Read and Write Ext2 / Ext3 from Windows Vista

Ext2IFS is officially supported by Windows NT4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003 (x86 only), but I have not encountered any major problems installing it on Windows Vista (32 bit). Windows Vista does not read EXT2 partitions or EXT3 Linux partitions by default. Explorer will not even show these partitions as visible! Fortunately Ext2IFS (IFS stands for Installable File System for Windows) will allow us to address this problem. Ext2IFS is a free driver developed by Stephan Schreiber. It provides access to native ext2 or ext3 partitions in Windows.

You can download it here:

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

Click on the link and select Ext2IFS 1.10c.exe to start the download.

Ext2IFS is not officially supported by Windows Vista. So when you start installing from the file you just downloaded, it will send an alert that your operating system (Windows Vista) is not supported.

Wait a few seconds while Vista offers the installation. Accept by selecting "installation with the parameters proposed." The installation will start normally.

The three hard drives on my system appear, notably the Linux disk partitioned into EXT3 (Drive 1) previously invisible to Windows.

The program automatically assigns the first letter available (F: here) to the partition and does not affect any letter used by Linux. Do not change the latter so as not to risk inadvertently changing the partition: Windows will ask you to format this partition when you try to access it, rendering it unusable by Linux!

Finish the installation and reboot because the partition is not accessible by the operating system. After rebooting you can read and write to the disk as Linux on a Windows NTFS disk.

Notes-

Ext2IFS is not officially supported by Windows Vista. The installation was successful but only enough so that it is stable for use. Be careful when dealing with hard disks that contain important data.

You can access both your personal files on the Linux file system, but remember this is without the protection which Linux offers within its OS.

Make a habit to only use the home directory / home> , and directories which you create yourself. I particularly recommend to avoid renaming any directory which contains a period. As these directories are very important to the Linux OS. And will definitely cause problems if messed with.

And that's it! You can now read Linux partitions from within Windows Vista.