[Techtalk] Finding windows files while using linux

[Rasjid Wilcox]

On Wed, 19 Mar 2003 07:32 pm, Dan Richter wrote:
> Hi.
>
> Thanks to the world-wide nature of the Internet, I woke up about the time
> you went to sleep - if college students sleep...  :-)
>
> You can access Windows files by "mounting" your Windows partition on the
> Linux filesystem. I believe that Red Hat 8 can read the filesystem used by
> Win2k: someone correct me if I'm wrong there.
>
> To mount the Windows partition onto the Linux filesystem (which you can
> only do as root), you must first have a destination directory (any empty
> directory will do):
>    $ mkdir /mnt/win2k
> Now mount the filesystem using the device corresponding to your windows
> partition. Example:
>    $ mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/win2k
> The /dev/hda1 is only an example. "hda" means your first hard drive (the
> second is "hdb"), and "1" means the first physical partition. I found the
> correct disk by trial and error: I listed everything corresponding to
> /dev/hd* and then I mounted until I got what I wanted. Most of the time
> mount just failed, because the partition didn't exist. I also managed to
> mount the Linux filesystem onto the filesystem, which wasn't damaging at
> all and was actually kind of amusing.

# fdisk /dev/hda -l

Disk /dev/hda: 41.1 GB, 41174138880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5005 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1       255   2048256    b  Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2           256       892   5116702+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3           893      1147   2048287+  83  Linux
/dev/hda4          1148      5005  30989385    f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5          1148      1402   2048256   83  Linux
/dev/hda6          1403      1529   1020096   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda7          1530      1656   1020096   83  Linux
/dev/hda8          1657      5005  26900811   83  Linux

This will list all the partitions on the master hard-drive attached to the 
first IDE controler.  Similarly

# fdisk /dev/hdb -l

will list all the partitions on the slave hard-drive on the first IDE 
controler.  /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd are the master and slave respectively on 
the second IDE controler.  Most desktop PC's only have 2 IDE controlers, but 
it just keeps going up in pairs.

In the above listing, /dev/hda1 is my windows 98 system, which is FAT32.  
However, if it was windows 2000 with an NTFS filesystem, it would say 
HPFS/NTFS.

Don't be fooled by the "Win95 Ext'd (LBA)" partition.  That is not a real 
partition.  It is the last 'primary' partition (DOS could only cope with 4 of 
them) within which all the other 'extended' partitions fit inside.  See the 
cylinder numbers.

So it is clear from the above that my windows partition is /dev/hda1.  It will 
be hopefully equally clear which is your NTFS partition.

Another word of warning - some new machines (some HP mahcines come to mind, 
and many laptops) don't come with installation disks.  They have a 'hidden' 
windows partition that holds all the 'installations disks' on the hard-drive.  
If this is the case, it will show up as an additional partition, and I think 
they are generally FAT32.

> Once the filesystem is mounted, anyone can read from it but only root can
> write to it. Don't try to write to it until you're sure that mount has
> correctly guessed the filesystem type. Maybe someone else can tell us how
> to explicitly tell mount what filesystem you want.

# mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/win2k  (for ntfs)
# mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/win98 (for fat32)

> By the way, to unmount a filesystem, use umount (notice that it's "umount"
> and not "unmount": the extra "n" would be too much to type). Alternatively,
> the filesystem will be unmounted automatically when you shut down Linux.
>
> >I have a dual boot machine (Win2000 & RH8).  My lecturer wants us to
> >use the "tr" command on a windows file. I'd like to know if there's a
> >way to access windows files thru the command line while I'm using
> >linux, rather than rebooting into Windows.  If anyone can help, that
> >would be great!

Another option would be to install Cygwin under Windows 2000.  You then get 
access to all the standard Linux/Unix command line tools (tr, diff etc etc) 
on windows (and without having to reboot).  See http://www.cygwin.com

Cheers,

Rasjid.