Dual boot + two hard drives
 

I have a 300GB 10,000RPM drive partitioned for Ubuntu 9.10 and XP 64bit. I use Linux (and sometimes run Win7 with VirtualBox) for everyday use, and switch to XP when I want to game.

My hard drive is filling up, I want to add a second. If I add a second, will both Linux and XP be able to access it? Will they both be able to read/write it? If not, are there steps I could take to make this happen?

OS's read filesystems; not hard drives.
Linux can read (and usually write) Windows filesystems (ie. fat16, fat32, ntfs). But Windows can not read Linux filesystems.
So it depends upon what type of filesystem you format the hard drive (actually the partition(s)) with.

--ET

My bad, I'm not 100% in touch with the nomenclature!

So if I format it in NTFS, I will be able to read and write to the filesystem with both XP and Linux? Will a file saved to the drive in Linux be able to be opened in XP?

I'm not 100% certain about NTFS.
I think Linux can modify existing files on an NTFS filesystem; but it can not create new files on NTFS.
At least that was the case a couple of years ago.

--ET

Alright, thanks! Do you know if it can in FAT32? Unfortunately, the problem with FAT32 is that it cannot support files about 4GB.

I believe Linux has no difficulty in both reading and writing to FAT32.

Can anyone else out there verify this (and my NTFS claims) for us ?

--ET

If you add the new harddrive, yes format the drive with the NTFS file system. Then on your Ubuntu OS open your Package Manager and install ntfs-3g this will let Linux read and write to the NTFS file system. If you want the partition to mount at bootup you will also need to edit your /etc/fstab and make an entry for that drive.(Just in case you didn't know.)