THE BIGGER PICTURE

Windows has traditionally avoided the challenge of providing access to Linux file systems. If you run Linux and Windows on a single machine, for example, you must either rely on the legacy approach of saving shared files with the FAT filesystem or experiment with some of the new Linux tools for accessing NTFS partitions. (For a thorough look at NTFS with Linux, see the January 2007 issue of Linux Magazine.)

In the past, various third-party tools have offered access to Linux partitions from Windows. Some of these tools integrate seamlessly with Windows and support transparent access – just like native Windows drives – other tools rely on their own file manager.