Mounting Dos-Windows Partitions

MOUNTING DOS/WINDOWS PARTITIONS

In some distros the Windows partitions are not automatically mounted. In that case we can mount them manually.

Most windows partitions have the FAT file system ( support long names for files ) A Linux partition typically has a Ext2 or Ext3 file system.
To mount a Fat file system on an Ext partition we have to give an extra argument to the mount command.

First we make a new directory in /mnt:

CODE

$ su
< password >
# mkdir /mnt/windows

Then we can mount the Windows partition ( for this example Windows is on hda1 ) :

CODE

# mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows

( or “mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows” for NTFS partitions )

NOTE: With “fdisk -l /dev/hda” as root you can see on what partition Windows lives

Unmounting:

CODE

# umount /mnt/windows

( this is NO typo: umount and NOT unmount )

With most modern distros, however, you do not need all this because the Windows partitions will be auto-mounted every time you access them.

Bruno

-- Sep 11 2003 ( Revised Dec 12 2005 ) --