Accessing Windows HD through Linux
 

Ok, here is my grip. I am intrested in the linux OS, but am still very new to the way it operates, particularly with the way its version of DOS works. But right now I want to know if there is any way to access my windows hd, which is an 80 gig runing on SATA, from my 40 gig, which is runing Mandrake 10.0. I have heard that there are things that will allow me to get access to my hd, one of which may be Wine, though im not sure if that would allow me to access my hd or merely emulate a windows enviorment for any programs i want to try and run on linux.
Any helpfull suggestions/answers would be most appreciated.

Welcome to LQ!

Before i get to answering your question, let me clear up one misconception. Linux doesn't run any version of DOS, except under emulation. DOS stands for Disk Operating System and, as the name implies, is its own OS that comes in several flavors (PC-DOS, MS-DOS, FreeDOS, etc.). What you're probably referring to is the Linux CLI (Command Line Interface), which is called the shell. There are several shells available, but you're undoubtedly using bash, as it's the default. Whatever you do, please don't call it a DOS prompt :), for it is infinitely more capable.

Now with that out of the way, here's some help for your question. Linux does not name hard drives like Windows, in Windows, the first hard drive partition is drive C, the next one is D, and so on. In Linux, with ATA hard drives, the primary master IDE drive is /dev/hda, the primary slave is /dev/hdb, the secondary master is /dev/hdc, etc. Then partitions are just number, so for example the first partition on your primary master is /dev/hda1, the third partition on your secondary master is /dev/hdc3, etc.

So, to mount your Windows drive you need to know where it is in your scheme of hard drives. Also, you should know what sort of filesystem it has. If it's fat32 this is easy and you should just be able to mount it (assuming it's /dev/hda1) with:

mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mountpoint

where mountpoint is an existant directory to mount the drive to (all the stuff on the drive shows up in that directory). If your filesystem is NTFS this is a little more difficult, since read-write support for NTFS is, I think, still somewhat experimental and may not be enabled in your version of Linux. With Mandrake 10 though you should at least be able to mount the drive read only (not entirely sure). In any case, the command is the same except you would use -t ntfs where I had -t vfat above.

I hope this helps a little bit. Somebody who's used Mandrake 10 can probably tell you better than I just how well it supports NTFS filesystems.

edit - do you need sata chipset support to mount? or just install?

Another thing that needs to be clarified is exactly what wine is. Wine is a windows emulator to be run inside linux. Depending on how you can access your windows drive, you may be able to symlink to your windows drives to run your programs. I have experimented with wine, and I must say that this is no easy task to take on. Put it this way, I have completely abandoned my efforts :scratch:

Now don't be too intimidated by what btmiller said, because once you get through this you'll see how easy linux really can be. I found this very helpful in understanding how to work with the hard drives on linux Adding Hard Drive in Linux. There's no way you'd be able to do this vice-versa (i.e. M$->Linux), at least as far as I know. My money says you're Windows installation is Windows 2000 or XP. So you have to be on NTFS, so you'll need to be very careful when you play with it from Linux. Another good link if you're a DOS command line user is DOS to Linux Cheatsheet.

Oh, and one quick thing. Be very careful when posting in linux forums, NEVER refer to the shell as DOS. Hahaha, that's why I loved this forum from the beginning. You don't get chastised for comments like that, but it can be horrible in other forums.

One final question, and that is... "Why do you need to access Windows from Linux?" If it's just to get files, then you may want to create an extra FAT32 partition for your data. Otherwise, I think you'll be very surprised to see that Linux can do more than what Windows itself could ever dream of doing. Check out the Table of Linux/M$ Equivalents .

WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF LINUX!!!

Hi
I read ur answer above and i got much thing from that.Now i have question
i.e How i mount my NTFS partion.When i give the cammand mount -t ntfs /dev/hda6 /mnt/das, It give the error something like no partion found.i have red hat9.0.wats the problem here.help meeeeeee.
thankyou bye

I'm sorry, but I've never bothered trying to access windows from linux. I ssh into my linux machine, and I have a samba server on it. Nowadays, I only use my windows machines as a workstation to access my linux machine. I don't think I was very clear about this.

Now that I've given the statement my legal counsel has given me, I'll throw this out for possible input as well. I believe that the 2.6 kernel really has NTFS support. I have Redhat 9 on my machine, and by default it was on the 2.4 kernel. Needless to say, I'm working my way into a Gentoo installation using the 2.6 kernel right now, just to get into a more configurable distro. I'll probably throw an XP installation on the enormous hard drive I have after this. I can help you after I've gone through this, but I'm fairly useless otherwise.

hi dear
From where i can get 2.6 kernal.can u help me
tanxs bye

Well my dear, muhmmadaasim. I do hope you're female in this context ;=), otherwise this is a bit awkward. Anyway, a question such as this is highly dependent on your distro.

I am very far from a guru, but as far as I understand... the kernel is linux! That is, whatever distro we choose to use, redhat, gentoo, slackware or whatever. Well, each one of them are built on the said linux kernel. It's not very easy process to update your kernel, but as far as I know it is quite reasonable. The problem is that it it probably very specific to your chosen distro.

Hm...sorry for the reference to DOS, i know its not, just wasnt sure what else to call it at the time. As for the HD being mounted, it already is. I was trying to get some files from out of that hd that i needed, but i suppose that from what i have read here it would be wise to abandon the attempt. Im sure i can find other ways to get the files, was just trying the more direct approach. I do thank everyone how tried to help though, I will most likely come back here if I have any further questions. Thank you.

I use Mandrake 10. When I installed Linux, it auto-magically discovered my windows partition sitting on the same drive and pre-mounts it for me with each boot up. That is the default behavior in Mandrake 10.

You can find your windows drive in

/mnt/windows

In case you are not aware, regular old Windows 95/98 use a filesystem called FAT (File Attribute Table). There was a 16 bit version of it and a 32 bit version of it. It's old, so the Linux community of developers wrote code to allow Linux to interface with FAT16 and FAT32 data.

Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT all use a filesystem called NTFS. It is more sluggish than FAT filesystems, mostly because it contains encryption and security settings for each file.

When reading NTFS, Mandrake 10.0 sees Windows as read-only. So you can browse "My Documents" and play any MP3's you have there, see videos, read documents, but you cannot save to them, rename them, or do anything else with them. You are not "root", and cannot become "root" (superuser/administrator) of the windows filesystem from Linux. You have to reboot and load Windows to do that.

Wine installations often fail (mine did), I now believe, because during installation it asks if you want it to use your existing paritition or to make its own. If the Windows partition is NTFS, it cannot make its own partition or edit the registry, so it fails to install properly.

Wine, if installed properly, lets you type

wine <program name>

to run a windows program. Succes or failure is pretty random. Some programs run great in Wine, some don't run at all, and some come up looking like they will run, but then when you push buttons or try to use them, they just puke up errors or do nothing.

Good luck!

Re: Accessing Windows HD through Linux
 

ok,
dont panik if it does not work, but this is the sujestion.

first try to get your hands on linux-config-xxxx.xxx.xxx.rpm which is shipped with redhat 7.2 or<, install it with rpm install:

if it does not get installed normally, force it using the switch -f;

then start another console and type "linuxconf".

if the package is installed then you get a cui version of display.

scince yours is a single hdd yours will be typically /dev/hdax

where x stands for the partition number.


hda1 primary partition usually c:
hda5 for usuallu d:
hdaxx for the last partition on your hdd


change the partition atttributes and hack around

bye.

if you have any querys feel free to mail me at prak_asam@yahoo.com