Chris Knadle wrote:
[reading ext3 partitions from Windows]
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".
Correction: it does have to be installed. The licensing agreement says
basically you can use it however you want and give away copies, but you
can't modify it. "Free as in beer" is correct.
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.)
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Note that the first one (ext2fsx) is pretty out of date and at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 Leopard.
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.
Thanks for all the links! I'll look into that. Can Macs read a FAT32
partition without any additional software? Has anyone here had any
experience reading an ext2/ext3 partition on a Mac? Reply offlist if
you want.
My 1 TB USB HD arrived (Fantom GD1000EU), and it's very quiet and after
24 hours of continuous use ('mke2fs -ccj') it isn't even warm. And
Mandriva recognized it without any problems. So far, so good. It just
seems to take much longer than I expected to format the darn thing.
Adam
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