Mount Linux Partitions Ext4, Ext3, Ext2 to Windows 8, 10, 11

You may be interested to know how to read Linux partitions in Windows 10, whether you have a dual boot device or if you are fiddling with your raspberry pi memory cards. It is true that serial Windows only allows working with partitions in Fat32, NTFS or exFAT format.

The problem with this is that when you want to access a partition with other file systems Ext2, Ext3, Ext4 or even ReiserFS, you will be surprised that they do not appear on the computer. Not only that, but in the disk manager, you will see that they exist, but you will not be able to work with their content or recognize them. This, for example, means that only the boot partition created to install the system appears when the Raspberry MicroSD is installed.

So, on this tutorial, I will explain how to mount a Linux partition EXT4, EXT3, EXT2 to Windows 10, 8, 7.

Some of the reasons for mounting Linux drives in Windows are:

Create dual-boot systems (Windows and Linux)
Share files
Make changes to the units and more

For this, we will use the tool Ex2Fsd.

Ext2explore

When you have a PC with two operating systems (Linux-Windows) you have a problem when accessing the Linux partition from Windows: the Microsoft OS does not “see” the partition where you have your Linux files.

What can we do in this case? In the network you find several apps to access Linux partitions from Windows, but the simplest and most straightforward is Ext2explorer, a Windows app with which you can access Linux partitions ext2/ext3/ext4.

mount ext4 windows 10

You only need to download the app from here, and once you run this program as an administrator (it is not necessary to install it), you can access Linux partitions without problems and copy files or folders to another partition. Unfortunately, this app does not allow you to write in Linux partitions, but it is undoubtedly an excellent option to access the files you have in your Linux partition.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2read/

Note: You need to run this program with administrator rights and only reads your Linux files if you want to edit and modify data, check the next app.

Ex2Fsd

Ex2Fsd is a free tool which is an ext2 / ext3 and ext4 open source file system driver for Windows systems in all its editions.

Ex2Fsd can be downloaded at the following link: EX2FSD

https://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/

Step 1: Install Ex2Fsd

Once the application is downloaded, run it:

We follow the steps of the assistant and it is essential that during the installation process we activate the boxes:

Enable write support for Ext2 partitions
Enable force writing support on Ext3 partitions
Make Ext2fsd automatically started when system boots (If we want it to be executed at the start of the system)

Press Next and the process of installing the tool in Windows 10 will start. When executing the application we will see the following window where the unit will be observed with the file system ext2, ext3 or ext4 as the case may be:

Step 2: Mount Linux Drive in Windows

Before starting it is important to clarify that the unit with the Linux file system does not have any letters assigned as we saw in the previous image.

To access this administrator of mount points and the first option is to click on the Tools menu and there select the option Mountpoint Management and the second option is using the F10 key:

For this, it will be necessary to pick the unit to mount. The following window will be displayed. There we click on the Add button to add the selected unit:

As we see in the upper part we can assign the desired letter, and in the lower part we can create the mount point using DefineDosDevice, but the changes will be eliminated when restarting the computer or create a permanent mount point using Session Manager.