Alright, this is my second time installing Linux to run aside Windows XP. I decided to give it another shot because I thought the issues that I experienced the first time would have be resolved. Heres my scenario:


I have two hard drives, with the first hard drive having 2 partitions, one for Windows and the other for Linux. The second hard drive is only mp3's, movies, etc.... When I start up Linux, it mounts the second hard drive, but lists the hard drive as being empty, 0 files, 0 folders, etc... The hard drive is formatted as NTFS. I check the fstab, and it is mounting the correct hard drive, /dev/hdb1; second hard drive, first partition.

I would like to be able to mess with my medial files from within Linux that are located. I know its not a problem with the hard drive, as I can view all the files while im operating in Windows XP. Any help would be very appreciative........

did you make sure your kernel supports ntfs?

what kernel version are you using? you can find this by typing: if it is a 2.4.xxx kernel then most likely you do not have ntfs support. you can find the ntfs support module by doing some googling, intalling this module should solve your problem if the drive is mounted correctly. note: while it is safe to read from ntfs devices with this module, write support is NOT safe.

hope this helps.

I may be totally off on this so if I am, someone please correct me. But I've heard that Linux has an easier time working with FAT32 partitions rather than NTFS, but neither of them are stable enough to be writing to the HD from Linux, only for reading.

fat32 support is quite stable. Kurumin linux can even swap in a fat32 partition. Ntfs is problematic. But paragon software came up with ntfs support (read and write).

Yes, my kernel supports NTFS. I forget to mention that I am using Mandrake 10.0. Any other ideas?