Long shot - Can I mount Mac HFS+ partitions under Linux?

MikeHunt79 · 14 Oct 2009 at 13:29

I've got an EXT3 partition I need to backup.

I've tried to read an EXT3 partition under OSX but no dice.

I can install Ubuntu on a USB stick, and boot off that, but if there a was of mounting an HFS+ partition, and more importantly, being able to write to the HFS+ partition safely?

JC · 14 Oct 2009 at 13:38

You've got an EXT3 partition on a Mac or another computer? And your backup destination is external media or backing up to a Mac hdd?

Not exactly the answer you're looking for but can you use NTFS as a happy medium between both OS which they can both read and write to?

Partition some free space on the backup target mac/linux machine to NTFS, install NTFS-3G for osx giving the mac read/write access. ?

Dj_Jestar · 14 Oct 2009 at 13:50

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/mounting-hfs-volumes-under-linux-521189/

JC · 14 Oct 2009 at 13:59

Dj_Jestar said:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/mounting-hfs-volumes-under-linux-521189/

Yes, you can mount HFS+ under linux but if it is a journalled file system you have read-only access

tntcoder · 14 Oct 2009 at 14:16

You could also back up over SFTP or samba shares, depending on how much you need to copy of course. EDIT: should have read you dont have Linux booted.

BigglesPiP · 14 Oct 2009 at 15:32

Finding a way to mount ext3 in linux is going to be best.

Since ext3 is open source, any mac drivers will be free of reverse engineering (unlike NTFS on either OS).

OSX being BSD based, I expected to see a lot of ports, but all I can find is this somewhat under-rated solution: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

MikeHunt79 · 14 Oct 2009 at 16:46

I think I'll give http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/ a go, tho I've heard it does not work on 10.6 but I think I've got OSX 10.5 which I can run from my USB key...

Long story short, I have a laptop which no longer works, it got dropped and has a cracked PCB, but I need to recover the data from the HD, and it was running Ubuntu with the HD formatted as EXT3.

I've taken the HD out, and put it into an external enclosure, and my macbook sees the drive but cannot read the partition. I guess another option would be to boot ubuntu on my mac, then just write DVD's with the data from the EXT3 partition. I'm going to try this first...

I've recovered stuff from NTFS partitions before under OSX with no trouble... but EXT3 seems harder which is strange.

Anyway, I think I'll try mounting EXT3 under OSX, as it seems I'm unable to write to a HFS+ partition, and I'm not suprised really as this is Apples filesystem.

I was going to try a Windows box but that's not working at the moment...

whitecrook · 14 Oct 2009 at 21:55

the easiest way surely (i don't know of any ways to make a mac read ext3) would be to get a USB drive FAT/FAT32 formatted at least as large as your laptop drive (1TB drives are less than £65) boot linux, copy the data to the disk, then copy it back to the mac using OSX. Or do it bit by bit using a Smaller USB stick.

jack.mitchell · 19 Oct 2009 at 20:16

maybe too late but, boot ubuntu on the windows pc that is down (assuming its a software fault) and network it to your mac, then stream away

Jack.