Having read/write access to some files in windows NTFS partition
 

I have a laptop with XP home preloaded. Hard disk had 2 NTFS partitions - C & D. My documents folders was in D drive.

I installed Open SUSE 10..., It automatically resized D partition. The installation was successful. I selected KDE. I even upgraded my KDE to 3.5. Everything works fine except the following glitch:

1.) I use amarok and have used the "my music" folder in "D:\My documents" as the source directory for mp3 files. So far so good. My problem starts when I try to edit the mp3 tags of my mp3s using amarok. It gives an unable to change tag message.

2.) In other programs, for example when I try to change the desktop wallpaer and I select a file which is there in the D drive, I get a mesage "You can only select local files."

P.S. I know that one way of overcoming this problem is that I make a new Fat32 partition and move all the files from D drive to it; but there are certain problems which prevent me from doing that viz.:
1.) I dont have any free space left.
2.) I dont want to delete the partition as it would also delete SUSE (remember SUSE resized D). I have spent an awful amount of time in organising the files on D.

Is there any way in which I can convert the D NTFS partition to Fat32 without deleting files and having to install SUSE al over again (I upgraded KDE from a ftp server from the net which took like an entire day).
P.S. I want to be able to access the files from windows as well.

OR

Is there any way in which I can access(I can read them even now but can I modify them, write mp3 tags etc) these files (a particular folder and its contents only) in any other way from Linux?

Any suggestions, advice, help, links would be really appreciated and I will be grateful.

Rex
rahilrai@gmail.com

writing on ntfs drives is not recommended from what i know
that is from linux os

Thanks for that bit of information... but surely there must be a way to get around it? If I am not wrong I read this about Linux somewhere "Linux - Whatever you want it to be". However if that is not true then what difference is there between linux and the almighty windows (barring the FREEdom!). In fact as far as a newb like me is concerned, Windows makes more sense... it's a one stop solution. (By the way do I sound as if I'm turning towards the Dark side!)

Anyway thanks for your time, guess I'll just have to keep looking (& keep praying too).

rahilrai@gmail.com

I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard some people say that NTFS writing from linux is pretty stable.
Others say it's risky...
If you're willing to take the risk you CAN enable NTFS writing in your kernel and give it a try...
Just don't use it on any data that can't be easily replaced until you're confident that it's working for you.

Can Windows read and write on my Reiserfs partition?

schanker21: Yes, if you jump through a few hoops you can write to a ReiserFS partition in windows (cygwin, NFS, Samba..)

rahilrai:

You have a few options, really none are going to be as appealing to you as you would hope, but nonetheless you aren't 'stuck'. Good thing there's choice ;)

If you can get a hold of an external drive, even temporarily, you could move the files you want to keep, format the drive to fat32, and then return them. Same idea, but instead of another drive, you could archive them to CDR(W) or DVDR(W)(OM); this idea is nice because it gives you a backup (which it would seem you lack, otherwise this option would have likely been exercised). Backups, on files you feel you can't live without, are very handy at times. Very handy.

Another option is to try something like copying these files to your "C" drive, formatting, then copying back.

Yet another is to enable write access on your ntfs partition. You probably don't even have to do much to do this, but as noted, this is really not (quite yet) too stable. You'll be modifying the files and adding/removing content which will change their filesize, and my understanding is that this is where the write portion of the NTFS code could hiccup and render your data useless.

Yet even another option, backup your data to your gmail account (using gmailfs) and then copy it back afterwards.

Plenty of options! :)

Certainly more, I just can't think of them right now off the top of my head.

Cool

I can appreciate the need to help, but a reply like this doesn't provide quality information to the original poster. Once a reply has been made the thread loses 2 things: It's in the 0 replies list, and threads get bumped after a certain amount of time if they stay in this list. Once someone replies that's it. So, hopefully, the information in that response either sparks discussion, or is quality information to the original poster.

Thanks for your understanding.

Cool

MasterC:

Thanks for that advice; as a matter of fact I do happen to have an external HDD.

rahilrai@gmail.com