I am using dual boot, and I want to be able to access windows desktop files with one click. How can I do this? How can I create a Windows Desktop Shortcut for Ubuntu? Thanks.
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I've not long ceased dual-booting, however I was in the same boat, wanted files accessible from both Ubuntu and Windows. Here's what I did:
- Under Windows, use Disk Managment to create an NTFS "data" partition for those files to reside, including folder heirarchy "Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Desktop, Videos", etc. (In my situation, I didn't create a partition, I used a secondary drive, this way, in the event Windows borks itself, I don't lose anything)
- Under Windows Explorer, right-click each of the above folders, choose "properties", goto the "location" tab and change their "location" to the new data partition (eg D:\users\username\documents). Windows will ask you to confirm you want to move the data files to the new location. Click yes/apply/OK to confirm.
- Reboot to your Linux Distro and have the new data partition mounted under "media", for this, I used the Disks utility and modified the data partitions automatic mounting options to mount the partition (/dev/sdxx) by its UUID to /media/data (you could also do this by editing /etc/fstab).
- Finally, I used Nautilus to "Make Link" for each of the data folders (Desktop, Downloads, Documents, etc) on the data partition and then moved those links to my /home/username folder as replacements for the standard folders.
The end result is the same files accessible by both operating systems, under the same folder heirarchy. I could create/edit files in one OS and the changes will be instantly recognised by the second OS. The only folder you may wish to omit would be the "Desktop" folder, as you'll end up with desktop links/shortcuts which are unique to each OS.
In step one, you're creating an NTFS partition as this will be readable by both Windows and Linux OS's. Step four works as both OS's will be "symlinked" to the same data folders.
