Access FAT32 Partitions

This pages covers how to access FAT32 partitions.

Locating the partition

To find FAT32 partitions, use any software that provides information on disk partitions (such as 'Hardware Browser' on Red Hat), then make a note of their location (the item that starts with 'hd' e.g. 'hda1').

Mounting the partition

Once you have found where the partition is located on your hard drive, open a terminal session and log in as root. Create a directory (in the "/mnt" directory) which will be the mount point for the partition. To actually mount it, enter the following command (where /hdxx is the name of the partition):

mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/<directory name>

You can then logout as root and access your data by changing into the mounted partition:

cd /mnt/<directory name>

Automatic mounting

To automatically mount the partition when booting up, edit the "/etc/fstab" file, this configures all file systems and disk device mounting options.

Add the following on a new line (where "/dev/hdxx" is the name of the partition):

/dev/hdxx /mnt/<directory name> vfat auto,umask=0 0 0