows.