ext3 partition access from Windows

Is there a 3rd party application for this type of task? I've looked around and a recovery program called DiskInternal was all I could find. Thanks.

 

DOWNLOAD EXT2IFS http://www.fs-driver.org/download.html
Makes almost any format I know of accessible for windows.

 

Wow this is a great program. Very simple to use. Thanks. My Linux partition is accessible but look at this screen shot of my swap. When I try to access it, it says that the drive is not formatted.

 

Yeah, your swap won't show up. I don't think it's in the ext3 format, but even if it was, it's not going to show up accessible. The swap partition is just a cache for Linux to use as extra memory in the case of too little RAM, so nothing will actually be saved there for you to access in Linux or Windows.

 

And with your specs in your sig, you really don't need a swap partition. Swap for pcs with over 1gb ram (mostly likely lower than that) is unnecessary and a waste of a possible 1 of 4 primary partitions.

 

Swap is also where the RAM is dumped to when you hibernate the system, so you'll want to have at least as much swap as you do RAM if you use the hibernation function.

At least, that's what I remember reading.

- Trip

 

I wouldn't know about that as I never hibernate. I'll have to look that up.
I always thought hibernate on Linux K/ubuntu would work the same as windows.

 

You can always setup the swap partiton as a logical partition so it doesn't waste it. I had to do that.

Pri 1 -- Dell Diag
Pri 2 -- XP
Pri 3 -- Ubuntu
Pri 4 -- Extended
Log 1 -- Ubuntu Swap
Log 2 -- Shared storage between partitions

 

So from the Extended partiton "log 2" .......Are you able to EASILY share within Windows and Ubuntu as storage?

 

Untrue. Even firefox alone consumes 1GB with a few tabs open and plug-ins running, and especially if you keep it open for a few days (yes, it's still leaking memory). So swap space is a must for any machine with less than 2GB RAM. But even if you have 2GB RAM, having some swap space as a reserve is always a good idea (example: firefox w/10 tab + open office + gaim + thunderbird open, and then you want to play quake4 for a quick online match - without having to close down any of your apps. Without swap space it would start thrashing).

 

I'm not even sure if Linux uses the swap I have set aside for it. From what I remember of setting it up, it is around 1.5GB in size, so space is no issue. Is there a way for me to hide the swap drive so I don't have to deal with it every day?

 

I don't know about hiding it, but the "swap" partition is really just a flat file as far as Linux is concerned. It's like the "pagefile.sys" file in Windows. You might be able to disable allocating it a drive letter in your drive manager (under the Administrative Tools section of the control panel, might be called "Computer Management")