ext3 in windows….

I currently have 3 boots—Windows 7 RC1, Windows Vista and Ubuntu.

Because I’m in exams, I haven’t really had the patience to use Windows 7. However, in Vista, I was using Ext2 IFS for access my Ext3 partitions. However, I would semi-frequently get a message from Windows that the “device needed to be formatted” before I could access it.

Annoying, especially as I have 2 internal ext3 partitions as well as my external hard drive. Hence, I moved over to Ext2Fsd.

There are 3 ways to mount with Ext2FSD:

1. DefineDosDevice, which will expire at next reboot;


2. Auto-mount via MountMgr, which is what the designer suggests for removable hard drives. I’ve been using it for my external, and it works perfectly. It takes an extra 2-5 seconds to recognize the drive, and Ext2 Volume Manager must be open for it to recognize the drive. As an added bonus, you can flush the cache before removing the drive by right clicking on the icon in the corner—not easily possible with Ext2IFS.


3. Finally: create registry entries to permanently mount the drives. This is what I’ve done for my internal Ext3 partitions, and it works perfectly.

In short, if you are looking for some way to use Ext3 in Windows, I’d strongly recommend Ext2FSD. In coming weeks I’ll test it with Windows 7 as well. Will update at that point!

Feel free to ask any questions. I’m always looking for a break from exams. :)