How to access linux disk from windows 7?

Question

I have a computer with Linux installed. And I want to be able to read and write data to its disk from Windows 7. Is there any software or does Windows 7 have any functionality for it built-in?

I've seen some website describing how to, but they are quite old:

3 Ways to Access Your Linux Partitions From Windows
Access Linux Files from Windows with Linux Reader

So I wonder if there is any better way than they ones they have described there.

Answer 1

WinSCP can also do what you need. It creates an FTP or SFTP connection between the hosts, provided you have the credentials, then you can drag and drop folders/files from one host to the other.

Answer 2

Samba is the "standard" Linux way of getting windows interoperability. Once installed, you can set up shares etc. on the linux machine and then browse them just like any other network share.

Free.

Answer 3

One of the ways is to build a virtual machine with Linux and connect the physical drive to this machine. In that way you can access the Linux partitions. Then you can use virtual machine software (additions or tools) to transfer files between VM and host system.

Answer 4

Multiple ways:

• colinux (http://colinux.org)
• commercial software UFS Explorer (http://www.ufsexplorer.com)
• Virtual Box or similar. If this is a USB drive you can share the physical USB device with a Linux based VM.
• Via Ext2FSd, (http://www.ext2fsd.com)

Answer 5

Okay I found a better way to reach what I wanted. So instead of mounting an ext4 drive to windows, I could use 3rd software to create a ssh mount to my linux computer instead.

The software I used was sftp net drive