I've just discovered a fantastic tool for dual-booters everywhere. The problem, as Linux users know, is that while Linux can happily read and write to Windows partitions, the reverse isn't the case. Windows is wilfully blind to the existence Linux, which means that if you've left a file on Linux that you now need under Windows, you have to reboot, copy it to a Windows-readable partition, reboot again... Well not any more!

The Ext2 Installable File System is a free download that adds a Linux-aware kernel mode to Windows. What does that mean? In short, this...


[click to enlarge]

... Linux partitions as accessible as any Windows ones!

This brilliant little tool:

• Provides read and write access to Linux Ext2 and Ext3 volumes from Windows.
• Allows Windows to handle floppy disks formatted with an Ext2 file system.
• Installs a pure kernel mode file system driver which extends Windows to include the Ext2/Ext3 in the same way that it currently handles NTFS, FASTFAT, CDFS for Joliet/ISO CD-ROMs, etc. That means direct access to data via drive letters. No need to copy files from or to Ext2/3 volumes in order to work with them.
• Handles files larger than 4 GBytes.
• It’s comparable to Windows NT's native file system drivers.
• Uses a setup wizard to installs and configure the Ext2 file system driver.
• Is configurable through "IFS Drives" in Control Panel.
• Removable via "Add/remove Software" in Control Panel.

The on-site documentation says it works with Windows NT4.0, 2000, XP, and SBS 2003. There's no word about Vista. I don't use it so I can't comment, but I can't see any reason why it won't work there too.



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