I searched the old messages and I couldn't find an answer to my question so I'm hoping that someone can help me. I'm planning on getting a second hard drive to install linux on and I was thinking about communication between a winxp(ntfs) drive and a linux drive. from what I've read I gather that I will be able to read files from the windows drive while in linux, but I'm not sure if i can read linux files from winxp. if anyone knows please tell me the answer. thanks!

Linux and Windows can both read and write FAT32. You won't care about reading your Linux OS files in Windows. Put your personal files on the FAT32 partition, and you'll have safe, convenient access in both OSs. If you need large file support, use Captive NTFS in Linux.

After doing some searching I found another solution to my "problem." This EXT2 IFS (http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm) sounds like a good solution for reading the Linux drive from Windows XP. What is the opinion of other Linux/Windows users on this path (safe, not safe...)?

I used that when I still used Windows, and when I still used ext2/3. It's pretty much pointless. As a Linux newbie, how often will you make a file in Linux that you'll want to read (but don't care about writing to) in Windows? Don't you think the situation you would encounter more often is having a file in Windows that you want to read, and possibly write in Linux? But if you can read and write from both OSs if you use FAT32 or NTFS (with Captive NTFS in Linux), why would you want a read-only solution?

Try using Total Commander in WinXP here: http://www.ghisler.com/ Then use File system plugins here: http://www.ghisler.com/plugins.htm#filesys And you can access many file system types. Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.

There is a windoze app called explore2fs which allows you to read and write to ext2/3 partitions: http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm ....not too useful if you end up using reiserfs or another file system type!=o)