Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of John R Pierce Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 12:16 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] What's the best way to convert a whole set of filesystems?
the only major distribution that really supports reiser natively is
SuSE I can live with that. I've heard unkind words about ext3, but so far no problems....
You have?
I'm on a list which has users of SLES and of RHEL (and slack and debian) on zSeries. I don't recall anyone sad to use ext3, but there have been the occasional stuffed reiserfs. Then there's the real concern the development team for reiserfs is small and has some legal difficulties that may seem him operating for several lifetimes from inside a US prison.
What sort of backup would be best from NTFS to ext3? I've a feeling that a straight binary copy might not be the best choice, but I'm guessing.
You need something that understands both filesystems. Reading NTFS in Linux is fairly straightforward, but on CentOS you will need to download less official kernel modules (each time you upgrade the kernel) or rebuild each kernel. Neither is difficult, and the need evaporates when Windows is out of your life.
frankly, I'd build a new computer, install Linux on it, then copy the files across the network. when done, recycle the old computer for parts, or sell it intact as is (its probably worth more as a working system than as parts).
(sigh) now you're talking money - it would cost me an extra $300-500 to do that, and I've already strained my budget and my credit to do the $400 for the upgrade. On the positive side, I've done this many times - been building and upgrading home machines since 1984, and I'm pretty good at that. This is the first time I'll be switching from an M$ OS to a real one. :-)
An extra drive won't strain the budget so hard, and gives you a neat backup device.