My pc has 2 hard drives one with win2000 and one with RH9. I'm trying to find a way to be able to view my windows folders from Linux! As far as I have seen samba is for networks how do I make it work on my pc? Please Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Samba is for networks. To view a filesystem in Windows from Linux requires you to mount the drive.

This is covered regularly on LQ - I'd do a search for mounting NTS or mounting FAT32 drives.

And please do not mark your question as urgent - what is urgent to you is less so to the rest of us. Often threads marked urgent are ignored.

But, Welcome to LQ anyway.

You need to mount that hard drive just like you do a cdrom or floppy.

How is the hard drive connected to your comptuer? On what cable and how? Master, slave, etc. Is it fat or ntfs? These are a few things you need to know but the basic info follows.

Make an empty directory to mount the drive to.

Then mount the drive with a command similar to this one:
(This is where that info is needed for this to be correct, you will need to change the info to suit your needs.)

mount -t ntfs /dev/hdb /mnt/windows


Some syntax info:
mount = mount is the command

-t = the switch specifying a type of drive

ntfs = is the type

/dev/hdb = is the device file in linux where the hard drive is connected

/mnt/windows = the empty directory the dirve is being mounted to

I ctreated the folder win2000 under /mnt and in the fstab i wrote /dev/hda1 /mnt/d ntfs defaults 0 0
the disk is master and runs ntfs. there are 2 partitions (C and D ) and need access to D. Any ideas on what i'm doing wrong?

Hi,

is your D partition on a primary or on a logical partition ?

hda1 is *very likely* your C partition.

hda2 can be your D partition if it's a *primary* partition.

However, If your D drive is a logical drive on a *extended* partition then it's
very likely hda5

You may check this by invoking fdisk /dev/hda
On the fdisk command prompt enter p and press the enter key.
This will print all partitions on your hda disk.

Then leave fdisk by entering q.

Now create a Folder called winD under mnt.

So:
md /mnt/winD

If your D partition is a primary partition and is located on hda2 and it is a ntfs partition
then you need to add following line to your /etc/fstab

/dev/hda2 /mnt/winD ntfs ro,user,exec,umask=0222 0 0

If it's a FAT partition then replace ntfs with vfat in the line above.
Save your /etc/fstab.

Mount the partition by entering

mount /mnt/winD

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It all worked fine!!!!!!!!!
I was worried for a while!