mount linux drive on windows

Earlier there used to be a software known as explore2fs which used to allow the users to scan all file-systems in read-only mode and copy files from the linux drive to windows. I had used it long time ago...

Now-a-days things have changed quite a lot. When i googled for mount ext3 file system on windows, i got tons of links and tons of tools. For some time i was confused how to go about all of it.

But then after going thru all the tools, i came across something known as ext2fsd. I got the 0.46 version downloaded - only 973KB and installed it.

Once you start the ext2fsd volume manager, you could see all the file systems on your disk. All you have got to do is

1. right click on the drive you want to mount and assign it a drive letter.
2. go to the ext2 management and choose the drive letter as mount point for fixed boot
3. ask the program to automatically mount the drive on boot
4. enable ext2fsd to auto-start during boot.

A simple reboot and i could see my linux partition as a drive on the windows explorer. No need to copy files to read them (like i used to do when i used explore2fs). It runs like a charm...

I still have to look at how to go about mounting ext4 file system on windows. Though ext4 is not that common, but it should become common soon...

mount iso image in ubuntu without burning them to disk

Another thing that could be done in linux is that you can mount the ISO image of any CD and browse/work on it. Following are the simple commands which help you achieve it

suppose you have a downloaded kubuntu-8.10-desktop-amd64.iso, and you want to check its contents.

jayant@localhost:~/$ sudo mkdir /tmp/kubuntu
jayant@localhost:~/$ sudo mount kubuntu-8.10-desktop-amd64.iso /tmp/kubuntu -t iso9660 -o loop
jayant@localhost:~/$ ls /tmp/kubuntu/
autorun.inf casper dists install isolinux md5sum.txt pics pool preseed README.diskdefines ubuntu umenu.exe wubi.exe

Bingo, your iso image is mounted and you can easily browse thru it. You dont need to burn it now.

To unmount the image simply issue

jayant@localhost:~/$ sudo umount /tmp/kubuntu

I hope this helps.