Hello all,

This is going to be a long explanation, but I hope it will make sense.

I wanted a dual boot system. So, I used partition magic to seclude a small portion of my first harddrive and put all the data I didn't want to lose on that small chunk. Then I deleted all other partitions and installed WinXP on the first 10G, then installed Linux on the second 10G. My plan was to get the dual boot setup how I wanted it and then boot into windows and use partitionmagic to expand the small chunk of stored data and reformat my second harddrive so that it could be common between Windows and Linux.

Here's what happened:

I got Windows and Linux installed where and how I wanted them. The dual boot works. However, when I boot into windows and try to run partitionmagic, it gives me an error saying that there is no drive letter assigned and then it closes.

So, can I go into linux and declare a drive letter for that partition that windows (and PM) will understand? Or do I have to reformat again and create the linux partition using PM? Also, what filesystem should I make the shared partition(FAT16, FAT32...)?

All help is greatly appreciated.

-UTK

Fat 32 should work ok, do not make it ntfs cause there is not very good support for it in linux.

Is the problem that you cannot acces your data on the "small chunk" or that you can't run partition magic?
Mikhail_16's suggestion to use FAT 32 will be the best option for your shared drive

actually, if all you want to do is access the data on that small partition, XP should see it all right. It should already have a 'drive letter'. If you don't see it in my computer, right click on my computer, then management and then disk management and see what it tells you about your harddrive. you can also manually assign a drive letter to a partition if it can read it.