Whilst helping one of my readers install Ubuntu I came across a link on how to access information on a Windows hard drive from Ubuntu.
The link is specifically for people whose Windows installation has crashed and need to recover information via Ubuntu, but is equally useful for people who have a working Windows installation and need to share data between Ubuntu and Windows.
The instructions to follow in Ubuntu are as follows:
1. Open a Terminal window. From the menus at the top of the screen, choose Applications | Accessories | Terminal
2. Enter the following inside the Terminal window to create a folder which maps to your Windows hard drive. Be careful to ensure that you replace the reference to /dev/hda1 below with the device name of your Windows hard drive. I used the GNOME Partition Manager to find out the device name. You will also need to replace the reference to ntfs if your Windows hard drive uses another file system.
- cd /mnt
- sudo mk.dir windrive (remove the dot between mk and dir - I had to enter that here to get round a mod_security rule whilst creating this post!)
- sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/windrive -o “umask=022″
- ls windrive
3. You should now a list of files from your Windows hard drive in the Terminal window. If you want a more graphical view of the files then do the following:
4. From the menus at the top of the Ubuntu screen Select Places | Computer
5. Double-click on the Filesystem icon
6. Double-click on the mnt folder we created earlier
7. You should now see a folder called windrive with all your Windows files inside
The complete post goes on to show how you can create a shared drive using Samba. Full credit to the original author. You may already know this information, but if not, I hope you find it useful.
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7 responses so far ↓
1 How To Access Your Windows Hard Drive From Ubuntu « Technical Itch // Nov 6, 2006 at 8:15 pm
[...] How To Access Your Windows Hard Drive From Ubuntu Posted November 6, 2006 [...]
2 Ethel // May 18, 2007 at 4:14 am
Thank you for this post! Just saved me a chance at a job - I need to update my resume on our computer that will no longer run Windows, and for some reason my husband who normally deals with this kind of stuff couldn’t figure out how to access Windows files in Ubuntu - he got stuck at how to mount the hard drive. And for some reason his Google search for directions didn’t turn up this page.
3 Dean // May 18, 2007 at 7:20 am
Glad I could help out!
4 Ben // Jul 21, 2007 at 7:58 am
hello, maybe you can answer my question, i guess i already had my hard drive mounted, im new at this by the way, i followed your instructions but i still have what i already had, a “read-only” disc. I need to be able to save file and what not to that drive. Any knowhow on how i might do that. Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thankyou
5 Dean // Jul 22, 2007 at 9:27 am
Hi Ben,
Can you confirm what you want to do. Are you trying to save a file to your Windows hard drive from Ubuntu?
6 Dean // Jul 22, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Here are a couple of links which I think might help:
http://onlyubuntu.blogspot.com/2007/03/widows-ntfs-partitions-readwrite.html
http://www.arsgeek.com/?p=585
Let me know if this works.
7 Access Windows Files booted from Kubuntu Disc (help meeeeeee!) - Linux Forums // Oct 21, 2007 at 8:04 pm
[...] How To Access Your Windows Hard Drive From Ubuntu Or this guide seems like it would be perfect but as soon as I get to this step…. ubuntu@ubuntu:/mnt$ sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda /mnt/windrive -o "umask=022" mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda, missing codepage or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so that happens! whats going on? [...]
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