Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3964 mails)

["Greg Wallace" <jgregw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday, November 22, 2004 @ 12:45 PM, Greg Freemeyer wrote --
>On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:39:33 -0500, Greg Freemyer
><greg.freemyer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 18:28:37 +0100, Catimimi <catimimi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>> > Greg Freemyer a écrit :
>> 
>> 
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > >I have the same task as you this morning, getting a ext2 FS to be
>> > >usable from windows.  In my case I need full functionallity.  ie. I
>> > >need 250GB partitiona support, a drive letter assigned, then I need to
>> > >be able to use normal windows software.
>> > >
>> > >I found ext2fsd (like you did?), but the "alpha" quality rating is
>> > >pushing me away.  The good news is that a release was made in the last
>> > >couple of weeks, but it looks like a pretty significant bug that was
>> > >just fixed.
>> > >
>> > >bug fixes are listed at
>> > >http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/projects/projects.htm#ext2fsd
>> > >
>> > >There is also ext2ifs which considers itself beta software under
>> > >Win2K, but is read-only
>> > >
>> > >      http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm
>> > >
>> > >I also found a commercial product for $30 which one hopes is
production quality.
>> > >
>> > >      http://www.ext2fs-anywhere.com/index.htm
>> > >
>> > >It appears to be from a German software company (Paragon Software
Group).
>> > >
>> > >Does anyone have anything good or bad to say about Paragon?
>> > >
>> > >Thanks
>> > >Greg
>> > >
>> > >
>> > I use ext2fs-anywhere in order to read and write to ext2 or ext3
>> > partitions. It is OK
>> > with small (a few GB) partitions, but I got difficulties with 250GB
>> > partition so that I came
>> > back to NTFS. I write to NTFS under linux by using vmware and mounting
a
>> > smbfs share.
>> > It works fine but it is rather expensive even with an education
license.
>> >
>> > Writing to ext2fs with Paragon give you up to 60% of non contiguous
>> > files and you get
>> > warnings with the trash under windows XP but it works.
>> >
>> > Michel.
>> >
>> >
>> 
>> Based on the above, I'll give the ext2fsd driver a try.
>> 
>> I also just saw the ext2 tools for cygwin were released this summer.
>> They could prove usefull as well.
>> 
>>   http://www.mail-archive.com/cygwin-announce@xxxxxxxxxx/msg00897.html
>> 
>> Greg
>> --
>> Greg Freemyer
>> 
>ext2fsd did not work for me.  I found sufficient docs to get the
>driver installed as a service.  I did not find any need for a mount
>command, it all seemed pretty automatic.
>
>One small issue is that by default you have to enter "net start
>ext2fsd" after every reboot, but I assume you can set that up
>permanently via the windows services program.
>
>Once ext2fsd was running I could copy files off of the ext2 FS to a
>native windows FS.
>
>I was not able to actually use the files directly on ext2.  ie. The
>file open dialog box for my main application would not even let me
>select files on the ext2 partition.
>
>Fortunately for me my files are static, but now I am having to put
>2x250GB to tape, then restore them to a FAT32 partition.  (I don't
>have a spare 250 GB drive to go direct disk-to-disk :(
>
>I'm doing the first restore now.  If I'm really lucky I will be able
>to start the second one before I leave work tonight.
>
>FYI: I had to make my 250 GB fat partition in SUSE 9.2.  Win2K and
>partition magic both refused to format something that big FAT.  I
>considered NTFS, but Linux can't write to NTFS, so that was no good.
>
>Greg
>-- 
>Greg Freemyer

Greg

     Sorry ext2fsd didn't work for you.  Based on the .22b release notes on
their web site, looks like this software is still very much a work in
progress.  I went back through the thread for this topic and here's a quick
summary of software based on what I got going out to the various web sites.

*) Ext2ifs -- Says "If you have a PC which can dual boot...", meaning, I
guess, if you have a machine with a dual Windows-Linux installation on it.
It also says "What EXT2IFS can't do ... use removable media".  I need to use
this for a USB mounted hard drive, so not sure if it will work.
*) e2fsprogs -- Looks like this is software for a Linux machine and not for
Windows.
*) ext2fsd -- Looks like they're still shaking out lots of bugs.
*) ext2fs anywhere -- Michael had problems with it on large files, but looks
like it still might have a chance of working for me.

Based on your experience with ext2fsd, I've about decided to plunk down the
$29.95 for Ext2FS Anywhere and just see what it will do.  I was going to try
the demo first, but then I saw this on the demo download page --
"Demo Restrictions:
 Read only drive
 Mounting of partition less than 1Gb"

Right off the bat, I know that won't work, since my backups are app 6G.  Oh
well, at $29.95, it's really not too big a gamble.  I'll let you know how it
works for me.

Greg W