Win7 mounts partitions?

On a dual-boot box, I've noticed Win7 can mount if Win7 resized and then reformats a partition. The choices are NTFS or exFAT for media format. Many tools available to format FAT32, but then Win7 won't mount the newly created partition.

What I'm after is:::::
a partition seen on Win7, reboot into Linux, and I get access to that same partition that Win7 wrote files to. In other words, the same functionality that a USB-external HDD gives, except I want the internal HDD to share a volume. I used to share a FAT32 \G: with a dual-boot XP box. But what I'm seeing with Win7 is Win7 has to create the volumes and then only a network or VM -- set up as a network -- can share files. I mean, if Win7 created the NTFS, the Linux side doesn't see those partitions either. In short, Win7 has to be the creator in all scenarios except networking??

Thanks in advance for any comments or insights.

Hi whs,

I know the Schwarzwald very well. Greets from Baden-Württemberg !

Anyway, I did as suggested. Using LiveCD / gparted, I sized and formated 160meg with ntfs. I made a couple of folders. Reboot into Win7 and there is no view available of my newly created storage.

Reboot from hard drive into Ubuntu. Created a new folder 'share_u', closed the files window and right-click the partition icon (looks like a disc drive in the side panel of Home file viewer) and selected Share. That caused Ubuntu to install Windows-sharing and wanted to reboot, but before that happened I canceled that dialog, and selected options for Guest and Users can use. I noticed Linux Windows-sharing also added a desktop icon for my newly-created 160gig so i could unmount if desired.

Booted into Win7, and whoa! there is a new icon in Computer Navigator. Windows assigned Letter drive E:/. Double-click that and I see my folder 'share_u'.

And, I type all this for those that follow. I was about to reformat my exFAT to FAT32 to see if that made any difference exposing partitions to a dual-boot. I'm glad your suggestion proved to be a better and simple solution: larger capacity, larger files and I don't have to rig up an external USB drive. Users see familiar icons in both OS to save their files.

Danke!