9/11/2020 Access Linux filesystems in Windows and WSL 2 | Windows Command Line

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Pierre
Platform Development
September 10th, 2020

Data Development   

Starting with Windows Insiders preview build 20211, WSL 2 will be offering a new
feature: wsl --mount. This new parameter allows a physical disk to be attached and
mounted inside WSL 2, which enables you to access filesystems that aren’t natively
supported by Windows (such as ext4).

So, if you’re dual booting with Windows & Linux using different disks, you can now
access your Linux files from Windows!

Getting started
To mount a disk, open a PowerShell window with administrator privileges and run:

wsl --mount <DiskPath>

To list the available disks in Windows, run:

wmic diskdrive list brief

To unmount and detach the disk from WSL 2, run

wsl --unmount <Diskpath>

The disks paths are available under the ‘DeviceID’ columns. Usually under the
\\.\\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE* format. Below is an example of mounting a specific partition of
a given hard disk into WSL and browsing its files.

Accessing these files with File Explorer

Once mounted, it’s also possible to access these disks through the Windows explorer by
navigating to \wsl$ and then to the mount folder.
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9/11/2020 Access Linux filesystems in Windows and WSL 2 | Windows Command Line

Limitations
By default, wsl --mount attempts to mount the disk as ext4. To specify a filesystem, or
for more advanced scenarios, check out Mount a disk in WSL 2.

Also please note that this feature comes with the limitation that only physical disks can
be attached to WSL 2. At this time, it’s not possible to attach a single partition. More
details on the limitations here.

Give us your feedback!

If you run into any issues, or have feedback for our team please file an issue on our
Github , and if you have general questions about WSL you can find all of our team
members that are on Twitter on this twitter list.

Avatar Pierre Boulay

Software Engineer II, Linux on Windows

Posted in Command Line

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9/11/2020 Access Linux filesystems in Windows and WSL 2 | Windows Command Line

2 comments

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Avatar JinShil September 10, 2020 6:45 pm  

But, can you edit the files?

 Log in to Reply

Avatar Ascii Wolf September 11, 2020 2:32 am  

Cool! Now, if only SFTP support was added to Explorer as well, I would be happy. 🙂

 Log in to Reply

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