Ext3 instead of Ext4

[NoOp]

On 03/07/2010 12:51 AM, Nils Kassube wrote:
> Dotan Cohen wrote:
>>  The only reason that I could fathom that they said that is
>>  because there is a Windows ext3 driver, so if you want to access the
>>  Linux partition from Windows you'd need ext3. However, the ext3
>>  driver would probably work for reading from ext4 as well, as
>>  backward compatibility was a design goal.
> 
> But the backward compatibility seems to be limited. From 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4>:
> 
> | The ext3 file system is partially forward compatible with ext4, that
> | is, an ext4 filesystem can be mounted as an ext3 partition (using
> | "ext3" as the filesystem type when mounting). However, if the ext4
> | partition uses extents (a major new feature of ext4), then the ability
> | to mount the file system as ext3 is lost.
> 
> Therefore I'm not so sure an ext4 partition could be used with the 
> Windows ext3 driver.
> 
> 
> Nils
> 

It can't (yet); I tried previously & hence my suggestion to use ext3 if
he wished to use those types of drivers and access the drive from older
Ubuntu systems.

<quote>
Ext4 is fine as long as you only intend to access the drive from 9.10
and above. My recommendation however would be to use Ext3 for the time
being so that should you choose to access the drive from older versions
of Ubuntu, and Windows drives with programs like
ttp://www.fs-driver.org/ you'll be able to do so.
</quote>
Note: ttp://www.fs-driver.org/ should be: http://www.fs-driver.org/
"should you choose to access the drive from older versions
of Ubuntu" is also relevant; Hardy/8.04 (ext3) cannot mount an ext4. If
you try, you get this error msg:
====
Cannot mount volume.
The volume uses the ext4 file system which
is not supported by your system.
====
Hardy (8.04) does not have an ext4 aware kernel (that I know of). Nor do
release with kernels So below 2.6.28, so those systems can't be
converted to, nor access an ext4 (again, that I know of).