Wednesday, January 18, 2012

How to read XFS on Windows

I often read about problems people have reading Unix formats on a PC.  Linux has many features that allow a new file system to be loaded and hence read disks in non Ext/2/3/4 format.

One solution for a PC is to use CnW to just read the data files from the foreign file system.  95% of the time this will be a satisfactory solution, though there will be occasions were read and write are required. CnW does not write to non PC file systems.

By using a copy of CnW Recovery software files can be read from many Unix disks, including XFS and Reiser.  It also included Macintosh.  The demo will read the files, but not actually save any.

CnW is designed as a data recovery tool, rather than this general reading tool, so file selection is limited, for instance there is no drag and drop.  However, there are extensive file filter tools so file of a certain date, size or name/location may be selected or skipped.

When presented with a problem of accessing data from a foreign drive, CnW may well provide a simple solution.  As a bonus deleted files can also be found.

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