Access Windows Files in Ubuntu

One of the biggest difficulties migrating to Ubuntu is losing access to your windows files. Fortunately, it is not too difficult to overcome this...but read the warnings before trying this out. All that is needed is to mount the windows partition after you boot into Ubuntu. Of course, the first problem is determining which partition contains the windows files.

Steps

  1. Install ( → search for gparted, mark it for installation and, when it installs, run it from ). Look for an NTFS partition – it is likely to be the one windows is on.
  2. Having located the partition, write down the name – it will look something like or , depending if your drives are PATA, SCSI or SATA. Do this carefully – Now check to see if this is the partition by manually mounting it and looking at the files.
  3. Open a terminal () and make yourself root by typing and pressing enter. You will be prompted for the root password and will then become root. Being root assumes that you know what you are doing – you could easily cause disaster if you make a mistake, so concentrate. Carefully type this line at the prompt and press enter
  4. mkdir /mnt/windows
  5. You may replace with or any other name you prefer. Now, having created the directory that is going to hold your windows files, type the following command carefully at the prompt and press enter
  6. mount -t ntfs /dev/sda2 /mnt/windows -o "umask=022"
  7. Make sure you replace with the name of the windows partition you wrote down. Now access the mounted drive and ensure that you can read the files by going to and navigating to . If you can see your files, you are all set. If not, you've mounted the wrong drive, unmount it using , making sure that you use the correct name for your drive.

Tips

  • Start a text editor as root by typing . Copy the lines below into the text editor and save it as .
  • Now, you will probably want to have the computer boot up and automatically mount the windows drive so you can save files back and forth seamlessly. This is easily achieved via a script that loads at startup. The commands in the script will have to be run with root permissions, so you will have to save the file in . You are going to use the same command you used manually. Most of the other lines in the script are comments.

Warnings

  • Always back your important files up before making changes to your system.
  • Leave yourself plenty of time to recover - never do this before a deadline.
  • Always verify your backup before trusting it.

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