ext2fs IFS driver

[seanspotatobusiness]

I currently use the driver here: Ext2 IFS For Windows to enable me to access ext2/3 partitions in Windows XP. I recently added a Maxtor Diamondmax 22 500GB SATA-II 32MB and partitioned it to include two swap partitions (one for Windows and one for a future Linux installation) and a ~450 GB partition for data. My problem is that I have installed the Ext2 IFS software and was able to create a drive letter for a desired volume of Linux. But when I try to access that volume I get an error message "The disk in drive X: is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?"

The website troubleshooting guide advises that I try mountdiag but it is not helpful in this case. I contacted the driver author a couple of days ago but am still awaiting a reply.

CDocuments and Settings\Sean>mountdiag h:
The volume has an Ext2/Ext3 file system, but the Ext2 IFS 1.10 software did not mount it. This diagnosis tool could not find out why. Please contact the author of the Ext2 IFS software.

I was wondering if anyone could advise an alternative ext2fs IFS driver. I notice that there are a few around but they all seem to be underdeveloped and unmaintained or developed very slowly.

[ken_yap]

This is probably due to the use of 256 byte inodes by default in 11.0 for ext3 filesystems. It's mentioned in the release notes. Other than waiting for the third-party software to catch up, the other recourse is to reformat with 128 byte inodes.

[seanspotatobusiness]

I partitioned with the latest GParted Live CD 0.3.7-7 (I currently have no Linux installation) but I will go back and check if I have the option to fiddle with inodes. Thanks.

[seanspotatobusiness]

It does not appear to be possible to adjust inode size within GParted. I suspect that this was not the issue. It doesn't seem as though the programmer is going to respond either. I think I will have to try NTFS (which I believe openSUSE has no problems using).

[ken_yap]

It may be that it's not possible because gparted didn't provide a GUI control for it, but the mke2fs program certainly does have the -i option. You may have to resort to formatting it ext3 manually from the CLI instead of letting gparted do that part. You can see the inode size by using the program dumpe2fs like this:

dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda1

or whatever your partition is called.

[seanspotatobusiness]

You're right; it was 256. If I can get openSUSE to install, then I'll use that installer to do it, since it lets you change inode size. Thanks