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| Ext2Fsd | |
|---|---|
| Original author | Matt Wu |
| Developer | Matt Wu |
| Initial release | January 26, 2002; 24 years ago (2002-01-26) |
| Final release | |
| Written in | C[2] |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Available in | English,Simplified Chinese |
| Type | Installable File System |
| License | GNU GPL v2 |
| Website | Archive of the original website |
| Repository | github |
Ext2Fsd (short forExt2 File System Driver) is afreeInstallable File System driver written inC for theMicrosoft Windows operating system family. It facilitates read and write access to theext2,ext3 andext4file systems.
The driver can be installed onWindows 2000,Windows XP,Windows Server 2003,Windows Vista,Windows 7,Windows 8,[3]Windows 10,Windows Server 2008,Windows Server 2008 R2.[1] Support forWindows NT was dropped in version 0.30.[4]
The programExt2Mgr can optionally be installed additionally to manage drive letters and such. Since the final release in 2017, no further updates have been made to Ext2Fsd. The official website succumbed tolink rot in 2024.
The German computer magazinePC-WELT reported frequent program crashes in 2009. The program was not able to access ext3 partitions smoothly. This often led to ablue screen. Crashes of this type can lead to data loss, for example if there is not yet permanently stored data in the main memory. The program could only access ext2 partitions without errors.[5] In 2012,Computerwoche warned that access to ext3 partitions was "not harmless". Data loss may occur.[6]
| Read | Write | Journal | dir_index | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ext2 |  | | N/a | N/a |
| ext3 | | | Limited | |
| ext4 | | | Limited | |
Source:[1]
On November 2, 2017, a warning was issued with the release of version 0.69:
Don't use Ext2Fsd 0.68 or earlier versions with latest Ubuntu or Debian systems. Ext2Fsd 0.68 cannot process EXT4 with 64-BIT mode enabled, then it could corrupt your data. Very sorry for this disaster issue, I'm working on an improvement.[1]
While it is not very clear whether v0.69 corrects this deficiency, users have reported[7] that Windows 10 prompts them to format the ext4 drive even with the 0.69 version. The known solution is to convert the said ext4 drive to a 32 bit version.[8]
