question about accessing different hard drives with different operating systems...

[Soylent Brice]

okay,

so i have a 465 gb seagate running windows xp 64 bit professional, with a partition running Ubuntu.
i also have a 150 gb SATA running windows 7 64 bit.

i have the "secret" administrator access on windows 7 on the SATA, and i also can access most of the programs on the 465 gb seagate from my 150 gb SATA.
i'm using the SATA as a primary, and "slaving" the 465 seagate. long story, don't ask.

well, i just bought a new 1.5 TB seagate this morning.

here's my question:

if i put JUST Ubuntu on the 1.5 TB, will i be able to access programs from the other two hard drives through it, or does it have to be windows?

<---just in case this is a dumb question.

side note: i don't want to upgrade the 465 gb to windows 7 because i have a lot of programs that i cannot afford to lose and that i have had trouble backing up.

i don't have the original .exe files in order to reinstall them later if i was to upgrade the 465 gb to win7. i know when you do a custom install you're soupposed to be able to back them up and they should show up in a windows.old file or something like that. i've never tried that before. i usually just do a clean install.

thanks in advance!

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

1. As I understand...

...an upgrade from XP to 7 requires a reformat so anything that you don't copy off will be gone. So DON'T UPGRADE.

if i put JUST Ubuntu on the 1.5 TB, will i be able to access programs from the other two hard drives through it, or does it have to be windows?

For windows to access/use any disk, the disk must be formatted in a windows readable format. (NTFS, FAT or FAT32)
I recommend NTFS. I'm not sure which Ubuntu you're using but I believe the newer versions support NTFS. (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MountingWindowsPartitions)

If you formatted the disk under Ubuntu you will need to make sure that it was formatted as NTFS. If not reformat the 1.5 TB.
NTFS is native for windows xp/vista/7 and compatible with newer versions of Ubuntu.

Goodluck

[hobbit709]

2. M$ likes to pretend no other disk formatting but theirs exists.

Linux has no problem reading NTFS or FAT32 files. But Windows sees any ReiserFS or other disk file system as "Unsupported Format"

[ChromeFoundry]

4. Accessing ext3, reiserfs, XFS and FUSE - from Windows XP, Vista, 7 or Server...

coLinux created an Application Version of Linux that can run as a Windows Service and re-share your *nix type partitions and NFS sources through Samba. It doesn't have the overhead of running a VM and accessing them through the VM's Samba shares.

May not be the best solution, but I hope it helps someone out in the future...

Tutorial Link: http://polishlinux.org/linux/ext3-reiserfs-xfs-in-windows-thanks-to-colinux/

Project Home: http://www.colinux.org/

[HopeHoops]

3. Are you looking to replace the .45TB drive with the 1.5TB one or just access the latter?

Any new drive you buy should work interchangeably with any OS on any machine. If you're using the same machine for a dual-boot, as it seems, and you just want extra storage, it shouldn't matter which OS you boot into. The 1.5TB will be visible and available for full access (unless you put access restrictions on something - that's NOT cross-platform).

That said, if you intend to install programs on the 1.5TB, I would suggest partitioning it based on your needs, but Ubuntu is lean and Windows (any flavor) is bloated on install, as are the applications, so I would suggest a 1/3-2/3 partition (adjusted as you see the need). Unless you direct them otherwise, both partitions should appear under either OS, but you just accept that and ignore the irrelevant one. You might also consider four partitions - U-Program, U-Data, W-Program, W-Data. That's a personal preference. It won't impact performance.