I have recently installed Zenwalk 2.4 on a PC also running Windows ME.

The PC has two separate hard drives. I have both the Zenwalk and ME OS installed on hda and /home and My Documents (for Windows) installed on hdb.

I have just discovered that when I boot into Windows I can see, edit and change all my Linux folders and files on hdb (D:\). On previous distros I have tried the Linux partition was completely invisible to Windows.

Is this because I have installed /home on a seperate drive?

Or is it the file system I am using, XFS?

I have checked my other PC (running SUSE & XP)and XP cannot see any of my Linux files or folders EXCEPT a .dt-TRASH folder that is on a shared FAT32 partition. On this PC the /home folder is on the same partition as SUSE.

It sounds as though you have actually installed them on FAT/FAT32 partitions. Windows ME cannot read XFS. It makes no difference where your /home partition is; if it were really on an XFS partition, Windows ME would not be able to read it.

Of course you are right, that is what i have done! I was assuming that a Linux partition was set up on the 2nd drive just for /home. But of course it hasn't, it has just installed it on the FAT32 partition because it is just data.

Probably not related, but I found that after I installed Norton utilities on Win98, explorer could see the Ext2 drives (and Norton complained about invalid partition). It caused the Ext2 partitions to be allocated drive letters in windows.

That is not the problem in this case but it is very interesting to know anyway. That is one concern I have about Windows 'seeing' my /home folder is that it might try to mess about with it if I do a chkdsk or defrag.