Displaying and Accessing Windows Partitions
 

I just migrated from Linux Mandrake 8.2 to Red Hat 7.3 from what I worked on under Mandrake I was able to view and access my Windows partitions and drive. Is it also possible under Red Hat? Is there any package or software that I could download and install on my system to allow me to access the Windows partitions?

I am using a software called PartitionMagic on MS Windows to partition the hhd first. What you do is to partition four sectors for the Linux.

1. a FAT32 sector
2. a SWAP sector
3. a BOOT LOADER sector
4. a Linux OS sector

(1) have to be formated as NTFS (2)~(4) is just Linux file system.
After installed Linux, mount the FAT32 sector from Linux then you can access to MS Windows file. Hope this helps.


DiablosPet

Is there any other way? I don't have that software and my system is already installed. Is there any alternative program from Linux that could do this?

Yes you can.

If they are fat/fat32 partitions you can mount them with :

mount -t vfat /dev/hdx /mnt/windows

Where, /dev/hdx is the name of the harddrive you want to view and /mnt/windows is the place it will put it.

If you want to see NTFS... then first check and see if it is supported :
cat /proc/filesystems -- look for ntfs

If it isn't there, install the ntfs support rpm from :
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/redhat.html

Then reboot... and use:
mount -t ntfs -r /dev/hdx /mnt/windows
to load it up.
The -r is for read-only... NEVER EVER EVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES omit that -r. Writing to an NTFS partition under linux will destroy the ntfs.

You can add useful commands to mount... checkout man mount... or post again :)

If you want to mount more than one windows drive make many directories under /mnt (eg: windows1, windows2, windows3) and change the mount commands appropriately.

Cheers