Mounting a Linux partition (Ext3) under Windows XP Pro

[Guest]

The small church system I manage has a NAS with an attached USB drive for
backup of the NAS. The attached drive is formatted Ext3 (the NAS is Linux
based and only allows XFS, Ext3, or FAT32 partitions on the backup drive).

I was thinking about the situation where the NAS itself has failed and can
no longer by used as a go-between to access the Linux partitions.

Is there a way to plug the USB drive with the Ext3 partition into a Windows
XP Pro system and mount the drive so the files can be recovered? I'm
assuming this will require additional drivers or 3rd party software.
Ideally, it would appear to Windows as a normal "Drive K" or something.

 

[Mario Schmidt]

The small church system I manage has a NAS with an attached USB drive for
backup of the NAS. The attached drive is formatted Ext3 (the NAS is Linux
based and only allows XFS, Ext3, or FAT32 partitions on the backup drive).

I was thinking about the situation where the NAS itself has failed and can
no longer by used as a go-between to access the Linux partitions.

Is there a way to plug the USB drive with the Ext3 partition into a Windows
XP Pro system and mount the drive so the files can be recovered? I'm
assuming this will require additional drivers or 3rd party software.
Ideally, it would appear to Windows as a normal "Drive K" or something.

Of course you can mount EXT3 on windows since EXT is open-source.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not interested in writing my own disk driver
nor in a general answer that "yes it is possible." Anything is possible.

Now, does anyone have experience with a driver that will allow an external
drive formatted ext3 to attach via USB and mount as a normal drive under XP?

 

[mnmis]

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not interested in writing my own disk driver
nor in a general answer that "yes it is possible." Anything is possible.

Now, does anyone have experience with a driver that will allow an external
drive formatted ext3 to attach via USB and mount as a normal drive under XP?

Paragon Mount Everything works for me.

http://www.mount-everything.com/

 

[Guest]

Thanks. I'll check them out. If anyone has experience with others drivers,
I'm interested in hearing about that, too.

 

[Noozer]

Google for something called "IFS". It adds an icon to the Windows control
panel. From there you can assign drive letters to ext formatted partitions
and read the contents normally.

 

[Guest]

ext2fs anyone? http://www.fs-driver.org/faq.html#acc_ext3

 

[Guest]

Good thread. Thanks, needed this stuff.

-Paul