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I am a little curious on if this ext2 driver that's used uses gpl code. Anyone know more info about it? It's only freeware; closed source.

You can access linux partitions fairly easily. If the partition is ext3 or ext2 you can use it by downloading "Ext2 Installable File System for Windows". http://www.fs-driver.org/

or, format your drives as Ext2 (or 3, really the only difference is the journal) and install Ext2 IFS on windows. Works fairly well!

...if your friend/colleague/whatever wants to use an NTFS-formatted drive on your computer, he might be a little unhappy if you reformat it.

I put NTFS support on my Linux computers and Ext2/Ext3 support (and a proper formatting tool) on my Windows computers. It's called interoperability.

Nice one

Can't figure out if I should moderate as insightful, funny or +1 quality bitchsmack

...if your friend/colleague/whatever wants to use an NTFS-formatted drive on your computer, he might be a little unhappy if you reformat it.

I put NTFS support on my Linux computers and Ext2/Ext3 support (and a proper formatting tool) on my Windows computers. It's called interoperability.

FAT32 has serious file size limitations. Why not just use ext2? http://www.fs-driver.org/

That's just bullshit. The simplest reason is that writing file systems is hard work and Unix programmers have trouble enough managing a stable one even on their home turf, let alone a platform they know little about and often despise.

Of course, there's a difference between using alternate file systems on a non-bootable partition vs a bootable one, but that's mostly due to the required support of the bootloader - a problem that exists even on *nix. If you only want to access a shared partition from Windows, have you tried this?

And finally Unix file systems are written for Unix (POSIX) operating systems, so while Windows isn't dependent on NTFS as such, it's dependent on a decent ACL implementation (POSIX ACLs are crude and basically worthless with rare exception; believe me, I tried) and some other advanced features depending on what you're doing.

The fact that Windows isn't Unix is neither bug, nor feature, nor evil conspiracy; it's just what it is. Unix maps no better to Windows than to VMS or OS/390.

Is that even possible?

Read only is easy. And quite possibly safe.

Read-write is also easy, but a little riskier (do you really want Windows to prompt you to reformat your root partition if it wasn't unmounted cleanly?)

Except for the fact that there is an ext2/3 interface for Windows that ignores access rights: http://www.fs-driver.org/

Firefox is much nicer if you use the same profile under both OSs. Start up the Linux one first and configure it to your liking. Then boot into Windows. (You'll need to have already installed an Ext driver) Start, Run, Firefox.exe -profilemanager and create a new profile, but point it to your existing Linux profile at /home/USERNAME/.mozilla/firefox/RANDOMFILENAME.default

This means you'll have the same set of bookmarks, browsing history, tabs, etc... whether you're in Windows or Linux.

You can use the same trick with your email if you use Thunderbird for both Windows and Linux. Set it up under linux, then use thunderbird.exe -profilemanager

Ext2 IFS for Windows.

http://www.fs-driver.org/

Since you'll be using Ext3, make sure you shut down from Ubuntu before booting into Windows if you want to be able to access your files on the Linux partition from there. There's a conf file tweak you can do so that you won't need to shut down (just do a restart), but someone else will have to help you out with that, I'm not that good with Linux yet.

Any takers?

I would have the same objection to FAT32, but you could keep your data entirely on ext2 because you can get an NTFS implementation of ext2 for Windows which works fine. Linky.

These days, the only place where FAT32 is appropriate is an USB stick.

• General:
  LUKS Integration,
  Overview
• Luks linux automounter:
      cryptsetup (look in your package manager)
• Windows luks tools:
    FreeOTFE
• Ext2 for win:
    fs-Driver

Incidentally, an Ext2 driver for Linux has existed since at least 2002, and can be found . Could not agree more that bringing the software world's features to Windows is a hell of a lot more important at this juncture than trying to bring Windows features to the rest of the world... Microsoft just drags its feet too hard and too deliberately for that to work. But they're beginning to reap what they've sown. :)

http://www.osnews.com/story.php/11506/Windows-Ext23-Filesystem-Driver/
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/filterdrv/default.mspx
http://www.fs-driver.org/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffsdrv/

I just wanted to add one more tip to all that great advice from the GP:
Forget the FAT32 partition. There is a pretty decent ext2 driver for Windows now, and SuSE installs everything as ext3 by default, which can be mounted as ext2.

Just to be clear, ext3 is the journaled version of ext2, so you can access your Linux partitions using that, with the caveat that it will not be journaled when using it in windows (i.e. make sure to force a file-system check in Linux if Windows doesn't end cleanly). Another problem would be that windows cannot list a directory if it contains filenames which are legal in Linux but not in Windows, e.g. ':'. But you couldn't write files like that to a FAT32 partition anyway. As long as you're sure to separate the data you want to share in it's own folder, it shouldn't be a problem. I would recommend that you install 3 partitions: swap, root (/), and home (/home). Then mount only your home dir in Windows.

• Windows will only install on the first partition of the master disk on IDE-0. If you've already installed Linux there, you'll have to either move the partitions or chuck in another HD as master.
• Windows will destroy your MBR. Can anyone post the command to fix this from a live CD?
• FAT32 is the only partition type both Windows and GNU/Linux support natively. There are also Windows drivers for Ext2, and GNU/Linux drivers for NTFS.

Ext2 Installable File System For Windows -- http://www.fs-driver.org/

Access rights are not maintained. All users can access all the directories and files of an Ext2 volume. If a new file or directory is created, it inherits all the permissions, the GID and the UID from the directory where it has been created. With version 1.10a of the software there is one exception to this rule: a file (but not a directory) the driver has created always has cleared "x" permissions, it inherits the "r" and the "w" permissions only. See also section "What limitations arise from not maintaining access rights?".
The driver treats files which have got a file name beginning with a dot "." character like other files, but not as hidden files.
The driver does not allow accessing special files at Ext2 volumes, the access will be always denied. (Special files are sockets, soft links, block devices, character devices and pipes.)
Neither different code pages nor UTF-8 encoded file names are supported. The driver always uses the current code page of Windows.
Alternate 8.3-DOS names are not supported (just because there is no place to store them in an Ext2 file system). This can prevent legacy DOS applications, executed by the NTVDM of Windows, from accessing some files or directories.
Currently the driver does not implement defragging support. So defragmentation applications will neither show fragmentation information nor defragment any Ext2 volume.
This software does not achieve booting a Windows operating system from an Ext2 volume.
LVM volumes are not supported, so it is not possible to access them.

Neither different code pages nor UTF-8 encoded file names are supported.

Remind me why you'd want to run NTFS again? I'm not sure that ext2/3 would really be the ultimate solution, but I'd take that over NTFS crap.

Since MacOSX is BSD based, I would be willing to bet that similar projects and support can be found (but, I Am Not A Mac Fanboy).

On Windows, you are pretty much stuck using either NTFS or FAT. FAT volumes can not be created in windows larger than 32GB. Although, you could create the partition using 3rd party tools to get beyond that limitation. I have had some success mounting ext3 partitions using Ext2 Installable File System For Windows or Ext2 File System Driver for Windows.

Personally, from my experience, VFAT or NTFS are about your only options.

No matter what the OS, you are going to have to install a driver/patch on at least one of them to get support for some filesystem unless you use something like FAT.

http://www.fs-driver.org/ ext2 for windows
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/ for osx /shrug

I have an ext2 partition in windows using http://www.fs-driver.org/

However ä,å and ö characters in filenames get screwed up.

ext2 is supported everywhere and it's far better than fat32 or ntfs. for windows, http://www.fs-driver.org/ and for osx http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

http://www.fs-driver.org/

I just use a external drive formatted in EXT3, and for windows files i just install the Ext3 driver.

I use ext3 on my portable usb harddrive. Works fine in windows using FS Driver.

Still I wish windows had good support for EXT2.

Not the best, but Explore2FS is pretty nice.

Of course, writing a Windows File System is a black art. If MS documented it better, maybe there'd be more third party file systems.

You might want to look at this as well -- disclaimer, I haven't tried it, don't know how good it is.

I used to have that issue as well. Not to mention disk space issues on my laptop due to 5 partions (swap,/,/home,/mnt/shared/,windows,).

Now instead of sharing a fat32 partion, I share my /home partion using FS Driver an EXT2 file system driver for windows. (naturally compatible of course with ext3)

Solved many, many annoyances for me. I highly recommend it.

You will start getting questions like "why cannot my Windows see my Linux partition?" Well, gosh, because Windows is designed to be incompatible?

What on earth are you talking about?

There's a lot to complain about in Windows, I can't argue that. But claiming that Windows was designed to be incompatible because it can't natively read a file system that 99.999% of Windows users don't even know exists, and the vast majority of the remainder don't care about, is absolute garbage. I'd agree with you if it wasn't possible to write filesystem drivers for Windows, but oh hey, it is.

It's not Microsoft's job to provide file system drivers for every filesystem on the planet, nor should it be. It is their job to provide interfaces so that new filesystems can be plugged in if anyone feels like writing them, and in this particular case, they have.

I don't like MS either, and I agree that they frequently attempt lockin and frequently design their systems to be as hard to interface with as possible. But pointing to filesystems as an example of that is simply flawed. Please, campaign for Linux using facts, not baseless wild accusations.

I usually recommend ext2 on external disks that are to be used seamlessly between windows/linux/mac environments. Works like a charm! Ref. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/ http://www.fs-driver.org/

I use Ext3 for my backup drive, and this driver for when I need to attach it to a Windows box.

However, the fact that nobody's written an extfs driver suggests to me that either it's too Windows-oriented, or the support is incomplete.

They have, see http://www.fs-driver.org/. I seriously considered using it for an external drive that is usually connected to my Linux file server, but that I sometimes use with my laptop when I need to copy a couple hundred gigs of data from another location. However, I ended up choosing FAT-32 because I can connect it to just about any computer and be fairly sure of it working.

Try this and a ext3 file system. I have all my Documents and the whole user directory on an ext3 and it works great. I can also access it from Linux if I want...

...and fuse. If you're one of those odd people who like stability, and are -therefore- running a 2.4 kernel, prepare to dig around for an old version of fuse which supports makeing the required kernel module that ntfs-3g requires. I gave up and installed 2.6; which promptly started crashing for no readily apparent reason (just as I remembered it doing with every machine I've tried it on). When I feel energetic I'm backing this up and nuking it.

The 2.6 kernel is complete crap, and it's made every machine I've ran it on as crash-prone as win98 SE. I mean that literally, by the way.

A better way to go (if you're dual booting XP and Linux) is the Ext2 Installable Filesystem Driver for XP. You lose the journal the goes with your ext3 drives (at least while you're running XP) and there's issues with it occasionally failing to mark the drives clean at reboot; but overall it performs decently and is -as far as I can tell- fairly stable.

The Windows read/write drivers for ext3 are great...NTFS had such a hard time getting supported properly in Linux because it's closed, while ext3 is open.
Here's the driver: http://www.fs-driver.org/

try this, and this

I've had still another experience. Ext3 and ReiserFS have been solid as a rock under Linux for years now, and I've only run into trouble when I get brave and try to read and write to ext2 and ext3 partitions from Windows. Something about how windows (not surprisingly) does not respect the file permissions.

Here's a partial solution (note I have no Macintosh, so my struggles are Windows Linux):

IFS ext2/3 drivers

It's free, it's solid (I also have another driver that I use to convert my Linux swap partition into a usable partition under Windows, where its swap is stored too), and it stores files up to, what, 2 TiB?

If there's a Mac ext2/3 driver (and there's gotta be, eh?), this might help you out.

HTH

-Ed

I found I prefer simply being able to access my Linux partition from Windows by installing the (unfortunately not open-source) Ext3 driver.

Seems to work quite well.
Yes, unfortunately it can't be Windows' root partition, but at least I can use Windows & Linux without needing an EXTRA data partition, or using Windows on FAT32.
(Though I usually do just use FAT32 to keep things easy, because I'm not all that worried about security on my home box.)

Anyways one problem I ran into using a shared FAT32 partition is that I couldn't use files > 4GB. Haven't seriously tested it yet but I think using the Ext3 driver will fix that. (Mainly for virtual machine images for Qemu.)

Steve

No, they dont supply one.
But there is a third party implementation using their (MS) development tools:

http://www.fs-driver.org/

1: MS doesn't provide it, but if you want to read/write ext2/3 from any NT-based Windows, http://fs-driver.org/

2: Yes, MS does provide support for mounting NFS. It's called Services for Unix, check it out sometime..

When handling directory entries NTFS is so slow it's not even funny. Maybe with some extra glue the drive head trashing related to NTFS metadata handling overhead could be targeted -> flash ... -> profit. Or something. Try this: http://www.fs-driver.org/ Then try mirroring a big directory structure to/from NTFS ... and to/from ext2/ext3 using this driver. The performance difference is enlightening.

5) Since you mentioned dual boot... Partition your hard drive 3 ways. One partition for the Windows installation. One for linux. Then a third partition (formatted as FAT-32) which can be accessible from both OS's.

I use Ext2 IFS For Windows to access my GNU/Linux partition from Windows, and use NTFS Link to create symbolic links between these two for the purpose of sharing the Firefox/Thunderbird and other profiles.

This works like a charm when you dual boot a lot. This way you can keep everything on your GNU/Linux partition (ext2 or ext3) which, through the driver, Windows is able to write to. No need for a seperate FAT32 partition.

the filesystems used in linux are free and open.

• explore2fs application that reads files from an ext2/ext3 partition, with LVM2 support
• ext2ifs old project by the maker of explorefs2, native reading support of ext2/ext3 in windows NT and up
• ext2fsd native reading support of ext2/ext3
• ext2ifs NON-opensource (maybe violating GPL ?) native read/write support for ext2 (and ext3, but the driver could fuck-up the journaling if partition wasn't unmounted clean in linux). Has a nice GUI to assign drive letters to partitions.
• rfstools and GUI Yareg application that reads files from an reiserfs partition.
• rfsd - native reading support for reiserfs

• It is possible to add access to linux partition in windows
• Even write access is possible and currently the non-open source ext2ifs provides a solution that can be read/written by both OS and which is a little better than FAT32
• although Windows has no propper device mapper but only Dynamic Drives, LVM2 data can still be accessed (although not with a native driver).
• None of this numerous attempt is done by Microsoft. This show how much they want to play nice with the others

the filesystems used in linux are free and open.

• explore2fs application that reads files from an ext2/ext3 partition, with LVM2 support
• ext2ifs old project by the maker of explorefs2, native reading support of ext2/ext3 in windows NT and up
• ext2fsd native reading support of ext2/ext3
• ext2ifs NON-opensource (maybe violating GPL ?) native read/write support for ext2 (and ext3, but the driver could fuck-up the journaling if partition wasn't unmounted clean in linux). Has a nice GUI to assign drive letters to partitions.
• rfstools and GUI Yareg application that reads files from an reiserfs partition.
• rfsd - native reading support for reiserfs

• It is possible to add access to linux partition in windows
• Even write access is possible and currently the non-open source ext2ifs provides a solution that can be read/written by both OS and which is a little better than FAT32
• although Windows has no propper device mapper but only Dynamic Drives, LVM2 data can still be accessed (although not with a native driver).
• None of this numerous attempt is done by Microsoft. This show how much they want to play nice with the others

NTFS support in linux is not safe as far as I'm aware. All of the NTFS mounting tools I've tried have recommended mounting read-only unless you really have to.

You really should take a look at the current status of the NTFS drivers. They are now quite safe (although a backup is always something you should have anyway).

The kernel driver was completely rewritten in 2002 (the version prior to the rewrite was NOT safe). It has all the read-related features you would expect; write support is limited, and it will only do things it knows it can - other operations are refused. You can also use a userspace version of the driver (albeit with a performance penalty) and the "ntfsprogs" to get more write functionality. Again, it's safe - if an operation is not safely doable, it is refused. See Linux NTFS driver for details.

There are alternatives too: there is Jan Kratchovil's Captive NTFS driver, which uses the Windows ntfs.sys driver. This can do everything (of course), but is a user-space driver, which means it's not that fast; I'm not sure how stable this is either.

You can also buy Paragon Software's commercial NTFS driver for Linux. Do not confuse this link with the linux-ntfs one! They have a demo version you can download, and it also provides full read-write access.

If you know of a Windows ext3 or Raiser driver, then please tell me.

If you want to read/write ext2 and ext3 under Windows, try this driver. I've been using it (over Firewire and USB). It works well and transparently. You should use the hack of changing the partition type to "NTFS" with cfdisk on external drives so that the Windows PnP notification works for hotplugging; the partition itself stays formatted with ext2/3 (both Windows and Linux look at partition content instead of the partition table to determine the format when mounting). This is mentioned in the included documentation; the alternative is a control panel to assign letters to ext2/3 partitions. You don't need to reboot after installation before the driver can be used; you still need to use Linux to mkfs and fsck any ext2/3 paritions though.

-- Steve

For what values of fine is putting 32GB of data on a FAT32 file system a good idea?

When you've got 32GB of data you want to share between your Windows install and your Linux install. Say, your MP3 collection?

Put this on your Windows install and make your common data-storage area ext2 or ext3 instead. If you start slinging around large (>2GB) files on a regular basis like I do, you won't have to worry about splitting/combining files.