Using Linux filesystems on Windows 8
Perfect Fit
For years, Windows has stubbornly refused to support any filesystems apart from its own, but with a few tricks, you can make your Windows systems talk to the Linux ext filesystem.
One of the obstacles standing in the way of cooperation between Linux and Windows on a single machine has always been the incompatibility of the filesystems. Although Linux has made amazing progress in this respect and now supports both NTFS and FAT filesystems without any trouble, Microsoft still stubbornly refuses to support anything but its own native filesystems (Figure 1).
Over the years, various projects have been providing access to Linux filesystems from Windows. In this article, I investigate whether these tools are truly ready for the Windows 8 release. To do so, I set up a system with a version of 32-bit Windows 8 and tested access to the Linux ext2/3/4, ReiserFS, and Btrfs filesystems.
Filesystem Drivers
By far the most elegant approach would be to let Windows access the Linux filesystems transparently, without special tools. A filesystem driver works behind the scenes, making the Linux filesystem look and feel native, and this is the approach an older project named Ext2 Installable File System for Windows [1] has followed for years. Ext2 IFS claims to support Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008, but no mention of Windows 8; the first time I launched the program, it spit out an error message (Figure 2) saying it is not compatible.
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