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how to access xfs partition from windows

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gsrcrxsi

Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2008
Location
Baltimore, MD
so i have a 1TB HDD that i use for data storage for my linux based media center. the HDD is full of DVD rips. now i want to compress my collection down from being full .iso rips to .iso's of movie ONLY, to save space. as my collection has filled my HDD and i have 6GB fre space on my 1TB drive lol.

now when i load into windows server 2008 (essentially vista), i can see the drive in my device manager. but not in my computer. i know theres a way to make the drive visable, but i fear i wont be able to read it and that windows will tell me to format it before using it (like it does with flash drives and stuff). but i want access to these files in windows because the program that does the conversion from full rip iso to movie only iso runs in windows. and i dont have another 1TB drive to reformat into windows to do this.

sooo, is there anyway i can mount and view files that are in an XFS file system with windows?
 
Not doable directly, there is no XFS filesystem driver for Windows.

There is a (convoluted) workaround: you install a Virtual Machine with linux. CoLinux or Virtualbox work. Inside the VM you mount the XFS partition and share it with Windows via Samba.
 
May I ask what program you are using? If you are not allowed to say because it is one of "those" programs then that's all right. Have you tried using wine in one of your linux boxes? wine has come a long way. And I have gotten WME, TMPGenc, dvdfab, and many others to work in wine with little hassle. It might be another easier option for you to is you still have a nix box handy.
 
May I ask what program you are using? If you are not allowed to say because it is one of "those" programs then that's all right. Have you tried using wine in one of your linux boxes?

It's not a program he's trying to use, its a filesystem he's trying to read - Like windows reads NTFS and FAT without issue; Windows isn't compatible with drives formatted with Linux filesystems like ReiserFS, JFS, or XFS. He just wants to see and open the files that are on his XFS volume.

Like the first response mentioned, theres no good way to read an XFS volume from a windows host without going the VM route afaik.
 
It's not a program he's trying to use, its a filesystem he's trying to read - Like windows reads NTFS and FAT without issue; Windows isn't compatible with drives formatted with Linux filesystems like ReiserFS, JFS, or XFS. He just wants to see and open the files that are on his XFS volume.

Like the first response mentioned, theres no good way to read an XFS volume from a windows host without going the VM route afaik.


I am fully aware that he is trying to access his xfs filesystem. If you read the OP the whole reason he is trying to do this is because the specific application he wants to use is windows based. This is why I asked which application he is trying to use because if this application is capable o being used in wine he could very well avoid using a windows box all together and access his xfs formatted drive in nix.
 
I am fully aware that he is trying to access his xfs filesystem. If you read the OP the whole reason he is trying to do this is because the specific application he wants to use is windows based. This is why I asked which application he is trying to use because if this application is capable o being used in wine he could very well avoid using a windows box all together and access his xfs formatted drive in nix.

Reading for comprehension. You pass, I fail. ADD kicked in before I read those lines where he talked about his application - I just reread it and see your right. Thx for the pointer.

Might want to search here to find the level of application support in Linux:
http://appdb.winehq.org

Things like DVD decrypter and DVDflick are well supported by Wine. I'm not sure what your accustomed to using to convert the VOBs, and what format you want to convert them into. If it were me, I'd convert the VOBs to AVIs (Mencoder should do this), then use DVDflick to create a DVD of just the movie content. There may be a better tool or method than that, but thats what I think would do the trick off the top of my head - VLC may have this capability also, it can transcode a lot of stuff but I'm not sure if it can handle the VOBs.
 
If it were me, I'd convert the VOBs to AVIs (Mencoder should do this), then use DVDflick to create a DVD of just the movie content. There may be a better tool or method than that, but thats what I think would do the trick off the top of my head - VLC may have this capability also, it can transcode a lot of stuff but I'm not sure if it can handle the VOBs.


I have to second this after some thought. This might be a easier solution for you yet. If you yourpurpose is to bring the movie ISO down to just the movie and no menu content or anything else this seems like a much more feasible idea. You can easily mount the ISOs in linux and use Mencoder or transcode or whatever your flavor is to rencode straight to mpeg. Encoding straight to mpeg still means DVD set top box compatability. Even still most DVD players now of days support DIVX and XVID out of the box which is an even lighter and better file then mpeg IMO.
 
You can use DVD::Rip and gmountISO to 1. moun the iso 2. remove/encode only the main movie without having to encode it. Warning; DVDrip likes to split the movie into 1gb chunks and then it messed up the audio to the director's cut and not the original sound, set it to save the movie as one big file.
 
the program is DVDFab. it works in wine ripping DVDs, yes, BUT the ability to transform a full rip ISO into a movie only ISO does not work in wine. when i try to do it the whole program freezes.
 
the program is DVDFab. it works in wine ripping DVDs, yes, BUT the ability to transform a full rip ISO into a movie only ISO does not work in wine. when i try to do it the whole program freezes.


Play with it some more. Update wine. DVDfab can be fully functional in wine. I have had it working great in Ubuntu a couple of times because I only use dvdfab.
 
so i installed VMware. and installed ubuntu 8.10 inside that. however i am unable to see my 1TB drive. partition editor only sees my virtual drive. am i missing something here"?
 
so i installed VMware. and installed ubuntu 8.10 inside that. however i am unable to see my 1TB drive. partition editor only sees my virtual drive. am i missing something here"?

a) Where did I say VMWare?

b) Did you read the documentation of the VM products I _did_ talk about?
 
the program is DVDFab. it works in wine ripping DVDs, yes, BUT the ability to transform a full rip ISO into a movie only ISO does not work in wine. when i try to do it the whole program freezes.

You have the full version? If not, I sometimes get a disc that won't read with DVDShrink. I rip the full movie with DVDFab, then open up the folder with DVDShrink.

Ok now, here's how I'd do it. You've already got a collection of DVD isos with full menus etc. I assume they are decrypted. So, open up DVDShrink in WINE. Go File->Open Disc Image. Choose the movie you want to fix. Click the "Reauthor" tab at top. Pick out the main movie in the right column, drag to left column. Click the "Compression Options" tab in the right column. Remove everything but "AC3 5.1 English" sound track. Click the "Backup" button on top. Ensure "deep analysis" and "high quality adaptive..." "Sharp" are selected. Go back to "target device" tab on top. Make sure it saves as ".ISO" file and choose the location to save. Click OK, let it do it's thing. and you're done.
 
The downside of VMWare is that it's not as powerful / full featured as other software unless you pay them and get the full commercial version. If you want to do it for free, VMWare is rather crippled.

It should still be doable though.

As for native xfs support in windows, I'm pretty sure you can't do it. Ext2/3 is possible, but xfs is just not supported. Since it is an open source fs, writing software to access it wouldn't be too bad, but definitely non-trivial. It would probably take a few weeks work.
 
i am using a full version actually. i have VMware Workstation 6.5.1 i created a VM, loaded ubuntu, but i just cant see the other drive. its not a matter of it not being mounted, the partition manager (GParted) cant even see it. i wasnt sure if it was a setting in VMware or not. if workstation just *cant* do it, ill take a look at virtualbox.

but i have purchased a second 1TB drive. what if i format it as NTFS (since FAT32 cant do >4GB files) and just use it that way. will it matter to linux being NTFS? i know deleting large files will suck (as these drives hold nothing but large files lol) and thats one of the reasons i liked XFS, it was almost instant deleting large files.
 
How about using ext2/3? That has full Linux functionality, supports large files and filesystems, and because it's free and open, there are windows implementations.

I cannot see any advantage to using ntfs on a drive that must be read by both windows and linux.

VFAT (FAT32 in windows terms) is a good option for some things. It's highly compatible with Linux and Windows out of the box, but it cannot support very large file sizes.
 
yea, some of the files are 5+GB. avg file size is like 4.5GB. so a filesystem that can only do up to 4 wont work. i really would like to keep everything XFS though because its very good with large files.

im gonna try out the dvdfab + dvdshrink combo in wine. ill report back.
 
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