Chris Knadle wrote:
So I'm making progress. Looks like I either have to find a way to
write to an NTFS partition under Linux, or to read a Linux
partition on a Windows (and preferably Mac) system.
ntfs-3g works very well for dealing with NTFS partitions -- EXCEPT
that without several manual changes you cannot mount an NTFS
partition as a normal user. More explanation:
http://ntfs-3g.org/support.html#unprivileged
Thanks, Chris. I looked at it, and it looks like it could slow down the
system, among other things. Since I'll only need to access NTFS from
Linux, or ext3 from Windows, in the case of disaster recovery, I thought
it made sense in my case to use something that normally won't use any
resources.
My "disaster scenario" is that I have to connect this USB HD to
some other system to retrieve data from the backup partition, and I
don't know in advance what kind of system that will be. I figure
one can never have too many backup plans!
ntfs-3g now ships on many LiveCDs such as Knoppix, so it's workable
for the disaster scenario also. The one caviat is if you end up
needing to do the recovery using an older PowerPC-based Mac, which
might be a little more difficult to find an appropriate LiveCD for.
I approached it from the other end: How could I get Windows to read an
ext3 partition? Under Vista, I tried Ext2IFS_1_11a.exe,
Ext2Fsd-0.46a.exe, and explore2fs-1.08beta9.zip, but all of those either
wouldn't install, or couldn't access all of my ext3 partitions, just one
or two partitions at most. I decided to go with Linux_Reader.exe for
two reasons: One, it worked. It even successfully copied my test 2.5GB
file from ext3 to ntfs. Two, it doesn't actually install anything, it
just lets you read and copy ext3 files while it's running. Remember,
I'd be doing disaster recovery on someone else's system, so I'd rather
not install anything on their system if I can avoid it. BTW
Linux_Reader.exe is "freeware" -- fully functioning version at no cost,
but executable only, and I'm not sure about the licensing.
So my current plan is to create a 100 GB ext3 partition on the external
HD for backups of important stuff, probably done as a cron job. The
backup files will be in .tar.gz format. There will be a small FAT32
partition on the same drive, containing Linux_Reader.exe, Windows
programs to undo .tar.gz files, and eventually programs for a Mac to get
read access to an ext3 partition and untar the files, if it needs
separate programs for those. (I know nothing about Macs.)
So I think I have this under control. It's mainly a matter of writing
the cron jobs to do the backups. And waiting for the HD to arrive, and
giving it at least overnight to adjust to room temperature after
spending the week on planes and trucks.
I'm guessing that the issue you might be running into with ext2-IFS
might be "Inodes that are larger than 128 bytes are not supported"
which is listed in the FAQ.
Nope, tune2fs reports that all my ext3 partitions have 128-byte inodes.
It may be yet another case of software that doesn't run properly under
Vista. Thanks again, Chris and everyone, for your help and
encouragement with this!
Adam
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