[ale] Ext2/3 Windows Driver

[Brian Pitts]

Calvin Harrigan wrote:
> Has anyone used the ext2/3 driver found on
> http://www.fs-driver.org
> Seems decent enough, just looking for someone who has used it.

It works for me. The one caveat is this:

"USB hard disk drives

Currently there is one issue you have to note when you are using 
external USB hard disk drives (USB memory sticks are not affected):

After you have connected an USB drive to the computer and have created a 
drive letter with the "IFS Drives" item of the control panel, you may 
remove that USB drive in two different ways: either with the "Safely 
Remove Hardware" icon on your taskbar or (not recommended, but possible) 
simply by unplugging the USB plug.

Even the Ext2fs.sys file system driver will dismount Ext2 volumes 
correctly. The "IFS Drives" component of the Ext2 IFS software will not 
realize the removal of an USB drive as a Plug and Play event, and hence 
it will not remove any drive letter.

Please remove the appropriate drive letters of Ext2 volumes manually by 
using the "IFS Drives" of the control panel before you attempt to remove 
a USB drive.

If you have not manually removed any drive letters, but already have 
unplugged the USB drive, you can only remove these drive letters by 
inconvenient means:

Double-click on the "IFS Drives" item of the control panel, so that its 
window appears. Please close that window now (you need not to do 
anything else here). Reboot your computer and all the drive letters of 
removed USB drives will be gone.

Note that there is another workaround for the mentioned USB drive issue: 
you may modify the type of any Ext2/Ext3 partition on your USB drives. 
Linux Ext2/Ext3 partitions usually have as type 83 (hex). You may set 
the type of them to 7 (hex) for example with the Linux fdisk tool (using 
its t-command). The partition type of 7 (hex) - usually used on NTFS 
partitions - causes Windows to create and remove drive letters for a 
plugged or an unplugged USB drive itself.

Since Windows doesn't check the type of a partition while determining 
the file system, everything works well.

Linux does not check the types of partitions either."

-Brian