BleepingComputer.com: Mounting Ext2 And Ext3 In Windows.

Ok, first, I don't remember where I read this, so if it was a user here, I apologize for not giving the appropriate reference.

So, my wife uses the XP side of this machine (I do for some games, but that's about it), while I use the linux side. We have all the little problems many dual booters suffer, mail in 2 spots, firefox bookmarks anbd themes (all of which can be fixed easily actually). The nomal way around it is to make a fat32 partition and share it between the two OS's, fix the permissions and away you go. But, I was wondering, can it be done with a linux native typ partition? As I was reading, i saw someone (I believe in Ubuntu forums) post information about this http://www.fs-driver.org/faq.html. So I looked at it, and it looks doable. I'm going to give it a try, and see what they say. It's apparently a way to get NT, 2k, Me, XP or 2003 to mount an ext2 or ext3 fs, assign it a drive and access it just like you would from linux...I'll let you know how it turns out. If it screws up the journalling when (not if) XP crashes,on the linux side, then I will deem it as a failure and abandone it. If fsck can fix it without hours of waiting, then I may deem it a success. Either way, I will let you guys know how I got on. If you all ready have knowledge of this, please share and reduce the research time for me :-D

Since you haven't updated us on the status of your test, one can only assume you are deep in a hole and still trying to dig out.

Actually, I hope it went well. Please let us know.

Actually, I have been switching back and forth from xp to linux and haven't even so much as seen a hiccup yet. So, it appears, it is a success and this works really well.

la la la (singing with joy). thank you Joedude for testing this out. I'm going to try it now. If anyone can make it go south it'll be me.

To be honest, It's been really handy for browsing through both systems when logged into XP. Now, Linux can all ready natively handle it and I never had a problem. After I installed this, I had the ability to do the same from windows. It's quite convenient for people like me who get tired of constantly rebooting into the other system to get files or work on a project.

Finding this may encourage me to try my XP-Linux dual boot again, sooner rather than later. Thank you!

word to the wise on this. If you use UTC for your system clock and have issues with keeping time in windows. When you reboot into linux it will bring up an error message about the last use of the drive being "in the future". It'll fix the timestamps and reboot (at least in Ubuntu). Nothing major just something to tell you about.

The easy fix is not to use UTC. It's not good for most dual or more boots anyways.Apparently, they will never sync between OS's due to the leap seconds to accomodate for the slowing of the earths rotations and such.

I've used this in the past, it works very well.
There's also Explore2fs. Doesn't mount it locally in Explorer, but you can browse the files just the same.

I've used Ext2 IFS for a while. It mounts Ext file systems natively for windows.