Hello everyone!
I am using SuSE Linux 9.0 in hda3 and Windows XP in hda1. I recently got a Maxtor 32049H2 20 Gb hard drive (got it from a friend who's upgraded his box) and I would like to know how to partition this drive and format it to use Fat32, so that it can be readable/writable by both Linux and Windows.
I used YaST expert partitioner, but can't get quite right.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Partition it with windows fdisk then format it from windows.

Make ONE primary partition, set the type to C
(assuming you're using fdisk) and write the
partition table.

Then use mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/<newhd>

When finished add it to /etc/fstab
</new/mountpoint> </dev/<newhd>> -t msdos rw,auto,umask=000 0 0



Cheers,
Tink

Thanks for the help guys! I now have one primary partition hdb1 in FAT32.
HOWEVER, I now have a new problem : I can read it, but not write in it (as a user).
The group permission is set to 'root' (unlike the windows directory-set to 'users'.
I've tried (as root) to change that using chgrg, but it says 'You don't have permission' (!).
How can I fix this? Thanks for any help!

The 'umask=0' Tink posted should eliminate that. Don't put a '-t' in your fstab. The fs must be remounted to apply changes.

/dev/hda3 / reiserfs defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=iso8859-1 0 0
/dev/hda2 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrecorder /media/cdrecorder auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,user,sync 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 auto sync,noauto,user,exec 0 0 #HOTPLUG B3Fu.SFaHrVGraQF

/dev/hdb1 /windows/D vfat defaults 0 0


This is what my fstab looks like. What exact changes are needed to (theoretically) solve my problem? Thank you in advance for any helpful reply!

add umask=000 (look at line 2 of the output for an example) after VFAT in the last line so it looks like this

/dev/hdb1 /windows/D vfat defaults,umask=0 0 0