Can I see linux partitions under Winxp
 

Hi!

I have a dual boot of Win xp home and Suse 9.2. Is there a way to see linux partition under windows. I use win for internet, since my modem is not supported under linux and want to do almost every thing in linux. I read some where that I cant modify the files on ntfs partitions and manually copying everything new form a windows folder to linux folder is a bit of a hard work. Is there a easy way to do it. can I save all my files directly on the linux(that resei or some thing like that formated suse partition) so that when I boot into linux I can easily work on my files.

For the part where u want to use linux for everything including internet: the best way to do that is using an ethernet router, every linux distro will work correctly with these ( and windows too ).

Just make sure it's something like a broadband router if thats your connection.


Now... there are project that enables you to see linux partitions from windows, but these are EXPERIMENTAL and should be used if you don't care damaging you win or linux partition.

The safest way to use is to create a seperate FAT partition.

Windows writes and reads FATs and so does Linux.

This is for now the safest thing you can do.

I think what you are looking for is this:

http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html

" It provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access). This may be useful if you have installed both Windows and Linux as a dual boot environment on your computer.

The "Ext2 Installable File System for Windows" software is freeware. "

Yes ok, this is one of them... but its still experimental. Beware!

Specifically which portion(s) of linux do you want to be able to view from win? If it's just a small section where you store document files, I think a good way would be to make it a separate partition formatted as FAT32, as Carroarmato0 suggested, so both OSs can use it. In linux you can mount it wherever you want it to be (under /home/<username>/Documents or /mnt/Documents is good), and in Windows you can redirect your My Documents folder to it.

I can't think of a good reason why you might want to share any other area of linux with windows

I just want to say that the captive-ntfs project lists it as stable, and having acheive all of the core functionality. It can read/write non-sparse blocks. I would think it would be as close to safe as you can get to writing on ntfs, since it relies on windows own NTFS kernel drivers. I personally have used it to write multiple GB files onto my windows partition without any failures. Just my 2 cents

You should have no problems mounting NTFS or FAT32 volumes using SuSE.
For mounting reiserfs volumes in Windows, I would recommend installing Cygwin or CoLinux and use those to mount the partition.