If you already have your Windows partitions mounted (but with the wrong permissions), unmount them before beginning these instructions. For example, if your Windows partition is mounted as /media/hda1, then open up a terminal and type sudo umount /media/hda1
The first thing we need to do is figure out where the Windows partitions are in the partition table. Typing sudo fdisk -l will tell you the location and the filesystem type (FAT32 or NTFS). For example, my sudo fdisk -l looks like this:
Disk /dev/hda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 1911 15350076 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/hda2 1912 19457 140938245 5 Extended /dev/hda5 1912 14716 102856131 83 Linux /dev/hda6 14717 17278 20579233+ 83 Linux /dev/hda7 17279 17404 1012063+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hda8 17405 19457 16490691 83 Linux
From this, I can see that my Windows partition is type NTFS and is located at /dev/hda1.
The next thing I need to do is create a mount point. This mount point may already exist as /media/hda1, but I like creating a separate directory altogether: sudo mkdir /windows
Now, we need to edit the /etc/fstab file to make the Windows partition mount with the proper permissions (NTFS is read-only in Ubuntu). First, let's make a back-up copy of the /etc/fstab file: sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_backup
Next, let's edit the fstab file: sudo nano /etc/fstab
This is what it might look like before we change it: proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda6 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults 0 2 /dev/hda1 /media/hda1 ntfs defaults 0 0 /dev/hda7 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0 /dev/hdd /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
Note: Starting with Edgy Eft (Ubuntu 6.10), the appearance of the /etc/fstab file has changed a bit, but the principle still remains. Instead of looking like this: /dev/hda1 /media/hda1 ntfs defaults 0 0
it may look more like this: # /dev/hda1 UUID=FC98E2C598E27E10 /windows ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
This is what it should look like after we change it: proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda6 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults 0 2 /dev/hda1 /windows ntfs nls=utf8,umask=0222 0 0 /dev/hda7 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0 /dev/hdd /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
If we also had a FAT32 partition, say at /dev/hdb1, we would unmount it and create a new mount directory for it: sudo umount /dev/hdb1 sudo mkdir /fat_files
Then we would add in a line so that our final /etc/fstab would look like this: proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda6 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults 0 2 /dev/hda1 /windows ntfs nls=utf8,umask=0222 0 0 /dev/hdb1 /fat_files vfat iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0 /dev/hda7 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0 /dev/hdd /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
When you're done editing the /etc/fstab file, save (Control-X), confirm (y), and exit (Enter).
Finally, we'd remount them both: sudo mount -a
If, for some reason, that doesn't work, try rebooting the computer.