Accessing/Mounting EXT3 in Windows 7 Beta?

**withfries2** · February 3rd, 2009

I'm thinking about just converting the ext3 partition (which has my /home) into an NTFS partition and letting Linux use the "foreign" file system.

Anyone have success doing that? Can you do this conversion without reinstalling Ubuntu?

**tjwoosta** · February 4th, 2009

i have used an ntfs partiton for storing my media files before, but often times ubuntu would freeze up when trying to play the files

i dont think linux gets along with ntfs very well

i could move files back and forth onto the ntfs partition just fine, but if i tried to actually play the files directly from the ntfs partiton it would freeze after about 5 minutes

this leads me to belive that ntfs in linux is not a great idea

i dont know if this is a common issue or not, only that it is an issue that i experienced

if you do decide to try the conversion, please post back on weather it worked of not

**Enyalie** · February 5th, 2009

Originally Posted by withfries2

I'm seeing the same issue:

Partition of disk into NTFS, EXT3 and swap partitions using Gparted Live
Clean install of Windows 7 Build (32-bit) with Ext2 Installable File System for Windows installed in Windows Vista compatibility mode (into NTFS partition)
Clean install of Ubuntu 8.10 (into ext3 partition)
The EXT3 partition shows up just fine in the IFS Control Panel
When I try to access it, Windows prompts me to format the disk before I use it

The problem is that IFS doesn't like the 256 inode size that Intrepid formats with. There's a couple solutions out there; I caught the problem before I had a lot of stuff on the partition so I was able simply to reformat using a Hardy cd (which formats with a 128 inode size) and then install Intrepid on the partitions created by the Hardy cd. Looks like there is another solution out there, though. Here are the relevant threads:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1049405

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=979523&