ext4 support on Windows XP

[munishvit]

So.. nothing can help me on ext4??

[GrfyGrumpyBear]

If you have 'extents' enabled on ext4, this breaks ext3 backwards compatibility and means that ext3 Windows drivers (or at the very least, the EXT2 Windows driver found at http://www.fs-driver.org/) won't work until 'real' ext4 support is added.

The worst part is that as far as I know, no Windows ext4 driver exists yet.... if anyone could find one, it would be very nice to mention it here.

[munishvit]

If you have 'extents' enabled on ext4, this breaks ext3 backwards compatibility and means that ext3 Windows drivers (or at the very least, the EXT2 Windows driver found at http://www.fs-driver.org/) won't work until 'real' ext4 support is added.

The worst part is that as far as I know, no Windows ext4 driver exists yet.... if anyone could find one, it would be very nice to mention it here.

Thanks for the reply dude . For Windows, now I have started using VirtualBox (was not aware this package before ). I found it much more convenient than otherwise separate installation. Even ext4 partitions can be easily shared with Windows...

[GrfyGrumpyBear]

Hey, it's no problem. It's just annoying for me when it comes to dual-booting, you know? All my stuff is on my EXT4 partitions. So when I want to rock out to some music I have to reboot and wait about 20 seconds for Ubuntu to come up and be ready to use.

On second thought, it's not all that bad....

[Ubuntist]

About the alternative driver mentioned by Dilligaf, has anyone tried Ext2fsd?

BTW, what is an I-node, and why would I care that Ext2fsd supports longer ones than does Ext-fs?

[jerome1232]

If memory serves Inodes are where directory and file information is stored.

Longer inodes means more possible directories, and more possible files per directory.

That and a couple releases ago Ubuntu began giving a default of 256 byte (or are they bit?) inodes, some drivers ONLY worked with 128 and couldn't work with filesystems that were using the larger inodes.

[Ubuntist]

Thanks for the explanation. After reading the above posts, I decided to install ext-fs but couldn't get it to work. Running the mountdiag.exe diagnostics program (in a terminal window) that can be downloaded from the same site, I found out that, lo and behold, the very I-node issue that I asked about was causing the problem: my ext3 partition was using 256-byte I-nodes. The recommended solution, re-formatting to 128-byte I-nodes looked painful so I decided to go for the less-well-known ext3 driver, Ext2fsd. FWIW, after a week, I've had no problems with it, although I didn't manage to designate my ext3 drive as L: instead of the default D:. I also I can't say that I often boot to Windows XP.

[ajoliveira]

Hello

I just installed Ext2Fsd 0.48 on XP, tried it on a ext4 partition, extents enabled, and so far it works . Used the registry mount method.

[Zorael]

At least on my Acer laptop, installing that ext2fs driver makes XP bluescreen when I try to mount truecrypt images. I've seen a blog where it happened to at least another guy, so chances are they're simply incompatible.

edit: Minor googling turns up;
http://linuxnewb.wordpress.com/2008/...ith-truecrypt/
http://www.edugeek.net/forums/window...installed.html
http://www.softblog.com/2008-02/the-...r-blue-screen/
http://xlshadow.livejournal.com/78729.html
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=209269


The Ext2 IFS changelog suggests it's fixed now though.

• Bug fixed that caused a blue screen when the Ext2 IFS 1.11 software was used together with the Truecrypt disk encryption software.

[hessiess]

Mounting Linux partitions in windows, especially XP is a bad idea as it has no concept whatsoever for folder permissions, meaning you can very easily mess up your system. If you have to mount Linux file systems in windows, make sure that they are mounted read only.