Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
I am currently running a Windows XP system at home with around 100+ Mb in use over ~400Mb of NTFS file systems. I am installing CentOS 4.4 on it when I change out the mobo/cpu/mem/video combo I just bought. I want to convert all the file systems to (probably) Reiserfs or maybe ext3, but I need to do them one at a time because I only have enough transfer space to accommodate the largest one, or at least that's my belief. That would mean at least two copies per partition converted, and I have six partitions to convert, from ~14Gb to over 85Gb (in one, only - the rest are 30Gb or smaller).
Is there a good way to do whole fs conversions, specificallyfrom NTFS to reiserfs or ext3?
Why reiserfs? RH doesn't support it at all in its RHEL series. It's no longer default in OpenSUSE (I'm not completely sure of SLES/SLED).
ext3 is generally a sane selection.
Do I even need to do this (i.e., do any of the CentOS/Linuxkernels support read AND write to NTFS)?.
I think rw support is available now in some distros.
Is there, by any chance, and in-place converter from NTFS toany Linux fs, preferably reiserfs or ext3?
Highly dangerous at best.
Also, the last time I installed CentOS on a system (I've done about six or seven so far) I don't remember seeing reiserfs as one of the supported fs's for configuring during the installation process - am I blind or is this really the case? I like reiserfs primarily because it is really good with many small files, and I have tons of them - around 100k files under 10k.
It is really the case. RH employs at least one ext4 specialist, declines to do so for any other Linux filesystem. I expect SUSE to follow this path.
The _best_ way to convert is to use another disk. That way, if something fouls up, you get another chance. The _best_ way to read NTFS is with Windows. The _safest_ way to convert is to read in Windows, transfer to Linux and write.
You can do this on a network, you can possibly run Linux under virtual PC (a free download now, does not require special CPUs, can boot a standard bootable CD or (I think) ISO image), you could use tar under windows (needs cygwin).