Hello,

I want to reinstall Windows. I have a second hard drive formatted in ext3 with mp3s I want to keep. Can Windows read ext3 partitions, or do I need to reformat to fat32 in order to transfer my files over?

Thank you.

No, no version of Winblows can read anything other than FAT or NTFS.

-=[EDIT]=-
I bet you can convert the partition to fat or NTFS, though.

I recommend read only
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

The safest method for sharing files (read/write) IMO between linux and windows is a FAT32 partition. You will not be able to convert (i.e. non destructive reformat) from ext3 to FAT32.

Ok, thank you.

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

But then you loose all the linux security: everyone can access your (encrypted password), your (encrypted) ssh key,...
so take care

http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm
From the same guy(s) who wrote that explore2fs thingy. This is a driver so the ext3 drive will show up under My Computer and you can explore it like any other drive. It's read-only though.

I have a fat32 disk but there are a lot of downsides. No permissions on the files and often applications will give warnings or even errors about that. And there's a 4 gig per file size limit. Very annoying if you use it as a data disk and you use dvd isos or somesuch.

Your link is the same tool but in version 0.3 and with GPL license and source code

The link I posted is version 1.10a! with read/write support but with license Freeware

It has the same function. But they are not the same project. The software at your link seems to have some security issues (everybody has full access). If that's not a problem than fine. Also, I prefer GPL to Freeware for obvious reasons.

Version numbers mean crap. Firefox 0.6 had features and was more secure then IE 6.*.

there is one driver: ext2ifs
search for this in google. It works

That one is read only though, so half useless, half useful.

Guys,

Ext2ifs is the ticket.

The site quotes
One of the alternatives of having a partition can can be read/write by both Linux and XP/Vista is to use Ext2/3 partition and install Ext2ifs to the Windoze.

This arrangement overcomes the maximum 4Gb limitation of Fat32 and is used by many Linux users.

I use it myself and can certify it isn't read only.

Oops! Agreed! I meant the other one that was suggested. Sorry...long day...

I'm about to install the ext2ifs program. It looks splendid if it performs as promised.

Does it only work for ext2 or ext3 as well ? What about reiser support and maybe xfs ?

The documentation of Ext2ifs says the file journalling of Ext3 is dropped and so the files are manipulated as Ext2. I would have thought it is a bit much to ask a OS foreign to Linux to guarantee the file integrity by maintaining the journalling mechanism. If I were M$ I wouldn't even have anything to do with Ext2ifs at all.

Don't know anything similar exist for Reiserfs or xfs filing systems.

* 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.

The first caused me a lot of trouble, all suid bits were lost after several operations from windows.


For accessing other FS, I used qemu. kqemu is GPL since a few days.