Martin; If you've got the time and patience, I'd like to suggest something that will solve most of your hard drive access problems. This is something that I have done time and again, and I've been damn glad I did because it saved me from a catastrophic loss of data several times, so I'll throw it into the mix here. Let me know if it works for you.
The first thing to remember is that this will mean wiping your hard drive completely, so I'd like to suggest that you start burning CD's right away. Once you've saved all your important data to CD, you should be able to proceed without concern. On a typical system, with at least a 25 Gb hard drive, I typically split the hard drive into smaller partitions. If you follow this suggestion to the end, you should have everything you need with a minimum of wasted space, and access to all your data with a minimum of hassle. For example - A 25 Gb hard drive divided into 3 partitions 1) The first is approximately 8GB in size, and formatted for NTFS. Here, you'll re-install Windows. 2) The second partition is ALSO 8 GB in size - and here you'll install Linux. A typical install of Linux would be set up with a "/" ( root ) partition of about 6GB's - giving you lots of space for applications and assorted packages, with another partition equal to the amount of RAM you have in your system - not to worry because Mandrake will suggest the appropriate size during installation. Use the remainder of the 8Gb partition for "/home". Item #2 above is inclusive - that is all the partitions mentioned during this part of the re-installation are all contained in the second 8GB partition. Even though the "/home" patition looks small, don't worry. That's what the rest of the hard drive is for. 3) You can create and format this partition in Windows or Linux, but the trick is to format it as FAT32. In this partition you will store all you data - documents, MP3's, etc., etc. You can even "re-map" your "My Documents" folder on your Windows Desktop to this drive, but do yourself a favor and create the folder on this drive before you do the move. Some final notes - Is essence, you only need to leave enough space in Windows or Linux to install your programs. If you look at it this way, you don't need as much space in either because you won't be storing any data on "C:\" ( in Windows) or "/" (in Linux ). This means that you don't have to duplicate storage space on either partition. It also means that you can have one location for all your data, since Microsoft Office, OpenOffice , and Koffice will all allow you to use the exact same folder as the location of your documents. In a similar fashion, you should be able to re-map the location of emails, MP3's, etc., so that programs from either operating system can access and use the files. The added bonus is that if your Wiindows ever needs to be re-installed, or you accidentally blow away the /home partition in Linux, all your data will be safe as long as you don't touch that last partition. Since doing this, I haven't lost a thing in the way of important info, docs or media of any kind unless I made a silly mistake. It may sound complicated, but it really isn't. Just takes a bit of time. Once it's done you should be able to access your files from either O/S without having to install anything else, and you can leave your Windows partition alone and untouched while using Linux. One last note here. Don't bother creating or formatting the last partition until both Windows and Linux are fully installed. That way, you can do it quickly from either O/S at your convenience, and you don't have to do it until you're happy with the results of the installs. One other feature of this is that you can create separate folders on the third partition to store Linux and Windows downloads, so that if you ever need them again, they'll be right where you left them. You'll save time on having to re-download them again and again. Hope this helps. Lanman
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