11.3. Accessing Files on Different Operating Systems on the same Computer

openSUSE Documentation Chapter 11. Copying and Sharing Files / 11.3. Accessing Files on Different Operating Systems on the same Computer
	11.2. Access Methods		11.4. Copying Files between Linux Computers

New computers generally ship with a preinstalled operating system, mostly Windows. If you have installed Linux on a different partition, you might face the problem of exchanging files between the different operating systems.

The following file systems are used by Windows and can be accessed from a Linux machine:

FAT: Various flavors of this file system are used by MS-DOS, Windows 95 and 98. You can create this type of file system with YaST. It is possible to read and write files on FAT partitions from Linux. Take into account, that the size of a FAT partition and even the biggest size of a single file is subject to restrictions based on the FAT version. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VFAT for more information on FAT filesystems.
NTFS: The NTFS file system is used by Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. Currently it is only possible to read partitions of this type. Write access is considered experimental, but will certainly improve over future Linux kernel development.

Depending whether you need read or write access and which operating system you usually work on, these are possible ways of accessing your Windows data:

KDE: Press Alt-F2 and enter sysinfo:/. A new window opens displaying the characteristics of your machine. Disk Information lists your partitions. Look at those that are of the file system type ntfs or vfat and click on these entries. KDE mounts your Windows partitions and displays the contents.
Command Line: The installer detects your Windows partitions. After you have started your Linux system, the partitions are usually mounted. Just list the content of /win and you will see one or more directories containing your Windows drives. For example, the directory /win/c maps to the Windows drive C:\.

	Changing the Accessibility of Windows Partitions
Initially Windows partitions are mounted read-only for normal users to avoid accidental damage to the filesystem. To grant normal users full access to a mounted Windows partition, change the mount behavior of this Windows partition. Refer to the manual page of the mount command for more information.