Windows 10’s default file system is NTFS. This is the format that the hard disk should have where we are going to install it, and it is also the most compatible format with this operating system, which offers the best performance and stability, and the one recommended for UEFI and Secure Boot systems . Therefore, users who have configured a dual boot system, or Dual Boot, with a Linux distro , find themselves with a lot of problems when exchanging data between both operating systems. Fortunately, these problems are about to end.
Linux can read and write NTFS drives without problems. Therefore, from this operating system we can access Windows hard drives to access any file stored on it, or copy files to these drives. However, the other way around, it is not possible. Windows does not support Linux file systems (EXT4), so for Microsoft‘s operating system, Linux hard drives will not be formatted, and we will not be able to use them, unless we use third-party programs that allow us to read Linux hard drives in Windows.
Despite the tough rivalry of years ago, today Microsoft gets along very well with Linux. The OpenSource operating system is a faithful ally that can help you gain the trust of developers, programmers and IT technicians who often work with Linux tools on a daily basis. One example of this is the launch of WSL, the Windows subsystem for Linux , which allows the Kernel of this operating system to be loaded on top of Windows as if it were a native system.
But when it came to accessing other hard drives, the problems continued. Until today.
WSL allows mounting Linux hard drives in Windows 10
The release of the new Windows Insider build 20211 has brought with it an important novelty for both users who use the Windows subsystem and for those who have a Dual-Boot on their computer. This new version of WSL in Windows 10 brings a new command that we can use to mount any physical drive on our PC within Windows 10: wsl –mount.
In order to do so, we must meet a series of requirements. One of them is to be an Insider user, from the Dev branch, and have the new Windows build 20211 installed. In addition, we must also have Hyper-V enabled and activate the Windows Subsystem for Linux, since this file system depends directly on it.
If we comply with the above, and we have a hard disk (or a partition) in EXT4, we will be able to mount it in Windows 10. To do this, we simply must know the physical disk that we want to mount (with the CMD command wmic diskdrive list brief) , and then we will use the command “wsl –mount”, followed by the hard disk in question. In case of being a partition, we will have to add the –partition parameter to the hard disk followed by its number.
For example, if we have in EXT4 the third partition of the second hard disk (remember that the units start counting from zero) the command would be:
wsl --mount /.PHYSICALDRIVE1 --partition 3
This unit will appear in the file explorer with the Linux icon, and we can use it without problems. When we get tired of it, we will simply execute the command ” wsl –unmount “, followed by the disk and partition, to unmount it safely.
We remember that Windows will have access to this EXT4 unit that we have mounted, but all the distributions that we run within WSL will also have access to it.
Mount EXT4 on Windows 10 is still tricky
The truth is, while it’s a great feature, Microsoft has found the most complicated way to make it work. Rather than relying on WSL, and Hyper-V , this feature should be native to Windows. The operating system should automatically recognize EXT4-formatted hard drives, as if they were an NTFS hard drive, and mount them automatically.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. And not only that, but in order to read and write to EXT4 drives we must have WSL enabled and execute different commands in CMD that allow us to mount and unmount the drives.
We hope that Microsoft will reconsider and simplify this process. It is still early days, since it is a novelty introduced in the latest Insider version of Windows 10 and it will take at least 6 months to reach all Windows 10 users. If not, then it is much more practical, faster and easy to use the usual programs to mount EXT drives in Windows .
