Ive Just set up a pc, with two 20gig hard disk drives, specifying the second as /home in the setup program (dont know whether that was a mistake or not) and what i want to do is be able to effectively share the second hard drive over the network, so windows XP machines can access the second drive, and use it like a remote hard disk, but so several computers can access it, without having shared files themselves, and without an extra program required on the windows, (keeping windows simple). i also want to be able to use the second drive to store files from the linux system as well, if that matters. any answers will be greately appreciated

I think the first step, (leave it to me to state the obvious ) in order to ensure cross-compatability, will be to make sure the drive is formatted fat32, if you want (reliable) rw capabilities in Linux, or NTFS if you don't.

thankyou for stating the obvious, because to me its not quite so obvious, so how do i reformat it as fat32?

If you go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management, you should be able to reformat it there and choose the file system. Remember to back up any data on the drive first though!

how do i get to the control panel

i feel like such an idiot for having to ask that question

Haven't been using XP that long? Click the Start button, then Settings and it's under there.

I thought we wanted network access?

You only need fat32 if windows and linux are dual booted and you want both OSs to see the same harddisk.

If windows and linux are on a different computer, but on the same network, then install samba on the linux box. This emulates windows file sharing for linux.

My distro sets up samba so that it automatically shares the home folders, if not you'll need to configure it.

Windows users can then get to their files (without even needing to log in, if the windows username and passwords match the samba ones). In a My Computer window, your windows users would type "\\linuxbox\username\" and would then see their home directory.

This method preserves/enforces file/directory permissions.

Things i've noted about samba are that it has it's own user tables, so you'll need to add all your linux users to samba, just something to watch out for.

I have a linux box acting as my filestore, so that i can randomly trash my windows PC without losing data and this setup works for me.

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If the linux and windows OS are in the same box then please note this:

If you backup the second drive in XP, make sure you actually copy All the files.

WindowsXP by default hides certain files, notably hidden ones. Also windows XP has problems with files that start with a dot. It seems ok copying them, but you cannot create them in XP.

To ensure you are copying all files open My Computer, and from the menu select Tools->Folder Options. In the view tab, go through and ensure that all the settings that get windows to hide files are turned off (or whatever, it's not always consistant).

Then you can copy the files off the hard drive, reformat it and put them back on.

If you actually have linux installed at the time.. it might be better to do this through linux, as i have no idea how linux will react to the harddisk suddenly changing filesystem.

Also from a security point of view, FAT32 does not have file permissions. So everyone will have access to everyone else's files.

Looking at the original post, many of the replys are incorrect or unnecessary. The questions was, "what i want to do is be able to effectively share the second hard drive over the network". Over the network will require that Samba be running on the linux computer. That is it. All the discussions of formatting are unnecessary. He isn't sharing data between 2 OSes on 1 machine, he is using the samba server as a file server. Any formatting will be fine, and samba will allow the M$ computers to write across the network, provided he gets the permissions set up correctly.

To the original poster, there is no problem with have one full drive set as home. 20 GB doesn't strike me as much space, particularly if music/video files are involved, but if that is what you have to work with, that is fine. Getting samba set up correctly isn't a trivial task. You'll most likely have to do a ton of reading, as well as searches here and on google. What you are looking to do is often done, so look for guides to help you if you get stuck.

Peace,
JimBass

thankyou - obviously the first guy didnt understand what i wanted to do, thankyou, to the other people for your responses though, cos now i know what i got to do.

Is Linux able to write on NTFS partition(s) throught samba (without damaging data on ntfs partition)? (linux box to write throught LAN to windows machine on ntfs)
I can't afford me to reformat windoz's NTFS partitions on other PC, no space available for backup.

Take a look at this if you want to use samba
http://us4.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/toc.html
It will be very helpfull.

Upon review, I OBVIOUSLY didn't think your question all the way through! I'm very sorry about that! Unfortunately, incomplete thinking plagued me quite a bit over the past two weeks, a symptom of raging insomnia. This problem has been resolved, and (hopefully) I won't be talking out of my butt again any time soon!