You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it
A Linux ext2/ext3 file system driver for Windows
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I am on Widows Pro 10 1809. I installed Ext2Fsd for read only and assigned drive letter. However whenI double click the ext4 formatted disk in windows explorer it gives me "You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it" error. How to resolve this issue. There is already Ubuntu 18.0 installed on the disk.
Thanks.
Last edit: Ahmet Crescent 2019-04-24
Same issue here. I actually had things working, trashed my linux install, re-installed linux (removed windows drive while doing so) and now I get the same error message that Ahmet gets after I assign a drive letter to my ext3 partition and then try to click on that drive.
I was not able to get it working. Using LinuxReader64 now.
Hi,
There seems to be a compatibility issue between ext2fsd v0.69 and a special feature inside ext4 filesystems : "64bit".
I have made some tests on a small partition :
* creating an ext4 filesystem under linux : mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda8
* reboot Windows -> "You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it"
* remove "64bit" feature under linux : resize2fs -s /dev/sda8
(Pay attention using a recent version https://serverfault.com/questions/753693/remove-the-64bit-option-from-ext4-filesystem)
* reboot Windows -> the partition is available through its assigned drive letter
Hi hippo31,
That worked. Thank you very much.
Hi hippo31,
Although the 'resize2fs -s' trick may not be the solution to the 'issue' of this topic, I can confirm that it solved my problem as well, so, thank you very much for sharing!
In my case, I have several raspberry pi's booting/running from micro sd cards, of which I make images using 'Image for Windows' (from terabyteunlimited.com; no affiliation!).
This creates image files of the sd cards with a .tbi extension. Using one of their utility programs called TBImount, in combination with Ext2Fsd, allows me to mount the Ext4 partition under windows.
Lately I started using a script to 'live clone' a running raspbian system to a micro sd card (using a usb sd card reader). After making an image of this 'clone' using the same Image for Windows', I could not mount the Ext4 partition anymore: Windows reported that the partition contained an 'invalid filesystem', even though the raspberry pi was able to boot from it, and fsck.ext4 did not report any errors.
Using known utilities like 'parted', 'fdisk' and the like, did not show any difference between the image files (one of the master and one of the clone).
Anyway, coming across this thread while scanning the Ext2Fsd forum for related issues, I decided to give the 'resize2fs -s' trick a try, et voilà, after converting the filesystem to 32bit, everything worked as expected.
Whether it Windows having problems with this 64bit filesystem or an issue with Ext2Fsd is to been seen. I hope the developer(s) can shed some light on it.
Anyway: Thanks to the developer(s) of Ext2Fsd and to Hippo31 for sharing his findings.
Hi: Need some help. I have a Channel Master DVR that died. It uses an external USB drive. I want to recover the files to my Win 10 machine. It can be done but requires Ext2Fsd.... I first downloaded Ext2Fsd version 69 and uninstalled it for version 64.... I thought going to 64 would help. The ISSUE as above Windows is saying I must format before using drive. The format shows EXT3, partitions are Linux. I assigned two drive letters to the two partitions... That is all I did.... nothing else... The goal is copy the files to my computer. There is a nice utility that does this called DVR+ Lister that captures all the titles and dates.... other wise the disk has files with meaningless titles... but that is down the road... First I need to get WIN10 from asking me to format disk and see the contents.
I see the line command suggested above but I am such a newbie I don't know what to do with that command. I have a bunch of shows on this drive and would like to recover them... Can anyone walk me through the work around. I am not using Linux OS, only have the Win10 machine. Again Newbie so detail appreciated. Thanks.
If it is an external drive you need to connect to Linux machine; if it is connected to your windows machine try Gparted Live or another live Linux distro. Determine the device number and partition. It is something like /dev/sdxX, "x" is the device number (although it is a "number" it goes like a, b, c, d, etc.) and "X" is the partition number (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). Then issue the resize2fs -s /dev/sdxX from Linux command line interface e.g. terminal window.
Thank you I will try that this week... I will report success or failure here. Cheers