Considering specing a workstation based on Windows XP Pro (32bit) with a dual boot option to also run Linux. Software package is STAR-CCM+ and I like having the option to run in either Windpws or Linux, depending on model size and the need for other applications.

Would like to know the methods that you have used to be able to read files between Windows and Linux, in particular exporting SolidWorks CAD geometry to Linux and reading results back to Windows.

I understand that using the FAT32 file system there would be know problems reading the Windows partition from within Linux - is this correct?

Cannot use the server to store and transfer files due to file sizes and bottleneck issues.

Does anybody know of any other ways of reading files between Windows and Linux?

Thanks.

"FAT32 file system there would be know problems"

Are you talking of "known" problems, or "no" problems?

I don't have any problems mounting my Windows XP partition on Linux, even NTFS, not just FAT32. There is a wealth of info online. Just google for instructions.

in my experience, SUSE linux automatically mount win drives (FAT and NTFS and also removables) on linux and there is no problem to write/read on/from win drives under Linux and then recover its inf. on win OS, prbably roblematic issue can be writing and reading on Linux partition from win OS (that is not essential, you can alleays use win drive for transmite inf.)

That is the same as I thought, thanks.

Not sure why I put 'know' when I meant 'no'. Should have checked it through before posting.

External USB hard drive also works. There used to be major issues about writing to an NTFS partition from Linux (as in "just don't do it!") Does anybody know if that has been cleared up?

There was a project to give write access to NTFS.The NTFS R/W access works directly in my distro (Ubuntu) and it should be pretty much working on most distros.

Hi,

I am using both SuSE 10.1 64 bit OS and SuSE 10.2 64 bit OS. There is no problem reading/writing to FAT32 partition (hard drive/USB drive). There is no problem reading from NTFS partition. To write to NTFS, I use ntfs-3g. For 32 bit OS, it is very robust. I have no problem with my 64 bit OS, although, the testing of 64 bit is not as extensive as on the 32 bit OS.

www.ntfs-3g.org

phsieh2005

And what's the reason for writing to NTFS? There is a Windows programm Explore2fs which can read from ext2 and ext3.

When I was using explore2fs a while ago it would not allow me to copy an entire directory directly.Sometimes copying file by file can become tedious.

Yes, I remember this problem. I haven't checked the new version yet, because now I have ReiserFS, which is not supported.