[james133]

Originally Posted by spirit4711

Not sure what you mean here, but Ubuntu reads and writes my Windows Vista disk quite nicely.

Sorry. I wasn't clear in summarizing. I have a Seagate 400 GB PATA internal hard drive in a USB/Firewire external enclosure, and I have an old desktop with Windows 98. (I have old language instruction software that will not run on any Windows OS newer than 98, nor will it run in Linux under WINE.) When I formatted the external hard drive, I chose either FAT32 or NTFS for its file system. There was no option to "format in OnTrack6" in the Seagate formatting utility that came with the hard drive. However, there was an option to "make all of the 400 GB accessible for older OSes such as Windows 98," which I wanted. Thus, the external hard drive was formatted in a file system usable by Linux (FAT32/NTFS) but with a modification that causes Linux to read it as incompatible (OnTrack6). There is a workaround to correct this, but it works only for a hard drive connected through the IDE bus. In other words, it works for the way you install a hard drive in a desktop computer and not for the way you connect that hard drive to a notebook.

Originally Posted by tomtyi

and finally Ubuntu has nothing to do with this recovery file, it can only mount if you plug in when Ubuntu runs. but if your pc can boot from usb things and the bios setup is good you could boot from usb hd. but the filetype of this recovery is not compatibile with Linux distros.

But you understand now that I was not trying to boot from USB. (Ubuntu 9.04, actually, was installed on this notebook via external optical drive, so boot-by-USB is certainly enabled.) I was trying to get Ubuntu to read an external hard drive in a modified FAT32/NTFS file system that it can be forced to read on IDE but not on USB.

Originally Posted by runningbird

Forgive the term "normal"; I mean, do people use linux who are not complete open source software fanatics? I actually only have linux on my computer myself, but I do not know how to do anything; I can't install any programs, mainly....It loads really quickly.

I like the cost and idea of open source software, but I will only think so long and so hard about how to do anything—for example, getting Ubuntu to read an external hard drive in a modified FAT32/NTFS file system that it can be forced to read on IDE but not on USB—before I return to the path of least resistance. Everyone draws a line somewhere.

I find installing programs in Ubuntu through Synaptic easier than installing programs in Windows. On the other hand, installing programs not in Ubuntu repositories is harder than in Windows. As an example of the latter, I screwed up trying to install Firefox 3.5, which is not available yet through Synaptic, using some cut-and-paste instructions because I didn't first read notes at the end of the instructions about deleting “Ubuntu Firefox” 3.0 before installing “Mozilla Firefox” 3.5. Fortunately, in addition to loading slightly faster than Windows, Ubuntu also installs and patches faster—much, much faster.