I have made a seperate partition on my hard drive for mandrake. I now have xp and mandrake installed... is there a way to transfer files between the two partitions? In windows i dont see the other partition and in linux i dont see the windows partition of the drive.

Windows XP cannot read or write Linux partitions.

"Out of the box" Linux can READ from XP (NTFS) partitions but it cannot write to them.

If you go into the Mandrake Control Center you can mount your Windows Partitions under Linux.

However a MUCH better solution is this:

http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

It works so well it's not even funny.

It grabs a few drivers from your Windows XP install and uses them UNDER LINUX to safely access the XP NTFS partition.

After installing this, Linux can read and write to your XP partition safely.

Check it out.

alright i downloaded the rpm and ran it... says everything's already installed. Where do i go to start the program?

Linux CAN edit NTFS partitions. The kernel module is experimental and risky and can damage your datablocks, but it can be done by including the module in your xconfig file in the kernel source tree and making a new bzImage or just be rebuilding your modules. You can look at details by browsing kernel.org. However, it's better to use the captive-NTFS tool (as stated above) in Linux. The windows partition should be detected and entered in /etc/fstab automatically (it did in mine). If not, then check if "diskdrake" detects it or not. If not, use "qtparted" partition manager or just simply "fdisk" in linux to detect it and take down the device name and enter it manually in fstab. Even if that doesn't work (unlikely), then goto windows and run "acronis" or something and see your partition table there, then edit fstab in linux accordingly. It might help to keep a shared FAT32 partition in ur machine. Fat32's can be detected, read from and written to by both linux & windoze, so u can transfer stuff across OS'es using that partition. linux ext3 filesystems CAN be read from/written to in windoze. You will need to install the windows ext3 file ystem driver (see

http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

and

http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/ext2.html

i can access the windows partition by going to mnt/windows and everything would be there, im just curious if it's safe to write and read stuff from there. I can view pictures and such from my xp partition so i guess the files are accessible. I dont see the captive program anywhere though... that's the problem. I installed it but it's nowhere to be found.

http://img98.exs.cx/img98/7231/Screenshot.png

That's what im lookin at... maybe it'll help you guys in a solution.
And if somehow i already got it working lol, here are a few questions... once i log out of root and back to my original user profile... will it stay mounted so i can read/write from it or will i have to enter that code again?

The captive installation script adds a line to the /etc/fstab which mounts the Windows partition using captive from then on.

You must manually comment out any older lines which refer to your windows partition though.

Once done, captive will be used to permit read/write access to your Windows partition. It is safe to use under Linux.

Try creating a file on your Windows partition or copying one to it.

If you can, then captive is working properly.

If you get an error about the drive being read only, then you need to unmount the windows partition

e.g.

umount /mnt/windows

and then remove or comment out the offending /etc/fstab entry.

Then you should be able to issue the

/mnt/windows

command again and see a message from captive telling you it has mounted the drive.