Can I access my windows partition in Linux?

I am a complete noob in Linux, but I want to learn this OS. My primary problem is that I cannot access my windows partition. I am running SUSE 10 with both Gnome and KDE installed, but I use Gnome more often than KDE. Well, the question is.. How?

BTW

I have 3 Windows partitions. All are formatted in FAT32. My windows partition is WinXP..

Yes you can access your windows partition in Linux. First the partitions have to be mounted. Open up a console, and open up /etc/fstab. What are its contents? (You will have to be root). Mine are the following:

# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda7 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec,users 0 0
/dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom2 auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec,users 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,rw 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/win_c2 ext3 umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,rw 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0

/dev/hda1 is MY main windows partition. That line means that I can navigate to /mnt/win_c and access the drive. The line following that is my storage drive, and that line says that I can navigate to /mnt/win_c2 to access it.

See, simple ;-)

For a complete newbie, I think that explanation could be a little more complete. Lemme take a crack at it.

First of all, do you need to access all three of your Windows partitions? My own Windows setup contains 3 partitions, but the 1st one is strictly for the OS, and the other two are data. I only need to access the data partitions from Linux. Hopefully, your Windows partitions are hda1, hda2, and hda3; and we'll assume you only want to access the 2nd and 3rd partitions.

I don't know how Suse is laid out, so let's start from a terminal window:

Log in as root, and open an text editor program and a terminal window

Using the terminal window:
# mkdir /mnt/windata1
# mkdir /mnt/windata2

Using the text editor:
Open the file '/etc/fstab'

Add these lines:

/dev/hda2       /mnt/windata1   vfat    owner,user,auto 0       0
/dev/hda3       /mnt/windata2   vfat    owner,user,auto 0       0

That should do it. Reboot, Log in as a normal user, then open the terminal window. and try ...

$ ls /mnt/windata1

Does that look like the Windows data you wanted to see? You may need to do some tweaking. Sometimes the windows partitions wind up being hda4 ... or 5 ... something else, but you should be on the right track. There are better ways to accomplish this, but this way is pretty foolproof for starters. Good luck.

Ahhhh, there ya go :-) I sometimes forget that I pick up on these things sort of quickly and forgot to really explain things. I'll start trying harder (I really like being able to help when I can)
Kevin

Wow you guys really know how! Uhhmmm... Is root user same as administrator in windows? I created a user account during installation, but i don't think that it is a root user because everytime I open up Yast it asks me for root password...

Root can control everything on the computer. If you want to install applications system wide, for example, you have to be root. You should have been asked to set a root password on installation. Open up a console and then issue the su command. Try entering *what you think* may be the root password. If nothing works, try entering a blank password (some people do leave, either purposefully or accidentally, their system wide open). Then issue the commands given by rickh.
Kevin

Originally Posted by MrVahn I created a user account during installation, but i don't think that it is a root user because everytime I open up Yast it asks me for root password...

Root is not a type of user; root is a particular user. When you log in, you normally type the user name you set up (probably something resembling your name) but to "be root" you have to type root instead.

Thank you for your very helpful replies. Now I am able to open my files. But another problem is that I have noticed that my system runs slow. Maybe it is because I have not payed close attention on the size of my SWAP drive during installation. I think it is only about 7.8mb. People say that it should be almost double the size of my RAM. If that so, I should have put 700++mb. Hmmm.. Is it possible to resize a swap partition without reinstalling? lol. Si\o many questions I have in this very interesting OS..

If your swap is only 8 megs, then it very likely could be a source of slowness. It is possible to resize it, but I'll let someone else field that one.

Ok then. I can wait.

My position is that, while it may be possible to resize your swap partition, it's more trouble than it's worth. If you're like me, you will reinstall several times before you get it right anyway. Bite the bullet. Reinstall and consider it a learning experience.

That is what I am already onsidering to do. I won't lose anything from reinstalling anyway, just my precious time. But as a noob, waiting for answers from pros may also take a lot of time. I'm just being curious if there is an alternative other that reinstalling.

The slowness might not have anything to do with your swap space. How much ram do you have?

On my system i have 256MB and swap rarely gets touched. After my last install i noticed very sluggish response when my hard drives were doing _anything_. It turned out that i didn't have 'DMA' enabled on the drives.

NOTE: after typing all this i came across something that suggests you can set DMA and other drive settings using Yast.

Although the small swap size might not be an issue, you should still resize it. If a program requests more memory when the RAM and swap are full it will be forced to shut down.

You can check this by opening a terminal, switching to your root user by typing 'su' and entering the root password, and then typing 'hdparm /dev/hdx'. Replace hdx with the letter for your harddrive.

hda is the drive attatched as master on the primary ide controller
hdb is the slave drive on the primary controller
hdc is master secondary
hdd is slave secondary.

My output looks like this:

linuxbox dan # hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    = 256 (on)
 geometry     = 39770/16/63, sectors = 20525137920, start = 0

If the line 'using_dma' is off then this could be the source of the trouble.

to turn DMA on, type: hdparm -d1 /dev/hdx

Changes don't stick between boots using this method, you usually need to add them to a file called hdparm which is located somewhere in /etc. It changes for every distro though, so i can't help you on that one

Just did a quick search and came across this: http://linux.about.com/od/linux101/l/blnewbie4_2_13.htm

it's a little dated but it explains how to make a swap file, so that could be a temorary fix for your swap issue.