mkfs.ext3 or mkfs.msdos

[James Gray]

On 09/09/2008, at 1:09 AM, Karl Larsen wrote:

>    I am a sucker for memory sticks and have several. I got the bright
> idea to make their file system ext3 since I have only one Windows  
> and do
> not use it much. But yesterday I had the need.

Oh dear - not only is does it still use superblocks (which fry  
specific sectors very quickly) it's journalling too.  I hope longevity  
and speed weren't determinant factors in your decision to use ext3! ;)

>    I got some URL data on this Ubuntu which I wanted to put on the
> Windows in my laptop. I got the data on a memory stick from my Ubuntu
> but when I plugged into Windows it upchucked and displayed nothing :-)

You want Ext2FS for Windows.  Punching "ext3 +windows" (sans quotes)  
into google yeids the site you need as the first hit.  Google is your  
friend ;)  To save you the exercise, and for the archives, here is the  
site:
http://www.fs-driver.org/

Voila - read and write support for ext2/3 under Windows.  I've used  
this driver on all 32bit non-Vista Windows systems (from Win2K and up)  
and it works perfectly.  In fact in a previous job I had a Win2K/SuSE  
dual boot system with an ext2 shared partition that held VMware images  
I demo'ed in each OS.  No problems.  I've also used it without any  
stability problems on Windows servers when porting/moving data from  
Linux.

FWIW, you might want to do a little research into filesystems on flash  
media as some (like ext2/3) are not particular "nice" to them when you  
considered the finite write cycles.  Superblocks really aren't very  
friendly to flash media, and to date, there aren't any filesystems  
(that I've seen anyway) that have a wide compatibility base and  
designed specifically for use on flash drives.

Cheers,

James
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