Ext2 Installable File System For Windows provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access). This may be useful if you have installed both Windows and Linux as a dual boot environment on your computer.

The "Ext2 Installable File System for Windows" software is freeware.

All applications can access directly to Ext2 volumes. Ext2 volumes get drive letters (for instance O:). Files, and directories of an Ext2 volume appear in file dialogs of all applications. There is no need to copy files from or to Ext2 volumes in order to work with them.


Detailed list of features:

Supports Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 2008.
Supports both the 32 bit x86 and the 64 bit x64 platform.
Includes drivers with a digital signature for Windows Vista x64.
All operations you would expect: Reading and writing files, listing directories, creating, renaming, moving and deleting files or directories, querying and modifying the volume's label.
UTF-8 encoding.
Files larger than 2 GBytes. (Please read the FAQ section, too.)
Supports hash indexed (htree) directories (utilizes the so-called dir_index feature of Ext3).
Full plug-n-play functionality. When a drive is removed, the corresponding drive letter is deleted.
Supports use of the Windows mountvol utility to create or delete drive letters for Ext2 volumes (except on Windows NT 4.0). This is useful for scripts. (Please read the FAQ section, too.)
A global read-only option is provided.
File names that start with a dot "." character are treated as hidden.
Supports GPT disks if the Windows version used also does.
Paging files are supported. (A paging file is a file "pagefile.sys", which Windows swaps virtual memory to.) Users may create paging files at NT's control panel at Ext2 volumes.
Specific functions of the I/O subsystem of NT: Byte range locks, notification of changes of directories, oplocks (which are required by the NT LAN manager for sharing files via SMB).