Linux / Vista Dual Boot issues

Hello,

1.

In order to access the data in your Vista disk, which is in a different partition than Linux, you need to create a "mounting point" in Linux and "mount" this partition from Linux.

2.

Assuming your data in your Vista installation is in a "ntfs" partition (a file system supported by Vista), and assuming you have a recent version of Linux with current "ntfs" support, you can follow these instructions to attempt to access it in read-only mode (which should work without any problem) or in read-write mode (which is still under development and should be used carefully).

http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=ntfs-en#mounting_ntfs_volumes

I don't have any Vista, so I am afraid I haven't tested personally this procedure. The support of "ntfs" under Linux is in the process of achieving maturity, but they still recommend that you do backups of your Windows data.

You need to do these various steps under the user "root" (or use sudo if you have Ubuntu or similar distribution with no root userland) and the Linux terminal to type the commands.

Btw, you did not mention what is your Linux distribution, this is always a good thing to do when you seek for help in the forums.

Alternatively, I have heard of this ntfs driver:

http://www.ntfs-3g.org/

Which is supposed to be stable, but I have never tried it and it involved compiling the driver, which might not be an easy task for you as a new user, unless your distribution has readily available compiled packages for it (see the list at this address).

3.

Another (certainly safer) option (if you plan to write to the Windows partition from Linux) is to resize your Windows ntfs disk, create a new FAT32 partition (FAT32 is an older type of Windows file system), and move the data you want to share there. The FAT32 support in Linux is very mature.

I believe these directions would help you achieve that with Vista

http://vistarewired.com/2007/02/16/how-to-resize-a-partition-in-windows-vista/

Then in Linux, you just substitute "vfat" to "ntfs" in the mount commands.

4.

As for your installation related questions, first specify what is your Linux distribution.


Dal

Hi!

You should be able to access all of your files outside of Windows IF you don't keep them in a protected file folder.

Personally, I keep all of my stuff out of the "My documents" folder.

If you get the paths and everything right, it should be fine too.

I'm not experienced with Linux at all, but usually if you need a general idea of what something is, you can have a look at the Wikipedia web site and see what it says.

It's usually pretty good to just give the basics.