Using Ubuntu

I fear that I may be an idiot, as all instructions I've attempted to follow have seemed rather easy and straightforward, and I have failed miserably. My goal is to have the second harddrive formatted to ext3, which I understand can then be accessed by windows and linux using the app @ fs-driver.org (I can't post url's til I've posted 5 things). I wish to have the second harddrive act as a repository for mp3's and video files, and be accessible by both windows and linux. When I attempt to cfdisk /dev/hdb I get an error that the disk drive cannot be accessed. Any help that can be profferred would be spectacular. I have just installed Ubuntu yesterday, and sort of jumped in feet first, as that's usually the way I learn things best, and have encountered virtually no problems, up to now. I include this information to let you know that I am working almost entirely out of newbie manuals and how-to's at this point, which should be read "talk to me like I'm your grandma."

Using Ubuntu
kernel 2.6.12-10-386



here's output of /sbin/lspci

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controll er/Host-Hub Interface (rev 01)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE Host-to-AGP Br idge (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) US B UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) US B UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) US B UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB 2.0 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 81)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Bridge (rev 0 1)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) UltraATA-100 I DE Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Contr oller (rev 01)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200 ] (rev a1)
0000:02:01.0 Modem: Broadcom Corporation BCM4212 v.90 56k modem
0000:02:02.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy (rev 03)
0000:02:02.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Creative Labs SB Audigy FireWire Port
0000:02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82801BD PRO/100 VE (LOM) Ethernet Controller (rev 81)

here's a dmesg, if necessary

arting at 40000000 (gap: 40000000:c0000000)
[4294667.296000] Built 1 zonelists
[4294667.296000] Kernel command line: root=/dev/hda2 ro quiet splash
[4294667.296000] mapped APIC to ffffd000 (fee00000)
[4294667.296000] mapped IOAPIC to ffffc000 (fec00000)
[4294667.296000] Initializing CPU#0
[4294667.296000] PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 65536 bytes)
[4294667.296000] Detected 2000.207 MHz processor.
[4294667.296000] Using pmtmr for high-res timesource
[4294667.296000] Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
[4294670.010000] Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
[4294670.011000] Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
[4294670.048000] Memory: 1030060k/1047808k available (1416k kernel code, 16868k reserved, 762k data, 224k init, 130304k highmem)
[4294670.048000] Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.
[4294670.048000] Calibrating delay loop... 3964.92 BogoMIPS (lpj=1982464)
[4294670.070000] Security Framework v1.0.0 initialized
[4294670.070000] SELinux: Disabled at boot.
[4294670.070000] Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
[4294670.070000] CPU: After generic identify, caps: 3febfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
[4294670.070000] CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 3febfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
[4294670.070000] CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops, L1 D cache: 8K
[4294670.070000] CPU: L2 cache: 512K
[4294670.070000] CPU: After all inits, caps: 3febfbff 00000000 00000000 00000080 00000000 00000000 00000000
[4294670.070000] CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.00GHz stepping 04
[4294670.070000] Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
[4294670.070000] Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
[4294670.070000] Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
[4294670.074000] Checking for popad bug... OK.
[4294670.074000] checking if image is initramfs... it is
[4294670.670000] Freeing initrd memory: 5171k freed
[4294670.671000] ACPI: Looking for DSDT in initrd... not found!
[4294670.721000] not found!
[4294670.732000] ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
[4294670.732000] ..TIMER: vector=0x31 pin1=2 pin2=-1
[4294670.843000] NET: Registered protocol family 16
[4294670.843000] EISA bus registered
[4294670.843000] ACPI: bus type pci registered
[4294670.843000] PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf0031, last bus=2
[4294670.843000] PCI: Using configuration type 1
[4294670.843000] mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)
[4294670.843000] ACPI: Subsystem revision 20050729
[4294670.852000] ACPI: Interpreter enabled
[4294670.852000] ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
[4294670.852000] ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
[4294670.852000] PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
[4294670.852000] ACPI: Assume root bridge [\_SB_.PCI0] segment is 0
[4294670.855000] PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 0000:00:1f.1
[4294670.855000] Boot video device is 0000:01:00.0
[4294670.855000] PCI: Transparent bridge - 0000:00:1e.0
[4294670.856000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
[4294670.857000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.P0P1._PRT]
[4294670.860000] ACPI: Power Resource [URP1] (off)
[4294670.860000] ACPI: Power Resource [FDDP] (off)
[4294670.860000] ACPI: Power Resource [LPTP] (off)
[4294670.863000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 7 9 10 *11 12 14 15)
[4294670.863000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs *3 4 5 7 9 10 11 12 14 15)
[4294670.864000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 3 4 5 7 *9 10 11 12 14 15)
[4294670.864000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 3 4 *5 7 9 10 11 12 14 15)
[4294670.865000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 *11 12 14 15)
[4294670.865000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled.
[4294670.866000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 *11 12 14 15)
[4294670.866000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 *10 11 12 14 15)
[4294670.866000] Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
[4294670.866000] pnp: PnP ACPI init
[4294670.871000] pnp: PnP ACPI: found 12 devices
[4294670.871000] PnPBIOS: Disabled by ACPI PNP
[4294670.871000] PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
[4294670.871000] PCI: If a device doesn't work, try "pci=routeirq". If it helps, post a report
[4294670.878000] pnp: 00:0a: ioport range 0x400-0x47f could not be reserved
[4294670.878000] pnp: 00:0a: ioport range 0x680-0x6ff has been reserved
[4294670.878000] pnp: 00:0a: ioport range 0x480-0x4bf has been reserved
[4294670.879000] audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
[4294670.879000] audit: initialized
[4294670.879000] highmem bounce pool size: 64 pages
[4294670.879000] VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
[4294670.879000] Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
[4294670.879000] devfs: 2004-01-31 Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
[4294670.879000] devfs: boot_options: 0x0
[4294670.879000] Initializing Cryptographic API
[4294670.879000] isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
[4294671.233000] isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
[4294671.254000] PNP: PS/2 controller doesn't have AUX irq; using default 0xc
[4294671.254000] PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:PS2K] at 0x60,0x64 irq 112
[4294671.257000] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
[4294671.257000] serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
[4294671.257000] Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 54 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
[4294671.257000] ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[4294671.259000] ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[4294671.259000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:01.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22
[4294671.260000] io scheduler noop registered
[4294671.260000] io scheduler anticipatory registered
[4294671.260000] io scheduler deadline registered
[4294671.260000] io scheduler cfq registered
[4294671.260000] RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 65536K size 1024 blocksize
[4294671.261000] EISA: Probing bus 0 at eisa.0
[4294671.261000] EISA: Detected 0 cards.
[4294671.261000] NET: Registered protocol family 2
[4294671.271000] IP: routing cache hash table of 8192 buckets, 64Kbytes
[4294671.271000] TCP established hash table entries: 262144 (order: 9, 2097152 bytes)
[4294671.274000] TCP bind hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
[4294671.275000] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 262144 bind 65536)
[4294671.275000] NET: Registered protocol family 8
[4294671.275000] NET: Registered protocol family 20
[4294671.275000] ACPI wakeup devices:
[4294671.275000] P0P1 UAR1 PS2K USB0 USB1 USB2 USB3 AC97 SLPB
[4294671.275000] ACPI: (supports S0 S1 S3 S4 S5)
[4294671.275000] Freeing unused kernel memory: 224k freed
[4294671.298000] vga16fb: initializing
[4294671.298000] vga16fb: mapped to 0xc00a0000
[4294671.453000] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x30
[4294671.453000] fb0: VGA16 VGA frame buffer device
[4294671.556000] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0
[4294672.605000] Capability LSM initialized
[4294672.620000] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[4294672.639000] Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
[4294672.639000] ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
[4294672.639000] ACPI: bus type ide registered
[4294672.648000] ICH4: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:1f.1
[4294672.648000] PCI: Enabling device 0000:00:1f.1 (0005 -> 0007)
[4294672.648000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.1[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[4294672.648000] ICH4: chipset revision 1
[4294672.648000] ICH4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
[4294672.648000] ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
[4294672.648000] ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
[4294672.648000] Probing IDE interface ide0...
[4294672.912000] hda: WDC WD1200JB-00GVC0, ATA DISK drive
[4294673.167000] hdb: WDC WD2500LB-55EDA0, ATA DISK drive
[4294673.220000] ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
[4294673.220000] Probing IDE interface ide1...
[4294673.892000] hdc: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-H552U, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
[4294674.606000] hdd: LITE-ON LTR-40125S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
[4294674.657000] ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
[4294674.657000] Probing IDE interface ide2...
[4294675.170000] Probing IDE interface ide3...
[4294675.682000] Probing IDE interface ide4...
[4294676.194000] Probing IDE interface ide5...
[4294676.711000] hda: max request size: 1024KiB
[4294676.728000] hda: 234441648 sectors (120034 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100)
[4294676.730000] hda: cache flushes supported
[4294676.730000] /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 p3 < p5 >
[4294676.771000] hdb: max request size: 1024KiB
[4294676.802000] hdb: 488397168 sectors (250059 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=30401/255/63, UDMA(100)
[4294676.803000] hdb: cache flushes supported
[4294676.803000] /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0: p1
[4294676.822000] hdc: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache
[4294676.822000] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[4294676.828000] hdd: ATAPI 48X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache
[4294677.411000] Attempting manual resume
[4294677.419000] swsusp: Suspend partition has wrong signature?
[4294677.462000] usbcore: registered new driver usbfs
[4294677.462000] usbcore: registered new driver hub
[4294677.464000] USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2
[4294677.464000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[4294677.464000] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.0 to 64
[4294677.464000] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1
[4294677.526000] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[4294677.526000] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: irq 16, io base 0x0000e800
[4294677.526000] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[4294677.526000] hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
[4294677.529000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.1[B] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
[4294677.529000] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.1 to 64
[4294677.529000] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2
[4294677.591000] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
[4294677.591000] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: irq 19, io base 0x0000e880
[4294677.591000] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
[4294677.591000] hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
[4294677.594000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.2[C] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[4294677.594000] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.2 to 64
[4294677.594000] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3
[4294677.656000] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
[4294677.656000] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: irq 18, io base 0x0000ec00
[4294677.656000] hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
[4294677.656000] hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
[4294677.687000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.7[D] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
[4294677.687000] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1d.7 to 64
[4294677.687000] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller
[4294677.687000] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: debug port 1
[4294677.688000] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
[4294677.688000] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: irq 23, io mem 0xfebffc00
[4294677.691000] PCI: cache line size of 128 is not supported by device 0000:00:1d.7
[4294677.691000] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 initialized, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004
[4294677.692000] hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found
[4294677.692000] hub 4-0:1.0: 6 ports detected
[4294677.795000] e100: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Driver, 3.4.8-k2-NAPI
[4294677.795000] e100: Copyright(c) 1999-2005 Intel Corporation
[4294677.795000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:08.0[A] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
[4294677.818000] e100: eth0: e100_probe: addr 0xfeafd000, irq 20, MAC addr 00:07:E9:9F:43:F1
[4294678.325000] usb 3-1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
[4294679.858000] usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
[4294679.875000] input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Logitech USB Optical Mouse] on usb-0000:00:1d.2-1
[4294679.875000] usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
[4294679.875000] drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.01:USB HID core driver
[4294680.576000] ACPI: CPU0 (power states: C1[C1])
[4294680.576000] ACPI: Processor [CPU1] (supports 8 throttling states)
[4294680.863000] Attempting manual resume
[4294680.882000] swsusp: Suspend partition has wrong signature?
[4294680.926000] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
[4294680.926000] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
[4294681.729000] md: md driver 0.90.1 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
[4294685.383000] Adding 2409708k swap on /dev/hda5. Priority:-1 extents:1
[4294685.619000] EXT3 FS on hda2, internal journal
[4294690.676000] parport: PnPBIOS parport detected.
[4294690.676000] parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778), irq 7, dma 3 [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,ECP,DMA]
[4294690.761000] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven).
[4294690.804000] mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
[4294690.869000] ieee1394: Initialized config rom entry `ip1394'
[4294690.937000] SCSI subsystem initialized
[4294690.944000] sbp2: $Rev: 1219 $ Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
[4294694.122000] device-mapper: 4.4.0-ioctl (2005-01-12) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
[4294694.869000] cdrom: open failed.
[4294694.882000] cdrom: open failed.
[4294699.822000] Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones
[4294699.835000] agpgart: Detected an Intel 845G Chipset.
[4294699.860000] agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xf8000000
[4294699.969000] pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
[4294699.984000] shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
[4294699.984000] shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
[4294699.984000] shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
[4294700.398000] hw_random hardware driver 1.0.0 loaded
[4294701.089000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:02.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[4294702.071000] ohci1394: $Rev: 1250 $ Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
[4294702.071000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:02.2[B] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
[4294702.129000] ohci1394: fw-host0: OHCI-1394 1.1 (PCI): IRQ=[19] MMIO=[feafe800-feafefff] Max Packet=[2048]
[4294703.396000] ieee1394: Host added: ID:BUS[0-00:1023] GUID[00023c0051016cbb]
[4294703.999000] Real Time Clock Driver v1.12
[4294704.125000] input: PC Speaker
[4294704.305000] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
[4294704.327000] FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
[4294704.794000] ts: Compaq touchscreen protocol output
[4294706.240000] e100: eth0: e100_watchdog: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex
[4294706.253000] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[4294711.497000] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[4294711.498000] Disabled Privacy Extensions on device c02eb280(lo)
[4294711.498000] IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver
[4294713.112000] ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF]
[4294713.112000] ACPI: Sleep Button (CM) [SLPB]
[4294713.263000] ibm_acpi: ec object not found
[4294721.056000] apm: BIOS not found.
[4294722.479000] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
[4294722.752000] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.7
[4294722.752000] NET: Registered protocol family 31
[4294722.752000] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[4294722.752000] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[4294722.771000] Bluetooth: L2CAP ver 2.7
[4294722.771000] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[4294722.797000] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.5
[4294722.797000] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[4294722.797000] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized

I hope I've included enough information. Again, thanks for any help at all!!

Jesse

You need to su to root before using cfdisk. (Or in ubuntu-land I suppose you need to use sudo.)

Just a note: I have not heard of anyone using ext3 as the filesystem to share between a Linux and Windows installation, but maybe you know something I don't. It is pretty standard to use fat32 for this purpose.

If you can live with read/write access from Linux, and read-only access from Windows, install explore2fs in windows. It will allow windows to read from a Linux partition. In this case, playing mp3s and videos is read access.

Using cfdisk allows you to create/delete/resize partitions, designate filesystem types, and write partition tables for the disk.

To format, you should use mke2fs -j /dev/hdbX, where X is the partition number to format. The default filesystem type is ext2. The -j option makes it a journaled filesystem (ext3).

To be certain you give the correct device name, look at /etc/fstab to see how ubuntu named it. If there is only one partition on the disk, it should be /dev/hdb1.

thanks a lot for the response! I actually do need to be able to write from windows, so I took anomie's advice, and tried FAT32. As of now, it appears to be working fine, although I had to make two partitions on the 250 Gig backup drive, and I fear I may have done something wrong. As of now everything appears to be functioning as I'd expected it to. Thans for all the help!!!

I will now list the steps I took to get my second hard drive working well to swap files between windows and linux (ubuntu)

first, I formatted the Drive to FAT32 using partition magic (which I would consider cheating, as I'd hoped to be able to offer a linux only answer. Alas)

Next I verified I was pointed at the correct drive and partition

sudo fdisk -l

Mine was /dev/hdb5
For our purposes, we'll assume that /dev/hda1 is the location of the FAT Windows partition

then I created a local mount folder
Local mount folder: /media/windows

sudo mkdir /media/windows

then backup file system table (in case of implosion)

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_backup

then edit the fs table

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

and add your partition by appending the following line at the end of the file

/dev/hda1 /media/windows vfat iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0

then save, close, and reboot.

the partition is now mounted in /media/windows to which you can point whatever you want to read from or write to that particular partition, or navigate there to ls your files manually.

Next time if you want a Linux-only answer, you might get the knoppix live cd.

http://www.knoppix.org/

There is a nice, gui partitioning program there called qtparted (which is a front-end to another program called parted). I think you will find it like Partition Magic in many ways. Anyway, you could have used that to manage the partitions and then create a fat32 filesystem.

is qtparted apt-get able in ubuntu? I'm actually thinking of switching over to KDE as I'm finding some shortcomings in GNOME (I think kubuntu is the ubuntu distro using KDE, but considering SuSE on the recommendation of a co worker.) I'm really really enjoying linux so far, and this forum is really awesome. most helpful community I've ever encountered. So otherwise just use knoppix?

You can use knoppix as a stand-alone set of tools for any system (i.e. you run the from the live cd to perform actions on the system; you don't need to install anything).

The qtparted application is OSS under the GPL, so I am sure it will be available as a .deb package for Ubuntu (and surely as an .rpm for SuSE as well). The source is available to compile yourself as well, if you wanted to for some reason.

You must of course also mention the distro GParted! It is awesome for reliable partition editing. Although it is a distro it isn't anything more than a live gentoo base with xorg and gparted! Very small and quick to download, burn and use.