Transfering files from Linux to Windows or Windows to Linux on the same machine

Linux can read all windows files in a read-only manner. The path to the windows D: and E: drives in Linux are /mnt/d_drive and /mnt/e_drive respectively.

Windows can read ext3 files with the help of an additional program that is installed and running for all users (previously used ext2ifs, now using the freeware driver from »http://fs-driver.org). All Linux files show up as a seperate drive (currently the H: drive). This is now a read-write setup, but it is a good idea to copy files to the native windows filesystems.

USB 2.0 Hard Drive

A new external USB 2 hard drive has been fitted to Fox, which is 200 gigabytes. This has two fat32 partitions on it.

These two partitions will be displayed as seperate drives in windows (eg: drives I: and K:). These are read-write, and should be cleanly unmounted if the drive is to be removed or data loss may result.

These can be mounted and unmounted by all users with the command mount /mnt/usb1 or umount /mnt/usb1. These should be cleanly unmounted before removing the drive otherwise data loss may result. Both partitions are read-write.

The USB drive is the only drive with read-write access from both Windows and Linux, therefore is an easy way to share files between the two systems without making copies. It is however much slower than the internal SCSI disks, there are no unix file permissions, and there is a maximum filesize for a single file of 4 gigabytes. When speed and file permissions are an issue, the files should be copied to one of the internal hard drives (eg: the users home directory).

Its important to note that in Linux these drives are NOT mounted on bootup, but a user can mount and unmount them as they want (I will look into mounting these at bootup). There should be icons on the desktop that correspond to each USB partition, this is an easy way to mount/unmount these devices. Using the media:/ kio-slave (also know as storage media) in Konqueror will let you see all the devices on the system (cd, dvd, hard drives, usb, etc), mount/unmount and copy/move/delete all files you own. The next version of Ubuntu will automount these devices on bootup, this upgrade will be performed October 2005.

Sometimes a user will encounter a message similar to "cannot find superblock on device ..." while trying to mount one of the USB partitions. This appears to be a bug in the hotplug system, as restarting hotplug (running /etc/init.d/hotplug restart as root) solves the problem. Another quick way around this is to turn the USB drive off for a few seconds and turn it back on then mount the partition. Never do this to a mounted partition.

Any USB mass storage device should be usable in Linux. Plug in the device, open Konqueror and type media:/ in the location bar. The mass storage device should show up, clicking on the device will mount it and allow you to use it as a normal drive. When you are done, right click on the usb icon in the list of devices and select safely remove (unmount), you may now remove the usb device.