Easy Data exchange between Windows PC and Raspberry Pi?

Question

I'd like to have an easy way to copy data from an windows pc to the sd card of a raspberry pi.

The sd card should be plugged into a windows machine and the partition seen by windows should be a FAT (?) formatted data partition.

As fa as I understand this, the first partition is always the boot partition and windows shows only the first partiton. I would also simply use a folder in the boot partition, but I am not sure if this is a good idea.

I don't want people to install any software on their windows machine to copy data to the card. I don't want to use additional hardware like an usb stick and there is also no network connection.

Is it possible to add a paritition which is seen by Windows or can I reuse an existing partition?

Is there a way to have partitions in this order? Fat Ext Boot ( the Boot partition has to be marked as primary but there is no need that it has to be the first partition, right?)

Or can i resize the Boot partition and just mount a folder there?

Answer 1

While you could always set up further FAT partitions for data and nicely access those at the Pi - Windows itself is the limiting factor here. If I remember correctly and without further tools installed on the Windows machine you will only access the first FAT partition. Strange (read stupid) as it seems that Windows does not support multiple partitions on storage devices.

Of course you can use the boot partition but be aware that the size is limited and the user has all the means to smash the system by deleting important files.