I have a dual boot system with Win XP and Mandriva 2008 running KDE, and I can copy and past files from my Windows drive to my Linux drive, but can't copy and past from Linux to Windows? What do I need to do to be able to move the files between the 2 systems while in Linux?

It depends. It could be that you're using the "ntfs" driver to mount the Windows partition, which means you can only mount the partition as read-only (read, copy things from there, but not to there). To get a read-write*support for your NTFS partitions, you need to use something else - maybe fuse-3g or whatever it's called. Not sure if Mandriva ships with it, some distributions do, some don't.

See here for more information:

mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=43701&mode=threaded&pid=332727

Thanks for info, just checked the Win drive and it is NTFS, will look into your suggested program, thanks again

You need to install the ntfs-3g package and any dependencies, then edit your /etc/fstab file to change how your Windows partition is mounted if you wish to write to an ntfs file system. I do not have a Windows partition on my system here, but you can search this forum for ntfs-3g to learn what changes to make to your /etc/fstab file.

To install ntfs-3g, open a terminal window, su to root, and install the package(s) with urpmi:If urpmi requests the installation of any additional packages (and I am sure it will), and the YES option in parenthesis is in caps, simply press the ENTER key to install them, if not, respond with yes then press the ENTER key.

To edit your /etc/fstab file, you will have to open it in a text editor with root access. The following example will open KDE's kwrite text editor from a terminal window as root:If you want to use a different text editor, replace kwrite with the name of the text editor you want to use.

HTH,

I just rechecked on this machine and my Windows drives are all FAT 32, still won't let me copy files from my linux to them? When I was runing SLED 10.0 I was able to copy to them?

Look at the ownership and permissions of the filesystem. Check the fmask= and dmask= options in your /etc/fstab file. Values like "fmask=0111,dmask=000" will allow "others" to write to the file. Also make sure that the "rw" option is used.

Another possibility is that there is something wrong with the filesystem causing it to be mounted read-only.

Not sure of what you are saying? this is what is in my "etc/fstab", I don't see what you are refering to?

/dev/hda6 / ext3 noatime 1 1
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto umask=0022,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
/dev/cdrom2 /media/cdrom2 auto umask=0022,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat umask=0022,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d vfat umask=0022,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/hda9 /mnt/win_e vfat umask=0022,iocharset=utf8 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0

These are the entries to change. Change the "umask=0022" to "fmask=0111,dmask=000". This will mount these partitions with rw file access for everyone. The 'x' bit for directories allows you to enter that directory. Because vfat isn't a native filetype, the permissions are determined when the partition is mounted and effect the entire partition.

See "man mount" and "info coreutils" for more info on mount and permissions.

Thanks for the info, made the changes you suggested and all works fine now, really appreciate your help