Hi forum,

I want to know how well Extended file system or Ext works on Mac OS, and Windows? I know they do not support it ‘out-of-the-box’. But are there drivers that provide support for Ext2, 3[, and 4] file systems from USB harddrives on those two operating systems?

Well, I don't know about Mac (although, since the Mac OS is, basically, just BSD UNIX, and the ext fs was based on BSD, it might be supported), but there are several drivers available for Windows (through XP -- Vista requires a "signed" driver, and MS charges a lot of money to provide the signing key(s) to a developer).

Just "Google" e.g., ext driver xp, for links. (I just installed the "LTOOLS" package on one of my dual-boot systems, and it works quite well.)

Note: As far as I can see, none of the Windows support can handle ext file systems inside a Logical Volume, so, if you're using LVM, you may be out of luck.

What is LVM, and how can I tell?

I only find Ext2 drivers. Nothing for Ext3.

If you need to ask, you probably aren't using LVM. Try the command (as "root") lvscan. If your system says "No such command" (or similar), or if the command works but returns nothing, then you definitely aren't using LVM.

As to the ext2/ext3 support, most of the tools were written for ext2, but -- since ext3 only adds "journaling" to ext2 -- most of the tools will work with no problem.

Thanks for the replies. :-) Very helpful.

If you could answer this one as well, I might be able to order that harddrive later tonight.