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I am new to Linux. I've built a second computer to start using Ubuntu and hoping to eventually transition into Ubuntu being my primary OS. What I want to right now is have a shared folder that I can use to store data, mainly backup files from my Windows machine like pictures and music, but also be able to access them with Ubuntu.

I have read extensively that Windows doesn't support Ubuntu's partitions, and that Linux has some issues with NTFS. So I know I did this wrong, but don't know how to do it right.

When installing Ubuntu on my 320GB HD, I created a 70GB partition for root, a 70GB partition for home (both ext4 if I remember right), a 10GB partition for swap, and a 160GB partition as fat32 (didn't know what to do for the mount point so chose /windows).

Now Ubuntu can find everything, and create folders in that 160GB Windows partition/folder. However I can't share any folders out on that partition, and since its not an ext partition for Ubuntu I can't change ownership or permissions to that partition.

So I guess my question is how would I set up that last partition so that I can share out the folder for Windows to access it as well?

Zanna
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Matty
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    You are going to be best off using either NTFS or FAT. Neither support linux permissions directly, you set them at the time of mounting. This answer will explain the issues on both windows and ubuntu http://askubuntu.com/questions/145902/unable-to-mount-windows-ntfs-filesystem-due-to-hibernation – Panther Sep 25 '15 at 21:31
  • OK, so I at least got using the FAT partition correct. Curious, I don't remember now if I had to choose a mount point or not when I installed Ubuntu and created the FAT partition. If I did it again, created the partition but not mount it, would that then work for me being able to manually mount it an modify the permissions then? – Matty Oct 01 '15 at 01:50
  • Matty - you can configure the mount point in /etc/fstab - use options noauto and users. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab and if you have a problem, ask a new question. – Panther Oct 01 '15 at 13:49

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As I understood, you want to share files from the computer running Ubuntu to other computers running Windows over the network.

In this case you do not need to create special partitions for that. That was a bad idea to create a large FAT32 partition.

I suggest installing Ubuntu a normal way with ext4 partitions for / and /home, and a swap partition.

Then you will be able to share some folders using samba. In Ubuntu it is very easy. You can right-click any folder in Nautilus and select share. Samba service will be installed on the first try to share and then just select a share name and permissions.

Pilot6
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  • I was under the impression windows can't write or read from the ext4 formatting that Ubuntu uses, which was why I made the FAT32 partition. Something they could both read and write to. – Matty Oct 01 '15 at 01:45
  • @Matty Windows is not accessing the data encoded on the drive though is it? Accessing data over a network is a whole different thing from accessing it on a disk. You seem to have confused the two. This answer is correct :) – Zanna Dec 20 '18 at 11:24