Shared partition for music? (Windows/Linux)

[JesseC]

I have a moderately sized music collection of 76GB which I would like to access from both ubuntu and windows. What is the best way to do this?

My thoughts were... have ubuntu on one partition, windows on a second, and stick shared stuff in a third one. Is there software for both ubuntu and windows that could then access the music without messing it up or getting confused when something is changed from the other operating system?

Or is there perhaps a better way?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Or is there perhaps a better way?

It might be easier to just use an external HD. It's obviously mobile that way too.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148653

 

[JesseC]

It might be easier to just use an external HD. It's obviously mobile that way too.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148653

That also occurred to me, however, I currently use my ext HD for backup and if I were to put my music on it then I'd have to use my computer HD to back up the music. I am trying to avoid making the backup situation too complicated.

 

[DavidSnider]

Last I checked Ubuntu had no problem mounting a windows file system...

 

[JesseC]

Last I checked Ubuntu had no problem mounting a windows file system...

Wouldn't that mean letting Ubuntu music software read and write to my Windows partition? Is that a good idea...

 

[DavidSnider]

Wouldn't that mean letting Ubuntu music software read and write to my Windows partition? Is that a good idea...

You could mount it as read only if that is a concern. Reading data shouldn't do any harm.

 

[JesseC]

You could mount it as read only if that is a concern. Reading data shouldn't do any harm.

That sounds like a good idea. A thought just occurred to me, I could do what you suggest and use a simple command line music player which wouldn't need to create library files and all the other hidden meta data stuff. Google suggests cmus or mplayer, any experience with these?

 

[DavidSnider]

I usually use VLC player for everything, but there are a lot of good choices out there. The meta data shouldn't be a problem, it usually gets written in your home directory on linux anyway.

 

[r4z0r84]

If its dual boot, all of the suggestions above are correct, if they are separate computers you could either share it from one computer to the other or get a third computer running as a server to share the files, the simple way to go is to just network the two setting their ip addresses manually, linux will be able to see all the shared items on a windows network without any hassles as long as they are both in the same subnet.
for example

Windows PC
Ip address: 192.168.0.2
subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.0.1

Linux PC
Ip address: 192.168.0.3
subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.0.1

 

[Ben Niehoff]

My computer is set up in three partitions:

1. Windows OS, and all installed Windows programs (80GB NTFS)

2. Ubuntu OS, and all installed Linux programs (80GB EXT3)

3. "Data" partition containing all documents (340GB NTFS)

I think it's safer this way, because then Ubuntu never has to mount the Windows partition. I can mount the Data partition with full read/write permissions and never have to worry about messing up Windows. Ubuntu deals with the NTFS structure just fine. I get access to all the same documents, regardless of which OS I boot.

You can even configure Ubuntu to automatically mount the Data partition on startup by editing your

/etc/fstab

file. Use Google to find detailed instructions, I can't remember everything exactly. With automounting, the whole thing becomes a seamless experience.