Like a number of people on this forum, I've formatted a USB HDD in Ext3 so I can pull off Humax PVR recordings onto it that are larger than 4Gb. I got Western Digital's WDTV Live network media streamer for Christmas and I was surprised to find that I can connect the Ext3-formatted HDD to it via the USB port and read/write to/from any of the Windows PCs in my network. As well as streaming to my adjacent TV, the WDTV acts as a network streamer from the HDD to any of the PCs. I've put in a USB switch to easily change between the Humax to the WDTV, so now I can easily pull off a recorded programme to the external HDD to watch somewhere else on my network.
I thought it would be useful to post this as it isn't publicised that WDTV Live will allow viewing of Ext3 formats via a local network.

A network won't care what file system is on a drive connected to a media server once the server has read the data from the ext3 drive it's just data like any other being transferred across the network.

Thanks Graham I didn't know this - I tried before formatting a couple of network drives in Ext 3 & also an HDD via a RJ45/USB NAS adaptor, but they all refused to accept the attempts and only allowed FAT32 - so being able to have an Ext3 drive on my network is quite a revelation for me.

I'm not sure if this site helps.

http://www.go2linux.org/accessing-li...ext-with-vista

I've downloaded the software but haven't tried it yet incase it messes up my system.

I'm also looking for a way to format a drive to ext3 format and then view it on Vista.

Try following this link

http://www.avforums.com/forums/frees...ml#post9872803

Be wary of accessing EXT3 volumes under windows the EXT2/3 driver has been known to screw up the file system

http://www.ext2fsd.com/

Safer to set up a dual boot system or boot from a CD

See this thread

http://www.hummy.org.uk/forums/showt...?t=6218&page=2

Thanks for the warning: now I can see my Ext3 drive via the network, I've uninstalled ext2fsd just in case. The only downside is that I can't see how much free disc space there is left on the drive. Do you know of a way of doing this over a network, please?

That's very useful to know - thanks!