How do I read a fedora partition from windows?

Question

Windows recognizes and gives my fedora partition a drive letter, but it shows it as blank. Is there a way to get windows to read ext3 filesystem? Its a Fedora 10 partition.

Shouldn't this go to serverfault.com or superuser.com? – George Stocker Jun 11 '09 at 18:57 — George Stocker, Jun 11 '09 at 18:57

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 21 '09 at 22:53

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I'd take a look at EXT2 IFS for Windows.

Several things to keep in mind with this.

Ext3 is backwards compatible with Ext2, it just doesn't write to the journal
NTFS is case insensitive, this may screw with you depending on what you are moving
Some filenames that are valid in Ext2/3 are invalid in NTFS/VFAT like : and $
Special files will be inaccessible, sockets, soft links, block devices
permissions are not maintained
Will not work with LVM volumes

It will let you read and write to it though ;)

answered May 21 '09 at 22:53

JensenDied

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this is what i just downloaded, i'll tell you all how it works when i install it. – ryansstack May 21 '09 at 23:05
unfortunately it's an LVM partition!!! – ryansstack May 21 '09 at 23:30
:( LVM, not sure if there is an LVM handler for windows. – Aiden Bell May 22 '09 at 17:53

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:13

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See the answers to my similar question on ServerFault.com:

What Windows ext3 driver should I use?

Summary of the best answer I got (and other answers were later deleted, I assume by their authors): Use ntfs-3g to access the NTFS filesystem from Linux. You will have a much smaller chance of filesystem corruption doing it this way than using any of the existing ext2/3 drivers from Windows.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:13

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answered May 21 '09 at 22:32

Eddie

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way to link to a private beta – ryansstack May 21 '09 at 22:34
I think he just wants to gloat about having an invite. ;) – JensenDied May 21 '09 at 22:40
Check out the blog. At the bottom of every StackOverflow page is a link to the blog. There are two recent blog entries directly related to the beta of ServerFault. – Eddie May 21 '09 at 23:13
@ryansstack: If a question is closed as "belongs on serverfault" then it appears to automatically be moved over there. I figured, therefore, that it was acceptable to crosslink. – Eddie May 21 '09 at 23:17
To whomever downvoted my answer: What about my answer is incorrect or offensive? – Eddie May 21 '09 at 23:37

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 21 '09 at 23:12

I know that you want to mount your Fedora partition but from experience I have found that the best way to share a partition with Windows is to format as NTFS and use ntfs-3g to access it in Linux.

I tried using the ext2 Windows app mentioned by JensenDied a couple of years ago and ended up having problems accessing data on the USB drive that it was being used with.

How do I read a fedora partition from windows?

3 Answers3