FAT @ RHEL

Clarifications

one partition is running windows and the other is running linux?

In short, Windows does not like ext3 so you'll only be able to see both partitions from the ext3 side. I'm going to assume it's a Linux distro but any *nix would be similar.

You'll also need to know what your two partitions are called on the drive. In Windows, they get drive letters (example C:\). In Linux they get drive letter and partition number (example /dev/hda1); The example shows drive "a" partition "1".

Now, the easy way is to use your distrobution's disk manager. In Mandriva, this is "drakdisk"; under Xwindows, it's all graphic. If whatever the respective graphic disk manager is, expect to do the following;

- Select the non-ext3 parition, click options
- confirm where it's mount path is set too or set it to /mnt/FAT32. "FAT32" being whatever you want to call it.
- let users mount and unmount
- let users read and write
- probably a button to mount/unmount the partition.
- once done, files and folders should be listed in /mnt/FAT32

You can mount and unmount it at the command line as root (or user if set) with;

mount /mnt/FAT32
umount /mnt/FAT32

You should really only need to mount it incase it doesn't list all the files and folders in /mnt/FAT32.

The non-graphic way to do it is open a terminal and change to "root";

type; su
enter root password

type; cd
type; mkdir /mnt/FAT32
type; ls /mnt
confirm that /mnt/FAT32 exists

type; mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/FAT32
type; ls /mnt/FAT32
confirm that "C:\" files and folders are listed

type; man mount
gives you the man file on Mount or search google for "mount fat32 partition"

NTFS can also be mounted but generally read only.

I have been running suse linux for several years now. If you have a dual boot computer, then you have both Windows and linux for the most part. Windows XP is usually set in an NTFS partition. Linux can see and load files from NTFS, but it cannot write to it. That has been my experience. On the PCs I build, I make sure that XP will format the partition with fat32. This makes it easy for installing Linux and for accessing the Windows partition with read/write privileges.