Reading and writing files to a Windows partition

[Liam Proven]

On 14 December 2011 16:12, Bill Stanley <bstanle at wowway.com> wrote:
> I dual boot with Windows.  My Linus partitions are the usual partitions and
> for windows I have 2 partitions C: and D: with D being a small partition
> where I keep files that both Windows and Linux access.  I never write to C:
> and seldom read files on C:.  I do this because in the past file access to
> Windows was uncertain.  (If I somehow mess up D: with Linux writing files,
> its not a disaster.)
>
> My question is... With the improvements to Linux are these precautions
> needed?  Is Linux access to Win32 and NTFS file systems reliable enough to
> not have to worry about?

I wouldn't worry. I have no problems reading in 15y and none writing
for 10-12. The only things I've known can cause issues are:

[1] Windows drive is *very* badly corrupted

(But Linux is more tolerant of this than Windows is! Try not to write
to badly-corrupted drives, though. If possible & if you're not doing
data recovery from a dying disk, fix it by running CHKDSK /F *from
Windows*. The freely-downloadable Windows 7 Recovery CD is good for
this. It's a good idea to do this regularly anyway as part of your
maintenance schedule.)

[2] Windows RAID and volume sets don't work

(Well, it might be possible with a *lot* of effort and fiddling).

[3] Windows whole-disk encrypted volumes don't work (e.g. Bitlocker), AFAIK.

This is by design; it's what the encryption is intended to defeat.

But a happy, working Windows drive in FAT16, FAT32 or NTFS should be
just fine. I routinely use a LiveCD for cleaning up temp files and so
on, in fact!

-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
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