Saturday, January 3, 2009

HOW TO: Mount Ext3 Filesystem in Windows

Problem:
You have an external (or internal) hard drive that has been formatted using the "ext3" filesystem for Linux. Unfortunately, Windows cannot read ext3 natively.

Solution:
The program "Ext2 IFS" (despite its name) has the ability to display your ext3 formatted hard drive in Windows XP.

(on Windows)
1. Navigate to: http://www.fs-driver.org/

2. Download the executable file.

3. Connect your ext3 formatted hard drive

4. Install the Ext2 IFS executable.

5. Follow the prompts and you should be able to see your drive in the windows explorer.

Till now I have not had any problems with this and I have been able to use this tool for everything from copying files to watching movies.

15 comments:

  1. Ext2IFS has an inode limitation, and will not mount certain file systems. See the release notes:
    http://www.fs-driver.org/relnotes.html

    Ext2fsd works and does not have the inode limitation:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd

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  2. Thanks for pointing that out. Fortunately I have never had a problem with all my ext3 hard drives in XP. But I shall try out Ext2fsd!

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  3. Ext2fsd doesnot works wit the latest editions of ubuntu using either ext3 or ext4 filesystem due to the change in default inode value

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  4. I guess it does. The option to manage 256 inodes has been added to the most recent release.

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  5. What about windows 7?

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  6. I have found an article about windows 7: http://www.soluvas.com/read-browse-explore-open-ext2-ext3-ext4-partition-filesystem-from-windows-7/

    Hope this helps

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  7. Can anyone explain how this application works actually??? i mean the exact logic??

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  8. help please..!

    i hav done installing 'Ext2IFS' and i mounted my ext3..but when i try to open the drive..it is prompting me to format the drive..which i cannot do????

    how can i access d drive without loosing d data???

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  9. I was able to install and successfully read from windows 7 by running in vista-sp2 compatibility mode. Haven't tried any other ops yet, but read is doing well.

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  14. I personally use Paragon ExtFs for Windows and it works well! IFS is nice tool as well but problem is it doesn’t work with windows 7 and 8, that’s why i’m using extfs for windows http://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-windows/

    ReplyDelete