On Monday, November 22, 2004 3:54 AM, BandiPat wrote:
On Monday 22 November 2004 03:41 am, Greg Wallace wrote: I recently converted one of two partitions on a USB hard-drive I have from NTFS to EXT2 so I could use it on my Linux machine, which means I can no longer even browse it on my Windows XP (SP2) machine. I'd like to have that capability, so I did some internet searches and discovered that there is software available that will allow you to read (and even write) to an EXT2 hard drive partition on a Windows machine. Not sure if I'd ever need to actually write to it from Windows, but being able to view data and maybe pull files off of it from the Windows machine would be sort of nice. Anyone have any experience with any of this type of software? I tried installing one of them that I found that was freeware (I think it was called EXT2FS), but couldn't figure out how to operate it, so I ended up trashing it. Maybe it was good software and I was just too dumb to figure out how to operate it, but when I tried to install it, I couldn't see that anything actually happened. After the install, clicking on the various exe's that came with it didn't seem to do anything either. I would like to think there's something out there with at least some rudimentary GUI front-end, but maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. Worst case, if it came with at least some rudimentary operating instructions, that would be better than nothing. Suggestions anyone?
Thanks, Greg Wallace ==========
Greg, The simple answer would be to make the new partition FAT32 instead of ext2. Doing that would allow your WinXP to read & write as well as your Linux side. Linux can easily take care of the FAT32 partitions. That would give you the best all around setup, if you are needing to transfer files from either or both.
regards, Lee
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Lee: Well, actually I tried using FAT32 first (I used "PARTITION MAGIC" to format the drive). However, when I tried to copy a large file over to the device from my Linux machine it errored off at app 2G saying the file was too big. I was trying to move over a YAST backup file of app 6G in size. Apparently, FAT32 cannot handle files that are that large. It errored off at (as I recall) app. 2G (maybe slightly larger). So, I regrouped, deleted that partition, and re-allocated the space on the drive as EXT2. I was then (of course) able to move my 6G backup file over to the USB drive, 6G being (of course) no problem for EXT2. The downside is that now, with the file system being EXT2, I can no longer even mount it on Windows. I really need to be able to put backups on this USB disk and I would like to at least be able to browse it on my Windows machine. Unless there is some alternative, I think installing some EXT2 software on the Windows machine is my best alternative. But if there is some way to go, I'd certainly be interested in learning about it. Thanks, Greg W