NASLite Network Attached Storage

although this is a general NAS question there is not really a category to post it in, so I'll put it here
and searching for existing solutions was impossible as most terms i used were to common and ignored

can i access files on a drive if plugged into windows (vista 64bit)
when i plug it in (usb adapter) drive manager offers to initialize it, i assume this would be a bad thing to do so i wont.
but then the drive doesn't get assigned a drive letter and i can't seem to use any ext2/3 tools to read it as i can't point them at a volume

any help would be appreciated

If you are stuck you can use a live linux cd like Knoppix to get access to the EXT2/3 partitions. It will also mount the NTFS files at the same time allowing you to recover the data to a NTFS drive from the ext drive.

Mike