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I made it so i can double boot, with windows in my internal SSD and Linux(ubuntu) on an external HDD. From Linux, i can access my windows files. However, when i switch to windows, i cannot access my hard drive.

SushiMoongoose
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3 Answers3

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Ubuntu does not use windows filesystems like NTFS or FAT and windows does not support linux filesystems by default. You can use ext2read on Windows to access ext4 filesystems.

Bruni
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The most common filesystem (or way of storing data on disk) used by Ubuntu is the ext4 filesystem. This is not readable by Windows by default. You can install third-party tools to make it readable by Windows, but my recommendation would be to install Linux in a partition on half (or any appropriate fraction) of the external drive, and use the other portion as an NTFS, or Windows-native, filesystem. This has good support in Ubuntu nowadays, so this partition would be a good idea to use for any data that needs transferring between operating systems.

To do this, if this is a fresh install, I'd recommend wiping the external drive, creating another partition on part of the drive using Windows, then installing Ubuntu on the remaining free space. You could set the NTFS partition up as your /home directory, but some compatibility issues might arise, so it might be wise to mount it from your file explorer as needed or set it up in a subdirectory of /home in your /etc/fstab file. You can find instructions for setting that up on the Arch Linux wiki.

Alternatively, simply save all files that might be needed in both operating systems on the internal Windows drive.

oldtechaa
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The quickest and easiest way to access ext2, ext3, and ext4 drives used by Linux is to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which allows you to run Linux tools from the command line.

In the search box, enter the term "Windows Features" and click on the first result displayed.

In the window with available Windows features, look for "Windows Subsystem for Linux," check the corresponding box, accept, and reboot.

Once rebooted, install a Linux terminal environment from the Microsoft Store. Use Ubuntu, download it, run it, and wait for the installation to complete.

Create a user account and password, unrelated to the Windows user account and password.

Now mount the Linux ext2, ext3, or ext4 drive using the command, with h being the drive from which it will be available.

sudo mkdir /mnt/h

sudo mount -t drvfs h: /mnt/h

You can now shut down Ubuntu and use Windows File Explorer to access all the content available on that storage drive.

kyodake
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