The problem you are having is that you're trying to access the
raw device file, /dev/hda1, rather than the files on that partition.
This is one of the first differences between windows & linux that
people run across. Linux has special "device files" that represent
hardware on the system; the closest Windows parallel is probably
the device manager.
In order to access the files on your fat32 (aka vfat) partition, you
will need to "mount" the fat32 filesystem, if it isn't already. You
most likely won't actually have to do this, since most installations
automatically detect fat32 partitions & do this for you. You can
check to see if it is already mounted by opening a console prompt
and typing "mount -t vfat". This will list all of the vfat (aka fat32)
filesystems that are already mounted. If your old windows
partitions are already mounted (most likely) it will print a line
something like:
/dev/hda1 on
/mnt/win/c type vfat (rw)
This shows where the device (possible /dev/hda1) is mounted, in
this example /mnt/win/c. What this means is that you can access
all the files on the /dev/hda1 partition in the /mnt/win/c directory.
If it's not mounted, you will want to edit the file "/etc/fstab". This
file contains info on filesystems & where to mount them. You will
want to add a line somthing like:
Code:
# Device Mount point Type Options Special
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win/c vfat defaults 0 0
Changing the bold text to what would be best for you. Make sure
the mount point (i.e. /mnt/win/c) exists. It should be an empty
directory.
Additional information:
man mount
man fstab
Filesystems HOWTO - very technical & in depth.