Skip to main content

Ext4 in Windows

Jan 11, 2023 ยท 1 min read | Windows
Ext4 in Windows

Pulling in EXT4 drives is easy now with Windows WSL2. There are a few tricks that you need to know about though!

Requirements

  • Any version of Windows 11
  • Any version of Windows 10 (Build 22000+) Note: check with winver from Run
  • Powershell as Admin and WSL 2 installed
  • ONLY Internal drives are supported. No USB Drives.

Syntax pulled from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk

Determine Partition to Mount

PowerShell as Admin

List Drives

GET-CimInstance -query "SELECT * from Win32_DiskDrive"

Mount and list Drive Partitions

wsl --mount <DiskPath> --bare
wsl

Linux WSL2 Instance

List Drive Partitions from WSL Instance

lsblk

List Drive Types and IDs

sudo blkid

PowerShell as Admin

Note: By default Windows will always assume it is EXT4, unless the -t vfat option is used.

From Windows PowerShell

wsl --mount \\.\PhysicalDrive1 --partition 2

This will make it available in both Windows Explorer and WSL /mnt/wsl/PhysicalDrive1 path.

Unmount

wsl --unmount \\.\PhysicalDrive1

Walkthrough Video

#EXT4