On Thursday 15 January 2009, Adam wrote: > 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.
Hmm. I haven't noticed a system slowdown, but I suppose I also don't use it often enough such that I would, either, because I'm only using it occasionally to transfer data on dual-boot boxes. > >> 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. Wow, I didn't know there were that many options -- okay. I used to do this when I ran ext3, but I haven't since switching to XFS. LTools supposedly also lets Windows read ext2/3 and ReiserFS3. > 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. >From what I can tell it comes from DiskInternals and is Freeware, just like you said -- there's no purchasable license for it. Seems to be "free as in beer". > 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.) Putting the programs to access ext3 on a FAT32 partition is a good idea. In terms of Mac OS X I found a few projects for reading ext2, but not ext3 -- though ext3 partitions are of course mountable as ext2. Note that the first one (ext2fsx) is pretty out of date and at least doesn't work well on Leapord. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fuse http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/ http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/18619 But anyway, it should be possible. > > 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. Huh. Well supposedly ext2-IFS runs on Vista so... donno. You're probably right. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Jan 7 - Ruby on Rails Feb 4 - TBD
