Writing to ext3 from WinXP

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am a dual booter--XP and usually some ubuntu-based distro.

I installed Jaunty on an ext4 system and while I've not had a problem with ext4, every so often I miss the ability to pull files from Linux (never to write to them which is way too scary) during the rare times I am back working in XP. So, I think when Karmic hits that I am going to go back to ext3.

In the past, I've used fs-driver to access files in ext3. Is this the best option or are there other drivers out there that you would recommend? Remember, I won't be writing to ext3, only reading.

Thanks in advance for your input.

 

That's it, really.

 

What she said.

 

Tsk, tsk, deities are male.
Or so I've been told (never actually met one)

 

Oh SNAP!!!

 

Oh no! The editor wars all over again! Vim is the best!!

 

pico ftw? 10 char

 

I use a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

 

I have a seperate ntfs partition so that I can write data from linux onto it, which windows can then read if needed....

 

That's a good idea, and I think it's what I've decided to do with my laptop this weekend. I have Ubuntu as my primary OS, and keep my data there so I can enjoy the benefits of Gnome Do indexing, among other things like not having to mount a separate partition. But I can always mount my Windows partition and put whatever I need there if I'm going to boot it up.

A separate data partition mounted as /home wouldn't work so well if it was ext3, since my experiences with read/writing from Windows (I used ext2 IFS for Windows) was less than satisfactory. And then NTFS isn't supported by Unix (since it sucks ).

 

NTFS is actually supported quite well in linux (just have to make sure if its mounted in windows that its cleanly unmounted).
I have been using an external pocket 400GB HDD in linux, formatted in ntfs, and use it mainly for torrents (in linux).
Been using it for a year, no problems.
To be 100% safe, I have a seperate ntfs partition, seperate from the main windows partition (call it /space or something, shows up as D: in windows), so that there is no chance of linux screwing up the windows installation, and no chance of windows screwing up the linux install

 

But you can't mount NTFS as /home. I know it's well-supported, since I mount my desktop Data partition all the time from Linux; I use it for both OSes. But having Linux as my primary OS, I don't want to have to mount an NTFS data partition every time I log in, and I want my home folder there.

What I'm doing now is using Windows just as a game launcher, so I put any files I want/need on that partition from within Linux, and then boot Windows. But if I get my RAM upgraded and gaming under WINE or Virtualbox figured out, I may do away with the dual-boot, unless it's BackTrack or something.

 

Just curious, why cant this be done ?

 

The answer lies in this thread.

And actually... that dude may have given me an answer for my dilemma in this thread.

 

You can set linux up so that it will mount the ntfs data partition automatically.

 

That is true. I have instructions how to do it. But I still can't have my /home partition there.

 

symlink from /home/pixelot/ntfs to the ntfs partition ?

 

Have you tried VirtualBox? Of course that doesn't work for gaming and things that require full graphics card performance, but it sure beats dual-boot for everything else.

 

Yeah, I game a bit which is why I keep XP installed for now.

 

I used to do the same thing. The only issue I ran into was that I couldn't run my VMware images off of the NTFS partition. I had to copy them back to a ext3 partition to run them in Linux. I guess it was a VMware issue that there may or may not have been a work around for, but I didn't really look into it .

Other than that, the NTFS partition worked great from what I remember. Somewhere along the line (probably when I bought a new computer) I stopped doing this because I hardly ever use Windows anymore.