Hardware Ext2/Ext3 Driver

OOPMan · Jan 25, 2010

Does anyone have any idea why no one has developed an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem driver that could be used in general Wii homebrew and applications. I know that I would appreciate having the option in MPlayer CE, since most of my hard drives are formatted as ext3 or ext4.

Anyone know if any work has been done on this?

Vattu · Jan 26, 2010

probably because not many users need more than ntsf and fat. everything is open-source, so please go ahead and implement ext support!

Wiimm · Jan 26, 2010

Vattu said:
probably because not many users need more than ntsf and fat. everything is open-source, so please go ahead and implement ext support!

All users need more than NTFS and FAT but most of them don't know it.

FAT has much limitations.
The open source implementation of NTFS is experimental and writing is still a problem.

ext2/ext3 is the perfect solution: open source, well tested, fast, many features.

Vattu · Jan 26, 2010

but is it vastly used? most users here are on windows platforms, I'm one of them. Have never ever come in contact with ext2/3/4 on windows. I tried linux on my PS3 once and used ext#, but that's all.

many developers don't write their stuff unnecessarily. it's a big effort and sometimes pain to make something work. if there isn't a big enough userbase (market) for a program, then why write it?

I know some people adhere to the above statement, but many such projects are only proof-of-concepts, just like the n64-emulator. noone wants to play n64-games with horrible framerates. the devs knews this from the beginning, and carried out a release anyway.

the devs of cfg usb loader (and probably some other popular ones) have written a "template" for file systems. implementing a new file system wouldn't be so difficult.

Wiimm · Jan 27, 2010

I use ext2/ext3 under windows for data partitions and all my USB drives. The driver "Ext2 Installable File System For Windows" work very good under XP and Vista (I have no Win7 experience) and supports sparse files too.

sonoranreptile · Jan 27, 2010

The combination of FAT/WBFS on my HDD works and has worked well for months.....not really sure if we need more file system integration. Should maybe work on streaming/FTP capabilities and working out the bugs in some of the newer emulator update..I.E. MAME, WiiSX, Wii64, etc.... Just a thought

boondoklife · Feb 15, 2010

I would love to see EXT3 support put into the mix, but really I don't think it would happen. Most people just will not use it because either A) they use windoes B) The use a mac or.... Well actually I ran out of reasons, suffice it to say that if they are a majority of the user base out there, they wont see a need for ext3. Only us linux people will, and well we are intelligent enough to figure out how to get FAT working just fine with out a support line.

But again I WOULD LOVE TO SEE IT HAPPEN...

Rydian · Feb 15, 2010

Wiimm said:
The open source implementation of NTFS is experimental and writing is still a problem.

Maybe years ago, but NTFS-3G had it's stable 1.0 release in Feb. 2007, and is still under active development for compatibility with newer versions of NTFS and speed.

giantpune · Feb 17, 2010

im running linux with the latest ntfs-3g and writing is fine as far as i can tell. i have 5 NTFS partitions that i regularly write multiple GB files to. so far nothing has killed it. and periodic checks using chkdsk in windows always show no errors o the drive.

at the same time, i have tried the various methods to mount my etx4 partition while running windows and they all see the drive and acknowledge that it is ext4. but they all fail to mount it and let me access the data. even worse, 2 of them corrupted the partition while trying to mount it and i had to use a linux live CD to even be able to repair the partition and not lose my data.

so right now, NTFS is the better choice in my opinion simply because i trust that i can mount the partition in either OS and it will work.

nitrostemp · Feb 17, 2010

Rydian said:
Wiimm said:

The open source implementation of NTFS is experimental and writing is still a problem.

Click to expand...

Maybe years ago, but NTFS-3G had it's stable 1.0 release in Feb. 2007, and is still under active development for compatibility with newer versions of NTFS and speed.

they are talking about ntfs writing on usbloaders

OOPMan · Feb 17, 2010

Vattu said:
probably because not many users need more than ntsf and fat. everything is open-source, so please go ahead and implement ext support!

I'd love to, but alas work keeps me too busy to even consider it :-(

I think ext support would be a win because there are people who use it, even if they are in the minority. Also, as Wiimm pointed out, there are ext drivers for Windows and they do work (Although, as giantpune pointed out, ext under windows does sometimes have issues).

Still, I think ext would be better choice than either NTFS, WBFS or FAT32 for ISO storage...

toejam316 · Feb 17, 2010

the thing about NTFS-3G is this - everything works fine until something abruptly stops a write. Then you can kiss your partition goodbye.

Rydian · Feb 17, 2010

You sure? 'Cause that's why Journaling was invented, and every modern filesystem, including NTFS, uses journaling. If the filesystem is left in an inconsistent state, it can be recovered to a working state at the expense of the data involved at the time of the problem.

toejam316 · Feb 18, 2010

Rydian said:
You sure? 'Cause that's why Journaling was invented, and every modern filesystem, including NTFS, uses journaling. If the filesystem is left in an inconsistent state, it can be recovered to a working state at the expense of the data involved at the time of the problem.

's a problem with NTFS-3G sometimes - it kills shit. The woes of reverse engineering. Anyway, comment about NTFS-3G being irrelevant - it's the basis for all NTFS reading and writing that isn't licensed from MS.

MarioMadness · Feb 20, 2010

libext4wii for the win i say.

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