If I install Linux Mint beside Windows 7, will my files/ documents be available from both OSs?

Question

Or will the files only be present in the OS that I made them in?

Answer 1

Your windows files will be available to the Mint but you cannot run windows programs from linux unless you use WINE and then not all windows programs will run under wine.

Generally windows cannot read nor write to the linux filesystem safely. There are some free tools but they have been known to trash the linux files. You can google for windows access linux files and see more results.



Hope this helps

Answer 2

As long as you have normal msdos partitions, Linux should be able to mount and access Windows partitions fine with a click of the mouse. However, Linux may have trouble accessing proprietary Windows volumes if you used Windows to add more partitions or combined different physical drives into one folder.



Msdos partitions are limited to 4 primary or extended partitions per physical drive, but you can have any number of logical partitions in an extended partition.



If you have files you want to be able to access from both operating systems (audio and video files, etc.) it is best to have them on a Windows NTFS partition, because Linux can usually easily access those, but Windows cannot so easily access Linux partitions without additional software (and then maybe only limited types of partitions).



For Win7 it is actually probably best to shrink Win7 partition with its own Disk Management under Administration Tools, reboot to make sure that is okay, then install Linux in the freed up unallocated space.

Answer 3

Linux Mint can read your windows partition and Windows file formats. Windows cannot read many Linux formats -- this is deliberate: You can create an extra partition readable by Windows. If you are not going to keep executable files in it you can even mount it as your home directory -- you just put it in /etc/fstab and write /home as the mount point and all your user files will be written there. But the partition has to be formatted for NTFS or FAT32.

Answer 4

First of all, Mint will give you the option to import all your personal files from Windows during the installation.



Second of all, you CAN access Linux's ext partitions from Windows. You just have to install the driver for it.



http://www.ext2fsd.com/