hey, this is my first post, i've actually attempted to use linux once before but redhat 7.1 was pretty buggy so i ran away, but now i'm studying programming at uni i decided i'd best use the development tools in linux as they are far my superior to windows...

anyway, my problem (question) is how do you see the linux partition in windows? and vice versa. they are both on my 120gb hdd, split up into 4 partitions! windowsboot, storage, linux, linuxswap. i just want the storage partition to be veiwable through linux, so i can play with programs in both operating systems and not burn 2mb files onto cds...

thanks for reading

mark!

btw, storage is NTFS and windowsboot is Fat32

From the sidebar, I see you are running RedHat. RedHat doesn't compile NTFS support into their kernels, so you will need to download a module if you really want to be able to use the storage partition while in Linux. Search the forums for the download you need.

After you install the RPM, you will be able to mount the storage partition. As root, you will use a command such as...

mount -t ntfs /dev/hda2 /mnt/storage

You will, of course, need to make sure that is the correct partition designation, and have made the /mnt/storage directory. If that works, you can look into the mount options and add a line to your /etc/fstab so that you can mount / umount the partition as a normal user.

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!

Now comes the warning... NTFS support in Linux is still "experimental"... That means, it can mess-up your NTFS partition, and there isn't anybody you will be able to blame. From what I've read / heard, reading is pretty safe, but writing is still quite dodgey. If you were to temporarily move everything off that partition, and reformat it to FAT32, you would then be a whole lot safer. Linux support for FAT32 is great.

<< EDIT >>

Forgot to add... There are programs that let you read an EXT2 or 3 partition in Windows, but I've never used them. As long as you keep your files on a Windows partition, then you won't need to read the Linux partitions.

Explore2fs enables you to check out your Linux ext2 and ext3 filesystems from within Windows.

thanks ranger_nemo, i'll check it out, i can't change it from ntfs --> Fat32 because the drive is to big, and fat32 doesn't support it...

but just to read is good enough atm..
and skyline thanks for that, its exactlly what i was after!

You can actually use FAT32 for partitions up to at least 128 GB but you must use 3rd party software to partition and format them since Microsoft only supports creation of FAT32 partitions up to 32 GB under some versions of their software. Probably because they want everyone to migrate to NTFS when they get bigger disks. I use a 120 GB FAT32 partition myself and it works without any problems.