Read Ubuntu Linux ex3/4 Files in Windows

Does anyone have any thoughts / experiences with apps that allow accessing Ubuntu ext3/4 file systems through Windows?

There is this utility by Paragon that allows Windows to read ext3/4 filesystems. Not sure about the write ability though.

Berton

You raise some interesting points.

My immediate need is moving the contents of an old ex2/3 IDE drive in an enclosure to an NTFS 1 T external.

My two 1T's both work well with W10 with either exFAT or NTFS . So clearly W10 handles dives beyond the 32gig cap.

I have been unable to get Ubuntu to access any USB external drives, even ones as small as 120 gig. dmsg shows they are attached, but they will not mount.

At the moment it looks like Ubuntu needs a kernel module for accessing usb devices over the 32gig limit????? This is getting WAY geekie even for me. i am drafting a post regarding this for a Ubuntu developers forum.

Maybe you have some thoughts on this Berton? This obstacle is what led me to look at the W10 readers.

I had not seen the Paragon Reader. It looks more credible and current then outer I found. I will try it. Maybe that is the best (only?) route?

mikeincousa said:

I had not seen the Paragon Reader. It looks more credible and current then outer I found. I will try it. Maybe that is the best (only?) route?

Make sure you copy the data onto another (NTFS?) drive as it only works full speed for 10 days - then you have to pay $20.

I've also used Ext2 File System Driver for Windows download | SourceForge.net which works fine (for ext3/ext4 too despite the name) but is, perhaps, a bit more fiddly.

Hi folks

@CountMike try this for a bit of fun !!.

"Seemples"

Here's how to make it even easier with file browsing by a GUI.

1) install the ubuntu add in (turn Windows features on or off)
2) install file manager say Dolphin (enter bash as dos command then sudo apt-get --then package name)
3) install an Xserver (on the Windows system !! not the ubuntu subsystem) -- Xlaunch is easy for windows.
4) in Bash set display:=0:0
5) in the linux bash command window run Dolphin --ignore zillions of messages
6) click on the Xlaunch icon on your desktop.

now you'll have a GUI with the Linux file manager




You can install other Linux GUI stuff too -- not all work but enough.

Note I showed here a Networked drive - you can of course browse those directly from standard windows -- however if I attach a Local xfs/ ext4 formatted drive then I can browse those easily too -- just didn't have one available currently -- it does work though and you can copy to Windows drives. You can also write to these drives too (both Windows and Linux) - also text editing use KATE / KWRITE as full GUI editors like notepad.

(To mount a drive sudo /mnt/dev/xxx -t auto -o rw /mnt/yyy where xxx is the device name and yyy is a mount point. -t auto says automatically determine file system so you don't have to care about the Linux fs and the -o rw specifies read / write access).

On the Ubuntu interface I installed the KDE desktop but you don't need to install that if you want to use non KDE utilities instead.

I'm sure I've gone a bit further here than Windows intends but it's a lot of fun !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

Berton said:

The 32GB limit is for FAT32 partitioning and formatting in Windows. Linux and the GPARTED LiveCD can go well beyond that for disk size and Windows can read them. I have 2 500GB 2.5" Notebook drives in portable cases formatted as FAT32, worked good on Mac OS X and the newer macOS which didn't like NTFS.

Have you gotten these externals to work on any Linux machine?

I have reformated my USB drives to Fat32, exFAT, and NTFS.

None of these formats work for these drives in Ubuntu 18.04.

They do not show up using the usual discovery tools.

So I cannot even get close to mounting them, despite having established mount points.