Sharing files between Ubuntu 6.06 and Windows XP Pro - best disk format to use

[Eric Dunbar]

On 04/02/07, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> Eric Dunbar wrote:
>
> >
> > Or, as I discovered this evening, you can map a drive or a partition
> > to your VM and avoid messing with Samba (need to be running vmware as
> > root, however).
>
> How?  I googled some pages that said you could, but I couldn't figure it
> out.

Edit the preferences for your VM (assuming you're using Server).

You can "Add" another hard drive -- you may have to go to the advanced
tab when you're adding an HD. You can then choose whether to add a
single partition or the whole drive to the VM.

In the VM you then mount the drive as you normally would.

Caveat: people have warned that mounting the drive is "experimental"
but another individual reported that he'd been using it for a while
without problems. YMMV.

Anyway, I'm now learning what MBR and GRUB stand for (I come from the
PPC world where you only ever have to deal with yaboot and it's
generally impossible to render your machine unbootable). I managed to
hose my MBR (I think) by telling my Windows XP CD to 'fixmbr' and now
doing the "GRUB dance" with the live Cd to no avail (e.g.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows).
Will try a few more things with the Win XP CD before I try to see what
installing Linux and/or Windows XP onto the blank partition will do...

I've got two HDs. Originally the 80 GB drive was 80 GB Windows XP (the
person who sold it to me installed a base Win XP Pro onto it). Then I
shrunk that to 20 GB and installed Ubuntu onto the rest (I shrunk it
to see how shrinking would work... I wasn't planning on using it).
I've got a second 20 GB drive that's Win XP only that was installed
before I installed Ubuntu onto the 80 GB drive. Windows installed a
'boot loader' (or whatever it is) that allowed me to choose between
the two WIn XP installs (presumably into the 20 GB partition on the 80
GB drive). Ubuntu later installed GRUB which ran before the Win XP
'boot loader'. When I destroyed the 20 GB partition the Win XP loader
(predictably) stopped working -- I figured reinstalling GRUB as per
the above link would cause GRUB to pick up on the other (lonely)
WIndows XP and add it to the menu -- no such luck.

Trying ... 'fixboot'... "Non-System disk"... no such luck

Eric.