2009/10/12

Ext2 under Windows

I finally had the definitive data loss on my (historical) FAT32 partition that I used to share between Linux, Windows and the odd other OS (sometimes FreeBSD, sometimes OpenSolaris). So I was looking for a way to share those data without the hassle of a yesterday filesystem. I was rather disappointed with the status of NTFS under linux, both native and under FUSE, not to speak about my mascotte ZFS.
Finally, I found this Ext2 driver with finely works under Windows, reaching near NTFS native speed, so I adopted it on the pc I switch OSes more, currently the Asus EEEPC 1101HA (yes, I finally got one).
The driver is nice, if you don't mind using your favourite ext3 filesystem in compatibility mode, which only means under Windows there's no journal, and you must bear the casual fsck when windows hangs, and the fact that you can't access your filesystem under windows if it has a dirty status on linux (the journal needs to be replayed). Of course you can simply make this filesystem a simple ext2 and get on with it.
By the way, you find everything here: http://www.fs-driver.org/

Note: remember to create the ext2/ext3 filesystem with the option -I 128, which means an inode size of 128, most moder distribution set this value to 256 which is not compatible with these tools.

Update: It works under Windows 7 too with some quirks. The first is that the installation requires Windows Vista compatibility mode (not an issue for me). The second is that the drive letter utility seems not to stick with the configuration done upon reboot. I'll investigate this further.