Accessing Windows Drive
 

Hi I Am VERY New to linux
I Use Red Hat 9
I have 2 hard drives
the first has Win XP and is in two partitions
all my songs/videos/other media are on the second partition
my second drive is only a few gigs and that has linux on it
i want to be able to use the stuff from my 2nd windows partition in linux

Please help if i cant figure this out i might give up on linux
Linux is harder to use than windows in my experience but i dont want to miss out on the power or the FREEDOM
:scratch: :scratch: :scratch: :confused: :confused: :scratch:

Is the windows drive FAT or NTFS?

most likely ntfs.

go here to get a ntfs read support module for your kernel version.

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/redhat9.html

look at the versions and find your kernel version, click either the i386 or i686 link (you should be fine with the i686 module and download the rpm. click on the rpm to install it.

then edit your /etc/fstab file. you'll need to know your /dev/hdX for your partitions. you can get this from the /sbin/fdisk -l command. the line in fstab that you'll want to add would look something like this for, let's say, your windows c:\ drive.

the first column is the partition's device label (/dev/hda1).
the second column is the mount point for the device (/mnt/winC). you need to make sure this directory exists before you try mounting the partition
the third column (ntfs) is the filesystem.
the last column is options. auto will mount this partition when you boot up linux. the umask option sets the permissions for this partition as read/exec for all users. ntfs write support can be dangerous, so it's better to not set write permissions for your windows ntfs partitions.
save your changes. i'm assuming you know that you need to have root access to do these changes.

to mount these drives immediately, use the mount command -> man mount to read about the mount command.

the command you want to use to mount this example would be:
mount -a /dev/hda1

now you can create hard drive icons on your desktop. some newer distros may automatically place hard drive icons (of devices that are mounted) automatically. if not, find out how to manually add hard drive icons to your desktop. www.google.com/linux would be good for that.

partitions
 

[URL=http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?threadid=166942]

First there may be some background information in that thread. I'm guessing you are using partition magic and have NTFS on the second windoze partition. Your first windoze partition is a primary partition "suitable for OS" your second is a logical partition that is really an extension of the first. These partitions are listed as devices in the /dev/ directory, and i can't tell you what they are--probably something like hda1 for the primary. What you need to do is figure out these device names, and mount them onto a portion of your linux filetree...perhaps at a point like /mnt/windows (you'll have to create it). hope that helps.

as you can tell, megaspaz is far more dedicated than I am tonight......

my drive is ntfs
i am running an amd athlon xp 2200 processor
i am attempting right now thanks for the help

i tried but i can only get my windows partition with windows directory not my seond parition
i cant figure out the drive name of my second partition
i used the partition creator windows has when i installed windows to create the second partition

It is probably /dev/hda5 but to see all of your partitions, as root:

fdisk -l (thats a small L)

it worked with hda5 thanks for the help