Can Linux and Windows share local files?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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Complete Linux newb yet to install first distro. Looking at experimenting with Linux on my PC and wonder if it's possible for a dual boot system to share media files?

Windows is installed on a SSD, with the media files stored multiple hard drives (predominantly movies and music files of various formats ). If I install Linux on a second SSD, can I play the local media files from the hard drives in Linux without reformatting the drives?

Edit: I realised I posted this in the wrong section, is it possible to have it moved by a mod?

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Yes you can access your files from linux, although you may need to turn off hybrid sleep in windows first if you're using 8/10; although since your windows install is on a different SSD anyways you might be fine regardless.

3

Yes as far as i know, it should be totaly possible to acces files stored on NTFS partitions, wenn you are under Linux.

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From my experience Windows puts a block on all drives with a letter path, even secondary drives.

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Ah ok, I wasn't sure on this cause I've never tried accessing stuff on a drive that didn't have a windows install on it, so I thought it could be just the drives with the actual windows files on them that get mounting errors with hybrid sleep.. Good to know

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So files stored in the Windows drive will be blocked on Linux?

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Not exactly, you should still be able to see your files from your windows partitions. However depending on how your files are formatted in Linux you may not be able to access them in Windows.

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He's not looking to access linux files on windows, he doesn't have linux installed yet. He's just looking to make sure that if he installs linux that he will be able to access his media files from that linux install, which yes is perfectly fine, as long as windows hybrid sleep doesn't prevent the drives from being mounted. If it does, just turn off hybrid sleep in the windows install and should be fine.

9

Correct.

Example, I have movies stored on the hard drive (E). If I install Linux and boot into Linux, can I simply play the movie files stored on the hard drive whilst in Linux?

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Ah okay, looks like I misread the post there. Thanks for correcting that.

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Yes like i said above, wenn you are in linux, you should be totaly capable to acces files stored on a NTFS partition.
As far a i know.

@cynicrf ?

12

No worries, we all skim read things wrongly sometimes :)

13

Yes they can. There are several ways to do so. I recommend you update samba to samba 3 or 4 if it is not already as windows 10 operates on 4 by default.

Setup the permissions correctly. There are quite a bit of guides as to setting up the smb config

You see samba is a protocol that makes it possible to share regardles of file system because the filesystem is CIFS

However on most linux distros you need to install the samba server so that you can share files bidirectionally

14

As @Cyanyde_Fox stated the files are only blocked if hybrid sleep is enabled which can be disabled in the Advanced Power Options on Windows 8/10. It is also worth noting that it is possible to mount the drives with hybird sleep enabled but you'll have to mount them readonly, the reason for this is that Windows is reserving the drives so it can boot up faster and changes to the files on the drive could damage Windows.

15

If on you are running windows you should be able to access files from the ext3 file system. Unfortunately the newer and by now standard ext4 table is not supported by windows.

16

yup. I moved and entire drive worth [900GB] of data from a Windows partition to an ext4 partition as the files where multimedia files and I did it with rsync. I viewed many of the files on Linux to check functionality and switched to Windows to check for errors. moved everything over to a Linux mount point and haven't looked back since.

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Thanks everyone. I look forward to experimenting with Linux soon

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Sure, you can access all of those files. But if you want to install Linux on a different hard drive be sure to disconnect every other drive from the system and keep connected only the one needed for the installation. This way you'll be sure that Windows and Linux won't mess up with each other like usually happens.

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As other people said..Yeah you can no problem. Just because of the fast boot system windows have might have some issues from time to time. It tends to leave garbage in the partitions and you will have problems mounting them on linux afterwards. This will not happen if you restart from windows and not do a shutdown before you boot to Linux. You can also disable the feature completely from the windows settings.

20

I due boot on a laptop, with linux mint and windows. I have found that disabling fast boot in windows stops the drive from locking up.

However I have also found that if you boot into Windows, and Windows wants to update, you will have to boot back into Windows again so it can finish the updates.

If you boot into Linux instead of Windows it can lock up the drive.

The best thing I have found it to disable auto updates on windows and enable choose when I want to update (unless you have windows 10)