If you're using Windows and if you want to access those filesystems that are used
by Linux you can use FUSE on Windows now.
"Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) is a loadable
kernel module for Unix-like computer operating
systems, that allows non-privileged users to create their own file
systems without editing the kernel code.
This is achieved by running the file system code in user
space, while the FUSE module only provides a "bridge" to the actual kernel
interfaces. FUSE was officially merged into the mainstream Linux
kernel tree in kernel version 2.6.14.
FUSE is particularly useful for writing virtual
file systems. Unlike traditional filesystems, which essentially save
data to and retrieve data from disk, virtual filesystems do not actually store data
themselves. They act as a view or translation of an existing filesystem or storage
device. In principle, any resource available to FUSE implementation can be exported
as a file system. See Examples for
some of the possible applications." (Wikipedia)
There is a version of FUSE for Mac and of course for linux and now with coLinux there's
a chance to get the FUSE world onto the Windows machines.
"For our task we will use coLinux. coLinux is a modified linux kernel that can
be executed as an application or a service in the Windows environment. The web page
of the project is http://www.colinux.org/."
You'll find a very detailed how-to there.
Source 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace
Source 2: http://polishlinux.org/linux/ext3-reiserfs-xfs-in-windows-thanks-to-colinux/
Source 3: http://www.colinux.org/
