Sharing drives between Linux and Windows

I'm running a dual boot (Fedora 4 and WinXP) on my laptop. Previously when I had a dual boot a couple of years ago I had no problems showing Linux drives in Windows and mounting Windows in Linux, but things have changed since then.

I should start by saying I have the ntfs extra for Fedora 4 installed and mounting the windows drive from Linux works fine, its Windows that can't see Linux.

The problem as I see it is that rather than having hda1, hda2 etc as in the old days, the new boot has hda* installed inside a 'virtual grouping', whatever that means. (I specifically made the Linux drive type ext3 for windows, although lately I've been using reiserfs and loving it.) Windows can see the drive as a zero size partition of unknown type.

Is there a solution?

I see, nobody is answering, so I put my (discouraging) answer here.

I have never been able to see linux files on Windows, and it allways gave me a feeling of security; I stopped missing it soon.

I heared from 3rd-party tools, but don't remember details.
Perhaps you may find more at google.

I always used to use a FAT partition. Both linux and windows can use it just fine, but admittedly, you do lose the security and speed of NTFS/ext(or other linux) partitions.

I have not use the newer versions of fedora, so I'm not familiar with the groupings you are seeing.

andrew

Thanks for the replies, I haven't had a chance to search the web yet, but it is something I will definitely do.

Yes, this change in the way Fedora manages drives is new to me too. Knoppix has no problem so I gather it may be a common change.

Originally posted by David O'Meara:
Thanks for the replies, I haven't had a chance to search the web yet, but it is something I will definitely do.

Yes, this change in the way Fedora manages drives is new to me too. Knoppix has no problem so I gather it may be a common change.

You want to google for "ext3 driver windows", assuming the problem is that your linux partition is using ext3 (this is my guess, since I also think windows would have seen it just fine if it were FAT).

Mark

Explore2fs and it also works with ext3.

Guy

That is so, so sweet. Thanks!

I may reinstall the reiserfs and ry the alternatives mentioned.

To access ReiserFS partitions under Windows, there are two tools available. The first is rfstool (a user-space application that can be used to copy files over to your Windows partition).

The better option is ReiserDriver, which is a file system driver that allows ReiserFS drives to be read natively. (Of course, I'm a bit biased, seeing as I wrote it.) The ReiserFS partitions will show up as additional drives to Windows. It's very similar to ext2fsd, which was mentioned above.

Try it out at rfsd.sf.net

Thanks for the heads-up

I installed the dual boot with ext2 assumingthee would be less problems, but that wasn't the case. I'm prepared to move back to reiser cos I like it a lot, I'll give yours a go!