Mounting and editing Ext4 FS using windows

Question

Hi, I'm using Win11 insider, and I want to edit and/or see the internals of an external drive with Ext4 filesystem.

What I have tried:

Diskpart

Apparently, the computer does recognize the disk. but not the main system portion, which is Ext4. What is likely is that the bootloader for Ubuntu included in the drive is being read. I did try to read the data using assign letter=d, but it refuses access.

Disk management

I tried to check what I can do with the disk management, then the Ext4 partition appears as "Healthy", with an unknown FS. even if I right click, it does not give me options other than to convert to dynamic drive, or help. on the partitions, it is either delete or help.

WSL

I heard from a few sources that wsl can be used to view files in Ext4 format. I tried using the command wsl --mount \.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 --partition 3, but it gave me errors, saying "The system cannot find the file specified. Error code: Wsl/Service/AttachDisk/HCS/ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND" or "The specified path is invalid. Error code: Wsl/Service/AttachDisk/HCS/0x800700a1".

Would there be a way to read/write from NTFS to Ext4?

Answer 1

Since you mentioned Ubuntu, I would suggest downloading Ubuntu Live, burning it to a USB drive, boot from that and it should give you access to that drive.

Answer 2

The Ext4 itself is the linux boot drive. I want to interact with the linux files from windows. Would that be possible without booting the drive?

Answer 3

This site might help you.

How to Mount, Read, or Format EXT4 on Windows 11 [2024 Guide] (windowsreport.com)