Need Help with Ext hard drive

[Eleggua]

Hello, Im a newbie yes sorry! LOL And my question is how do I view and read my files that are on a ext usb Hard Drive, that was set up when I had ****ty *** Windows!? All my files are still on it, do I have to back up everything on it, then erase it, or format it so I can get files off of it on Linux? or is there some kind of software I need? Please Help,
Thanks!

[x]

Depending on which distro you have, but normally all you need to do is to plug the drive in.
If the USB-drive then doesn't show up, return with info about your distro, the filesystem on USB-drive (NTFS or FAT32 probably) and the output of command # fdisk -l ("sudo" or as root)

[saikee]

The use of an external; hard disk is exactly the same in a modern Linux as in a MS Windows. There is nothing to change.

Most modern Linux distro, say a Ubuntu, on detecting an external hard disk will mount all the partitions if they are healthy and the partitions will be available immediately at the desktop without the user lifting a finger. The drive/partition may be called a different name usually using the partition's label as Drive C, D, E etc are only used by Windows. That is all.

To remove the external hard disk the user has to unmount the drive/partitions. By selecting the drive/partition and right click it there will be several actions possible. One of them is to unmout it.

A user can regard it is his/her God given right to be able to use files stored in an external hard disk in any operating system as long as the partitions have been formatted in with a normal filing system like Fat16, Fat32 or NTFS.

Linux excels in able to manually mount and unmount any external drive if the operating system doesn't do it automatically.