EXT4 in Windows

Pulling in EXT4 drives is easy now with Windows WSL2. There are a few tricks that you need to know about though!
Article: christitus.com... .
►► Digital Downloads ➜ www.cttstore.com
►► Patreon ➜ / christitustech
►► Reddit ➜ / christitustech
►► Titus Tech Talk ➜ / titustechtalk
►► Twitch ➜ / christitustech

[@glitchmill4795]

I've been using ext4, to limit myself from using windows again. Don't gimme a solution

[@gloopington]

IT crybaby

[@puspamadak]

Finally, someone just spoke my mind

[@markmiranpt]

I agree - well said

[@AlemannoDigitale]

Great answer

[@LovecraftianGodsKiller]

You might want to consider using btrfs. About a year or year and a half ago I did some research on seeing if you could get a btrfs partition to be read by Windows and I found absolutely nothing. I also doubt anybody has done anything to try and achieve that since.

[@NoEgg4u]

@1:18 "I don't know what's ext4, what's not". You can run: wmic logicaldisk get deviceid, volumename, description, freespace, filesystem to see various disk info. The "filesystem" argument is the key one, but the others I find helpful, too.

[@markifi]

not having ext4 in windows is a great security feature it better not be able to access my data

[@devinodonnell]

You might want to consider tweaking the visual aesthetic of the video link's graphic at the end so it looks less like some random UI element attempting to hijack the screen randomly. Aside from that, great content as always and I look forward to more of your stuff.

[@leous3952]

Pay for it

[@devinodonnell]

Pay for what exactly?

[@praecorloth]

Finally, a (very limited) way to do this. I solved this problem a number of years ago by using NTFS tools on Linux, and just making Linux my desktop OS. Life has been SO much easier since I switched.

[@ronny332]

That's the way to go, haha. Did this a long time ago but still keep an eye to the other side, just to see how complicated it can get. And yes, it gets worse with every release. Just by keeping old parts of the OS combined with more added "features" and needed security addons. No, that's not worse my time, no joke. I want to use a system, not taking care of it in a way, that's not really needed with another design.

[@praecorloth]

@@ronny332 omg, so accurate! I just recently got a Windows 11 laptop at work. Wow. Just, wow. Like, audio alerts? They come in literally a second and a half AFTER the alert in the lower right of the screen. The Windows bell sound? It finally starts coming through the speakers about half way through playing the bell sound. Like, wtf are you doing Microsoft?

[@xiaowong6651]

1:04 while I don't have problems with ntfs, I'm always open to see something else

[@yesteryanks9948]

"Target is busy." Probably because you were in that directory!? I can't believe you really rebooted the OS just for this!

[@pfeerick]

Classic Windows user! 😆

[@sbklb1]

slight error on umount -- you were in the directory, no reboot needed, just cd / before umount

[@cheebadigga4092]

In Windows 11 you always have "Linux" in your file explorer if you've installed a WSL distro. It's just a network drive mapped to \\wsl$. You can also do that in Windows 10 manually.

[@eng3d]

that is a virtual machine in disguise, so thanks but no thank

[@cheebadigga4092]

@@eng3d that's not what I was talking about at all. Chris used manual network drive mapping when Windows does this on its own already is what I said.

[@jangelelcangry]

ETX4 on Windows: Dual Booters' worst nightmare.

[@markh.6687]

While I sometimes wish Windows saw Linux partitions, there are far more times I'm damn glad it can't!

[@rikachiu]

your custom powershell is beautiful!

[@adrianinsaval]

This a cool feature indeed, but it only works when the partition is in a separate disk than windows. I have a dual boot setup on the same SSD so what I'm doing now is I installed Linux on a btrfs partition instead of ext4 and use winbtrfs to have it recognized by windows

[@jda4887]

agree the wsl2 trick is useless for me... btrfs is a better way to cross access those drives

[@kouhaiii3182]

thanks. you saved me time i would have spent re-watching this video haha

[@Ifænnn]

Is Winbtrfs only for Windows to recognize the Linux partition and Windows still is in a ntfs partition, or also you have windows installed ina btrfs partition with that way? I am thinking about changing my Dual boot to that file system and rn I'm doing some research. I know your comment is from 9 months ago, but I can only hope to have an answer jsjsjsj

[@adrianinsaval]

@@Ifænnn I think it's theoretically possible to move your windows install to a btrfs partition but it is not recommended at all.

[@Ifænnn]

​@@adrianinsaval I mean, not the partition/the installation, doing some research I now know that is a risky choice but, at least store some files that I would use in windows like games and programs. To be a more specific, right now I have a SSD with a partition of windows 11 and another partition for debian 12. And I have a HDD with two partitions to store data for my windows and linux. Would it be a good idea to maybe, in the SDD still have my windows 11 and maybe change my linux partition to btrfs. And have my HDD to be only btrfs to store data of both Linux and Windows?

[@maurolimaok]

This terminal is awesome. Do you have a video about it? In time: thnaks for all videos. They're really helpful.

[@dr.stephen.strange]

its actually a tool called "Oh my posh" a tool to customise your terminal and has a variety of themes to choose from, there are surely a lot videos about it on KZbin

[@DavidLee-jd5ot]

5:32 you were in the mount point directory, that’s why the target was busy. Just cd to ~ and unmount, no need for reboot.

[@KevinBaumann88]

Thank you so much, I had a issue with my open media vault would not mount the folders on the drive this saved my bacon and allowed me to access the files.

[@chrism8731]

You were trying to unmount the mount point while you were still in it.. If you would have cd'd to / and then unmount it should work.

[@berkpwn]

Yeah I noticed that too lol

[@bstar777777]

I've had nothing but issues with NTFS. It's the primary reason I'm using Linux as my daily driver now.

[@jonathanschober1032]

Your current directory was in the drive, that’s why target was busy

[@angelayala5000]

Hi Chris, I want to start off by saying I truly enjoy your channel. And I would like to know if you can make a video regarding seeing and modifying Dell Bios via the command line or PowerShell?

[@666KoXz666]

nice. I will try it. Can I edit my grub.cfg without leaving windows? This can be great

[@pythonstatistical4105]

Great video! I had to run PowerShell as administrator before I could mount my Linux drive. Didn't need to reboot when umount said it was busy all I needed to do is go back to the Ubuntu home directory and run umount from there. Do not install MiniTools it kept asking me repeatedly to back up my PC. Apparently, this back-up service is not free.

[@markh.6687]

I love seeing Chris the Master at work, even if it's above my abilities or desire to do what he's doing. 🙂

[@greghudson77]

Happy birthday Chris

[@Korodarn]

I'm hoping you are going to tell me in the video I can now do this even if part of the drive is on NTFS and is already mapped in windows.

[@welemmanuel]

that mount is the only reason I'm considering upgrading to W11

[@mrzazzaable]

How do you disable journaling from a USB connected in windows 11?

[@alexferreira1632]

Thank you for this great video, however how can I ensure that the mount is persistent ? I have to do again the same procedure everytime I restart my computer and I don't want to 😫

[@wisnoskij]

Wait, you need an entire linux kernal installed and running in Windows just to read EXT4? That seems a little excessive, it is just a bit storage format. So I assume this would work with any format that Linux understands then?

[@amantiwari6627]

Chris, you are inside the directory you are trying to umount. 🙂

[@ronny332]

It is still kind of annoying that accessing block devices is so hard to do nowadays. A partition is nothing more than a big file, nothing more. Easily visible as you can "format" a for instance 1G file as ext4/btrfs and mount it without issues as a loop(ed) device. Another way I don't enjoy the over complected way windows works (from the GUI side, I'm not a Windows CLI expert though).

[@katrinabryce]

In Unix/Linux, everything is a file. That isn't really the case in Windows.

[@ronny332]

​@@katrinabryce That's not what I mean. Not how the kernel "represents" a thing, what the thing "is" on a device. A partition is a long sequence of bytes, with a start and an end. Nothing else. Every myth about it isn't true. So if Windows would make it easier to access this range of bytes, it would be much easier to handle. May be that's even possible. I don't have the knowledge about it.

[@ronny332]

@@katrinabryce BTW, that's a bad design decision of Microsoft from day one. The way devices are represented in different ways makes is more complicated to have a constant way of using things. This forces MS always to built in workarounds or ways to keep renewed things working in the old style. Take a look at the limitations of folder depth and filename length. They can't fix it, so the "invent" a new way to handle it with a new URL scheme. In my eyes that's just a mess.

[@Ko6pa]

Ntfs is awful... Fat32, hold my beer 🍺 It's 2023, i know, i know...)

[@ChrisTitusTech]

LOL so true!

[@Ko6pa]

@@ChrisTitusTech thanks for the video, mate 🖐️

[@IunahYT]

Do not pin

[@kuhluhOG]

exFat > Fat32

[@r3n736]

@@kuhluhOG exFat is terrible giving me problems and reason I am watching this video now...

[@cheebadigga4092]

Don't know if you noticed, but the last point of "Requirements" of your article mentions "Internet connections ONLY. No USB Drives." - I'm sure you mean "Internal connections ONLY. No USB Drives." like you say in the video.

[@kevin34ct]

I just use Linux File System for Windows by Paragon Software. It will even allow you to see USB drives.

[@carp1143]

underrated comment. I like his tutorial but i'm pretty sure there's more the step because i failed at --bare command

[@TheSpotz009]

Hi Chris, I just found out about you and your work on the internet yestarday. I saw that you created a tool to install multiple programs at the same time and then I went to install one in specific which was LibreOffice and it haven't install. Is there any issue about downloading it?

[@dynamitestyle8678]

You don't have to reboot windows to unmount the ext4 drive. Running "wsl --shutdown" should cause everything to unmount.

[@weekendtech]

You were cd'd into the directory you wanted to unmount which can block the unmount from occurring.

[@SourScotchOnTheRocks]

can you make a video showing how well games on steam work on an ext4 drive if at all?

[@kim-hendrikmerk4163]

This also works for external drives connected via USB. I have found that that is the only way I can get access to my luks encrypted external ssd on Windows.

[@RedSntDK]

I guess it's possible to automount through fstab whenever you start up WSL2, right? That's actually not too inconvenient.

[@Jool4832]

That PowerShell prompt is funny.

[@MStrong95]

But how can you use EXT4 in Mac OS?

[@rollinkendal8130]

I was not clear. Does this provide write access or only read access?

[@pfeerick]

should be read/write, depending on the permissions you have set. The block device is mounted, so everything is in the hands of the WSL2 distro

[@rabidwallaby84]

Ok, Super Genius. This is really cool! BUT...I got one for you. :P I have a drive with 3 partitions on it. 1 is my secondary NTFS partition (where I install most of my games/programs to for Windows), the other 2 are my EFI and Ext4 partitions for Arch. How can I mount the Ext4 partition in Windows? WSL won't let me because the NTFS partition on that drive is already mounted in Windows. Yes, I know the best practice is to use a separate drive for each OS, but I don't have that luxury.

[@Joeteck]

What about a 5 disk RAID 5 array? How can I see the data on that? The hardware of the NAS failed, but the drives are intact. How can I mount the drives and recover that data?

[@ThePowerRanger]

WSL is the a god send.

[@MohammedMehdiTBER]

Does this work for BTRFS also?

[@pfeerick]

It should work with any filesystem that Linux natively understands, since by using WSL2 to do the mount you're using Linux proper...

[@RedSntDK]

If the kernel supports it and it can be mounted, then yes.

[@xnonsuchx]

A few years ago, I tried some ext4 'driver' for Windows (don't recall exact name) and it ended up corrupting a bunch of files on my main Windows partition. Not fun.

[@nymuHRK]

can you edit or delete files from the ext4 partition this way?

[@MohsenTheKnight21]

it finally worked thanks so much

[@tutacat]

_Disks_ do not have filesystems, partitions do. Only floppies and other discs have filesystems

[@wilsont1010]

What will be a solution for USB drive?

[@metal-beard]

how can I customize power shell like yours?

[@chfilms1]

can you do it through powershell with a luks protected drive?

[@cydactyl9096]

following

[@katrinabryce]

If the distro you use in WSL supports it, then yes. Debian and Ubuntu as far as I can see only supports LUKS 1. Those are the only distros I personally use.

[@cydactyl9096]

@@katrinabryce derp, that seems obvious in hindsight!

[@sovo1212]

I just checked my Windows 10 version with winver... 19044. That's a relief, Windows can't touch my EXT4 partitions.

[@itdepends604]

Why can't we just have a nice ext4 driver that doesn't need workarounds. At least it seems to have gotten easier from when I last tried (everyone was recommending a slightly shady program that wasn't even a proper driver)

[@carnap355]

is that gonna work on btrfs

[@jrowen76]

I was having issues with ext4 and gaming.. it took forever to read anything.

[@Pomelientje]

Can I also write to EXT4 SD cards this way?

[@xt6997]

so im dual booting windows 10 and steam on the steam deck and was wonderin if this would work.

[@gregoryknowlton3734]

chris i question on windows 11. I just brought HP Laptop the specs on receipt "Windows 11 Home Plus". My ? is this safe OS or did china add malware on it? Should just do a clean install of windows 11 Home coming from Microsoft?

[@dianaalyssa8726]

Interesting. I use a lot of ext4 in Linux and well NTFS only good thing about it is saving files in either without permissions idk it is old.

[@Artstye4you]

Read only or also write?

[@vng]

Now, can you use this to share a storage disk (for like Steam games) between Linux and Windows...

[@darkpowerxo]

There is a new tool that can end tasks if target busy in the power toys or dev toys app. Super nice 👌

[@LefterisEl]

We need the same procedure but with HFS/AopleFS disks.

[@adithyasunil8809]

Can I mount a LUKS encrypted btrfs partition on Windows 10 Pro 22H2? It would help a ton to manage my dualboot setup

[@onegabriel5823]

You can with cryptsetup on WSL

[@reimorster]

i believe target was busy because youre cwd was the mounted folder. you should have cd'ed outside it before umount.

[@Gatzgold97]

I've been using third party software to access my ext4 drives on windows, but they all are read-only, does this method allow you to write files also? And if so I wonder how safe it is to write stuff on an ext4 partition... We are using windows after all lol

[@adrianinsaval]

It's a virtualized Linux kernel doing the writing so I think it's safe. With third party software even of read only access I've had filesystem corruption issues. Nowadays I'm using btrfs on Linux and access it with winbtrfs, seems to have much better support than ext2fsd ever had

[@katrinabryce]

WSL-2 is actual Linux running in a VM, so there should be no problems. You might need to change permissions on the drive to allow you to do it.

[@lizardface110]

Obligatory "But can i game on it?" comment: Can a run an EXT4 steam library using this method? To save me having to make two partitions to separate linux games and windows games. I'm currently attempting this, and have gotten steam to recognise the EXT4 steam folder as a library, but none of the games seem to be able to boot. Hoping i've messed up something unrelated, and that this should in theory work

[@bluelantern5241]

What terminal was that. I know I'm wrong but it looked like you were doing linux commands in a windows command line.

[@byrdboy19]

Nice tree behind you. :)

[@吳炯仁]

Not using ntfs in Windows, would it be refs?

[@ibrames3]

How can I get that terminal you already have?

[@TheA_Gamer554]

I have a Fedora partition on my system and I was wondering if it works for btrfs

[@katrinabryce]

If you can find a wsl distro that has suitably compatible btrfs support, then yes. Fedora isn't one of the options available. Oracle is the only distro from the Red-Hat family available, but it it likely has older package versions than Fedora. SuSE is another option available, and it does support BTRFS. But, please note that Ubuntu is the most compatible distro for WSL. Debian is the one I use and it also works well. Other distros might not work so well.

[@RedSntDK]

@@katrinabryce Maybe things changed since you wrote this comment, but doesn't Fedora use Btrfs by default these days? Or are you talking about the WSL specific distro?

[@LupusYonderboy]

"Internet connections ONLY. No USB Drives." Do you mean "internal" instead of internet? :D ps: I've never commented before. I really enjoy your videos. They're very educational. Always something new to learn, and the entertainment factor is there too, which makes learning easier. Or at least it doesn't take effort to sit through a video on account of sheer boredom, lol.

[@user-ro1cc8tz6d]

I think he said 'internal'

[@ferndog1461]

Chris just puts out Yoda knowledge. . .

[@lukasbruderlin2723]

Why does Power Shell not list the Ext4 partition from Dual Boot? Also not displayed with "diskpart" > "list volume". But in Windows 10 and 11 Disk Manager I can see the Linux partition (of course wo/ a drive letter and wo/ being able to access it) ... So, is there a way to list the ext4 partition using Power Shell? PS. Windows Disk Manager is showing me the partition as partition 5. I'm using Dual Boot with EFI and I'm having the same problem in Win10 and Win11. PPS. I know it can't be mounted anyhow as it is one the same disk... but still the partition should show up in Power Shell, I guess.

[@darkpowerxo]

Can't wait for the non ntfs windows

[@pedroamaral1989]

Im 8TB steam games on ntfs. Sad. Tryin strengh to switch to linux

[@selvakumarm4382]

How to hind linux installed deive in windows 11

[@JAFOpty]

I think if you restart Explorer.exe, from Task Manager, you dont have to reboot Windows.

[@666KoXz666]

W10 21H2 not working :(

[@666KoXz666]

At this time, only entire disks can be attached to WSL 2, meaning that it's not possible to attach only a partition. Concretely, this means that it's not possible to use wsl --mount to read a partition on the boot device, because that device can't be detached from Windows. So wasted time..

[@EgaoKage]

I would love to have a bear mount. 🐻

[@KentHambrock]

No one likes NTFS? I've only dabled with linux in the past, and it definitely was a pain initially, but from what I saw when I googled, NTFS has a lot of advantages over ext4 and others and currently ntfs3g support seems pretty solid. Can someone explain why NTFS would be particularly bad? (I will say I wouldn't use it for the partition Linux is installed on, but why not a home directory partition or just a partition for sharing files when dual booting?)

[@eng3d]

ntfs is quite bloated. both are journaled so the safety is the same

[@wisnoskij]

what is with that path? "\\.\Phy*" Are we doing some weird path wizardry here? ".\" means current directory. But looks like nonsence to me when we add in the "\\". Is this all just hardcoded characters for the path to physical drives, or if this some location we are diriving from path manipulation rules I done know?

[@AlexD-X1]

Call me cynical, but, is it safe to allow Windows to have access to an EXT4 based drive? I don't know specifics, hence I'm asking-that and I simply don't trust Windows. ;)

[@pfeerick]

You're accessing the EXT4 file system via a WSL2 kernel version of Linux... so it should be reasonably safe... but hey, Microsoft is still Microsoft! 😆I'd have no concerns accessing data that way though, and will give it a try myself soon...

[@AlexD-X1]

@@pfeerick I thought the same thing, with WSL2 installed, technically, it should be fine. But....Microsoft....😆

[@Demonspeeding251]

I figure in disk manager if the file system is completely blank it's a good chance it's ext4 lol

[@shantilkhadatkar1195]

I have yet to encounter a windows 10 having Build no 22000+

[@Stradlater25]

It is shouldn't work when you have windows system partition next to the aimed linux's one

[@ahmednabil4456]

thanks bro

[@jangelelcangry]

0:06 And it should stay that way.

[@LefterisEl]

And you can batch file the process, automate it, then make a Virtual Drive of the wsl drive and have it on "My Computer" as a drive. That way many you'll have a drive letter 😊😉

[@houseandhobby6971]

Like your videos but ive seen a few and noticed you really arent well articulating what the end goal of the video is. So i watch the whole vid or i get out after deciphering what you are about to do. You tackle tough challenges so it takes me a few to figure out. Thanks

[@TheSechas]

hi

[@Lethaltail]

"PNY CS900 1TB" oh boy wonder if that one's gonna self-destruct (ask me how i know!)

[@crypcase150]

Keep going

[@rockymarquiss8327]

It was busy because that was your current directory...

[@liontech835]

5:33 just cd ..

[@Tharindu_LK]

I don't understand why windows won't allow ext4 by default. Everyone on the planet earth knows NTFS is bad but Windows developers still pushing it blocking other formats. That makes me hate windows even more.... not "like" it!!! I don't know which genius in microsoft thought of 'let's make everyone's life harder, that will make them love us'.

[@akoyich]

Is WinBTRFS a valid option for a steam library drive read by Steam on Windows?