G'day all,

I recently installed Fedora Core 4 on a new hard drive. My system now dual boots using GRUB, but all my files are still on my old hard drive which is used for windows XP. I was wondering if there is a way to transfer music and files from my Windows hard drive to my Fedora hard drive.



Thanks in advance,

Nick.

In fact you can access the Windows drive directly, without need to transfer your files. Linux has been able to read ntfs filesystems for some time, and recently has been able to write them as well.

First of all, check your system for a folder called /mnt/windows or /windows or something like that. I am almost 100% sure that your Fedora install will have detected the Windows partition and set up a mount for it automatically. If you find it, that is your Windows drive and you can access all your files in there.

In the very unlikely event that it isn't there, you will need to create a directory to mount it to, say:

and then mount it with:

where * is the device number for your Windows drive. You can then add an entry in your /etc/fstab file to mount this drive automatically when you boot up; someone else can tell you how to do that, or I will tell you when I get home.

You have to mount the drive

I do this at boottime using an entry in the file /etc/fstab
/dev/hda8 is my windows G-drive and will be mounted as /W2K/G (you have to create this directory)
vfat is the type (vfat for FAT-formatted drives, ntfs for NTFS formatted drives)
auto indicates that it must be mounted at boot-time
uid and gid indicate the owner and group
umask indicates the rights
I'm not sure about the last 2 numbers (0 0)

Please note that NTFS reading is not a problem but writing might be.

Just installed the last and lastes verion of Suse Linux 9.3

I have two drives...one dedicated to linux and the other is a NTFS windows drive.

I have tried to mount the drive to gain access and here is the error messege I get

"Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: can't find /dev/hda1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab"

contents of the files above:

fstab
/dev/hdb2 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hdb1 /ntfs ntfs user,ro 0 0

mtab

/dev/hdb2 / reiserfs rw,acl,user_xattr 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /ntfs ntfs user,ro 0 0

Now when I reboot, the above file mtab goes back to its orginal config without the:
/dev/hdb1 /ntfs ntfs user,ro 0 0

There by I get the same error messege again:
"Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: can't find /dev/hda1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab"



Any help would be much appreciated.

Saspen

On Fedora Core, you have to first install the NTFS kernel module

I got to looking in the partition area of the YAST...you are right there are no assignments of the type of file system for the NTFS...

hmmmmmmmmmm

any more info???

I see that there are kernels for Redhat and Fedora...but what about SUSE? Where may I find that kernel you speak of?

saspen

I've attempted the mount -t ntfs ... and it returns

(I'm running gentoo, so it didn't already set it up for me)

mount: unknown filesystem type 'ntfs'

I had gone back into my kernel config and selected ntfs file system support , done make && make install, and rebooted, but it still doesn't want to recognize ntfs.

If you find you absolutely cannot mount the darn NTFS partition in Fedora, try using a live CD to copy the files. It's worth the download to have a Live CD sitting around for emergencies anyway.

If you boot Knoppix, both hard drives (all partitions) appear on the desktop.

- set up a password for su (sudo passwd root),
- mount the two drives/partitions (just use the icons)
- make the Linux partition writable (right click icon, select actions-Change Read/Write mode)
- open Konqueror as su (menu-System-More Applicatns-File Manager Super User Mode)
- copy the files

Exit Knoppix as soon as you finish copying, or you might find yourself playing with it all evening. Be especially careful if you use PCLinuxOS or Kanotix or Wolvix, because you will end up wanting to install it and/or build your own custom Live CD, and you may not get back to your original project for days!

Well, I'm using gentoo, not Fedora. Consequently I have a Gentoo LiveCD, which doesn't have the commands/graphics that you are referring to. Also, what files are you talking about copying over.

I realized what I had forgotten to do. I never copied my kernel configuration to overwrite my old kernel after I had compiled the new one (since they are in different directories)

It looks like you're trying to mount /dev/hda1, which can't be found (possibly due to being a cf/mmc card reader). As you can see above, your ntfs partition is actually on /dev/hdb1.