How to Access Windows Files in Ubuntu OS

Maintain access to your Windows files when migrating to Ubuntu

Last Updated: December 23, 2024

One of the biggest difficulties migrating to Ubuntu is losing access to your windows files. Fortunately, it is not too difficult to overcome this...but read the warnings before trying this out. All that is needed is to mount the windows partition after you boot into Ubuntu. Of course, the first problem is determining which partition contains the windows files.

Things You Should Know

Navigate to System → Administration → Synaptics Package Manager to locate and install gparted. Then, run it from System → Partition Editor
Open a terminal and type sudo -s to root yourself.
Type the prompt "mkdir /mnt/windows". Then, type {{{1}}} .
Be sure to replace /dev/sda2 with the partition name you located earlier with the Partition Editor.

Steps

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Install gparted ( System → Administration → Synaptics Package Manager → search for gparted, mark it for installation and, when it installs, run it from System → Partition Editor ). Look for an NTFS partition – it is likely to be the one windows is on.
Having located the partition, write down the name – it will look something like /dev/hda2 or /dev/sda2 , depending if your drives are PATA, SCSI or SATA. Do this carefully – Now check to see if this is the partition by manually mounting it and looking at the files.

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You will be prompted for the root password and will then become root. Being root assumes that you know what you are doing – you could easily cause disaster if you make a mistake, so concentrate. Carefully type this line at the prompt and press enter
mkdir /mnt/windows
You may replace /mnt/windows with /mnt/windrv or any other name you prefer. Having created the directory that is going to hold your windows files, type the following command carefully at the prompt and press enter
mount -t ntfs /dev/sda2 /mnt/windows -o "umask=022"
Now access the mounted drive and ensure that you can read the files by going to Places → Computer and navigating to /mnt/windows . If you can see your files, you are all set. If not, you've mounted the wrong drive, unmount it using umount /dev/sda2 , making sure that you use the correct name for your drive.

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It says that it can't find /dev/sda/2 in /etc/fstab. What does that mean?

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The location will not always be /dev/sda2. It may be something else on your system. You will need to look at GPartEd in order to figure out what you need to type in for the mount command. Also, you put an extra '/' in /dev/sda2 right before the 2. This may have affected your mount command as well.

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What does it mean when it says Mount is denied because the NTFS volume is already exclusively opened?

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It means something else is already accessing the volume. Make sure that no other programs are using the volume and try again.

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My root password is wrong. What can I do?

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You will have to change your root password. The root password is typically the administrator's login password. But if it's not, you will have to change it by editing boot commands.

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Tips

Start a text editor as root by typing gedit /etc/init.d/mountwinfs.sh . Copy the lines below into the text editor and save it as /etc/init.d/mountwinfs.sh .

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Now, you will probably want to have the computer boot up and automatically mount the windows drive so you can save files back and forth seamlessly. This is easily achieved via a script that loads at startup. The commands in the script will have to be run with root permissions, so you will have to save the file in /etc/init.d . You are going to use the same command you used manually. Most of the other lines in the script are comments.

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Warnings

Always back your important files up before making changes to your system.

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Leave yourself plenty of time to recover - never do this before a deadline.

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Always verify your backup before trusting it.

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How to Access Windows Files in Ubuntu OS

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