[R-sig-Debian] accessing the Windows side from Debian

[Tyler Smith]

"Hodgess, Erin" <HodgessE at uhd.edu> writes:

> I have a desktop which has both Windows and Debian operating systems.
>
> If I am on the Debian side, is there a way to access file from the
> Windows side, please?

You need to 'mount' the windows partition to your Debian file system,
and then you can read files from within Debian.

To do this, you need a mount-point, and an appropriate entry in your
/etc/fstab file.

In my case, I have an empty directory in home (~/) named 'windows'. 

The corresponding entry in /etc/fstab is:

/dev/sda1	/home/tyler/windows	ntfs noauto,ro,users,noexec,umask=000 0 0

I can then mount the windows side with the command 'mount ~/windows' and
read files like I would any other directory.

Some caveats:

1) I use a pretty minimal setup, and use the command-line as my primary
user interface. If you're using Gnome or KDE, you may have more 'point
and clicky' alternatives

2) I haven't tried writing to the windows partition from within Debian.
It used to be impossible. I'm not sure where we are in the transition
between risky and safe, so I just avoid it altogether.

3) Depending on your hardware, the windows partition might not be at
/dev/sda1, so you might have to do some poking around to figure it out.

4) I don't remember the details for the fstab options. What I've got
above works for reading an ntfs-formatted partition. You'd have to
change it to read a fat32 partition, or to mount a partition read-write.

5) Possibly another out-dated concern, I always unmount the windows
drive before hibernating or shutting down. Unmounting is done via the
command 'umount ~/windows'


HTH,

Tyler