hello there,
I’d like to co-install SUSE 11.1 64 bit on my notebook with pre-installed Vista 32 bit.
I’d like to have one unit (say sdc1 for /home) where I will basically run computations in Matlab/Abaqus.
I 'd like data from this unit being accessible from Vista/XP as well.
How to do it?
Which kind of fileystem should I choose for / and /home while installing SUSE 64bit?
Many Thanks, Alex
Easy questions.
While you can make /home accessible for Windows by formatting it vfat = FAT32 or NTFS, it is not good at all for Linux.
Format /home with ext4. And so the /
Share data with Windows on another partition, for exmple, /share. Create, and format that partition with NTFS (formatting NTFS is not done in Yast). Formatting with vfat may give you slightly less problems in Linux, but there are drawbacks, and it is not worth.
As far as I know, vfat and NTFS are two filesystem types that are easy to share between Windows and Linux. ext2 and perhaps others are accessible from Windows with some effort, but I don’t know how.
If you want to access the partition from Windows you could format it in ext2/ext3 (I think ext4 is not an option in 11.1) and use drivers/programs to gain explorer access to the filesystem. I use ext2ifs,but there are a couple more good options you could check out tools to access windows , more tools. It works fine for me…! 
It is not a good idea to modify files on a journalled partition if the relevant operating system is not running. So if you use NTFS or ext3, you need to limit the extent to which you alter the files from the foreign OS.
If you want to manipulate files using two different OSs on a common partition, ext2 is best. It isn’t journalled, will preserve your Linux permissions and can be accessed as noted above from Windows.