accessing the Windows side from Debian

"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