So I am about to reformat my entire HD, then install a clean Vista, and Suse.
I want suse to be able to see the windows files. Would it be best if I created 3 partitions
1 - vista
2 - suse
3 - share
If the share is the way to go, how should I format it?
Or is it not necessary since my current suse can see the windows files?
Don’t bother with partitions at this stage. Install Vista and when you are satisfied with that, defrag and install openSUSE.
The installer will install the relevant partitions /, /swap and /home automatically and also mount Vista.
However, if you want to have some control over the allocation of space on your HD, you will need to enter Expert mode. In that case, you will also need to select the option to mount Vista yourself as this is not done automatically in Expert mode.
Thanks,
So everyting is installed, but I used expert mode to get the sizing the way I wanted it. Thefore as you said vista drive isnt mounted. Can you tell me how to manuelly mount it?
The manual method is:
mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/<vista partition> /<mount point>
But it would be much easier to set it all up through fstab. First you need to create a mount point. Had the installer done this, IIRC it would have created a /windows and then a /c (or whatever Vista is) in /windows. You can do the same thing running dolphin as root (Alt-F2, kdesu dolphin). Alternatively, you could create the mount point under /mnt. Don’t put a mount point for it under /home if /home is on a separate partition; better to create a link if you want to see it in /home. Just be sure to right-click on the folder and change the Permissions under Properties to show the group as “users” and that group can “read and write”.
Then go to YaST Partitioner, right-click on the Vista partition, and enter the mount point from above. When you OK, Finish an entry will be written to /etc/fstab. When you reboot, the Vista partition will be mounted. With the entry in fstab, anytime you want to manually mount it, it’s:
mount /dev/<vista partition>
because mount will look up the partition name in fstab and use the parameters there.