Hy all...i am a real Newbie!

I have instaled a linux OS un my PC and i woud like to acces the files on my winows partition...what shoud i do?

Thank you, Telcy!

Hello Telcy

To be able to help out, a couple more details will be required. Here are a few for starters:

1. Your distro is Ubuntu, right? If that is the case, ideally, if you get to the point where you could login with your username and password and it shows you a desktop, the desktop will have folders that are labelled something like hda1, hda2 hda3 and so on. Double clicking these will open the c:\, d:\ or something similar, which are of course your data on partitions that Windows sees.

If you are not able to do that, then please do give the following information:

1. Distribution and version of your Linux
2. Do you know whether your Windows files are on NTFS partitioned hard disks or FAT partitioned hard disk?
3. Anyway, please do copy and paste the contents of the file /etc/fstab in this forum.

Hope you are able to figure out something !

Regards
Hari

FSTAB file


# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 / ext2 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdd /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

Hi

Ok.

So, from what I understand, hda6 is your linux partition. That means, somewhere between hda1 and hda5 are where your Windows Partitions are .

Create a temporary folder in your home folder (make sure you are root, though)

# mkdir winDrive

Then do the following:

# mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 winDrive

Look at the output and see if you can make sense out of it. If you can, you must be able to open the folder in the file manager you use and access the Windows partition.

If that doesn't work, then maybe your drive is a fat32 partitioned drive

# mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 winDrive

If that too doesn't work, I guess we will have to wait till some body else makes a post ;-)


Also, be warned that you will be unable to write into your drive if it is ntfs type. You will need to do more stuff, and I am sorry I will be unable to help you out there.

Regards
Hari

If you have installed WIndows first and Linux next, Windows will usually put itself in /dev/hda1. If you have subsequently partitioned, it will be next partitions from this.

Ok 10x for the help!

I manage to mount one of my partitions it was had5. On this partion i keep my media files but i still wasn't abel to mount my winodws partitoin wich is had4. I do the exact same thing like with hda5 and it dosen't work.

Here is how it loks:

root@ubuntu:~ # mount -t /dev/hda4 winDrive
Usage: mount -V : print version
mount -h : print this help
mount : list mounted filesystems
mount -l : idem, including volume labels
So far the informational part. Next the mounting.
The command is `mount [-t fstype] something somewhere'.
Details found in /etc/fstab may be omitted.
mount -a [-t|-O] ... : mount all stuff from /etc/fstab
mount device : mount device at the known place
mount directory : mount known device here
mount -t type dev dir : ordinary mount command
Note that one does not really mount a device, one mounts
a filesystem (of the given type) found on the device.
One can also mount an already visible directory tree elsewhere:
mount --bind olddir newdir
or move a subtree:
mount --move olddir newdir
A device can be given by name, say /dev/hda1 or /dev/cdrom,
or by label, using -L label or by uuid, using -U uuid .
Other options: [-nfFrsvw] [-o options] [-p passwdfd].
For many more details, say man 8 mount .


i don't know why it dose that...

P.S Soryy for my bad eanglis!

root@ubuntu:~ # mount -t /dev/hda4 winDrive

That is where your mistake lies, After -t you need to tell the kernel whether hda4 is ntfs formatted or FAT formatted.

Anyway, if you mounted your hda5 on winDrive, then of course, create another directory and mount this in the new directory, and not on the one you already mounted hda5 on. Hope I am making sense. Basically I am saying you should not mount both your partitions on the same folder.

Coming back, you managed to mount /dev/hda5 right? Copy the exact same command you used to mount that, but this time substituting 5 for 4 in the /dev/hda5 part and giving a different directory name other than winDrive.

Hope this helps

Regards
Hari

Any luck?

Exactly. The point is that every drive you mount to a directory must be mounted to another directory, i.e. you can't have more than one drive mounted in one place.
For media files, I usually create a large Fat32 partition (vfat) - both Linux and Windows wil read and write Fat32; I then mount it @ /mnt/storage when I install our favorite operating system. Right now, I have blown WinXP away, but I have both Slackware 10.2 and Debian Etch on the system - and they both use /dev/hda4 which in both file systems is mounted as /mnt/storage.

10x i made it work. Both partitions are mounted and i edited the fstab file so linux will mount the partitions after every restart.

Here is my fstab file:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 / ext2 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdd /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/windiska ntfs auto,ro,users,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windiskb ntfs auto,ro,users,umask=000 0 0

Thank's again!

Telcy,

You are a smart, hard worker. Congratulations on getting it to work.