Home folder with Windows + Mint dual boot

Question

I am dual-booting Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon 64-bit and Windows 8.1 64-bit. Since I use both OSes to work with the same files, I am thinking what would be the best approach to read and write files using both OSes.

I am considering to create a separate partition for such files. Since Linux can access and write files located in a Windows partition but the opposite is not true, then a NTFS partition should work well for the common files. But my question is: how do I "link" the folders on this new partition to Linux /home?

In Windows, there is the concept of libraries, and it is possible to add any folder in your system to the useful "My Music", "My Videos", etc. in "My documents". Would it be possible to do something similar with Linux? Or do I really have to mount this partition every time I boot my system and manually navigate to its subfolders?

Or yet, is there any better approach to deal with common files than what I am proposing?

Answer 1

Add the shared volume to your /etc/fstab file so it mounts automatically at boot.

Then run the following commands:

mount -a
ln -s shared_volume_mount_point/path_to_My_Music /home/My_Music
ln -s shared_volume_mount_point/path_to_My_Videos /home/My_Videos
ln -s shared_volume_mount_point/path_to_My_Documents /home/My_Documents

Navigating should be pretty easy from that point on. From a Windows perspective, symbolic links (created when using ln -s) are similar to Windows shortcuts.