28th February 2017, 12:51
(This post was last modified: 10th April 2017, 2:04 by kdemeoz.
Edit Reason: Solved
)
Hi
I deliberately wrote "Convert" rather than just Convert because i know this is not literally true in one step. However i was wondering if the following procedure would be considered reliable & safe [albeit i know it will be very slow].
Btw, i do know that the "proper" way to do this would be to backup all the hdd data, reformat the target partition as ext4, then restore all the data from backup. I do not unfortunately have any portable media large enough to hold all this data for a backup, but... because this 2TB hdd is less than half-full, i conceived the following plan whereby the hdd itself would become its own "temporary backup".
Rather than immediately launch into this, i felt it safer to ask others' opinions first.
Current hdd status:
Possible Procedure:
1. use gparted to shrink sdb2 in ~half
2. create a temporary ext4 partition sdb3 in the new space
3. move* all the sdb2 data to sdb3
4. reformat sdb2 to ext4
5. move* all the data back from sdb3 to sdb2
6. delete sdb3
7. resize sdb2 back to its original size with gparted
* For the actual moving back & forth, would Dolphin be sufficient, or should i use rsync [or my newly installed GRsync]? Either way, would all file dates, properties & permissions be preserved?
Background:
Looking back to when i first setup this Linux Tower in 2015, i think i was crazy in choosing NTFS not ext4 for this HDD partition [all my SSD partitions are ext4]. I know that Windows cannot access Linux file-systems, though of course Linux can happily access Windows'. The largest files on the HDD are the many VDIs for my VirtualBox VMs [the VB pgm itself is & runs on my SSD in Maui, but i store the VMs themselves on the large HDD]. Two of my VMs are Win10, & i think now that back then i stupidly thought that whatever partition held Windows VMs had to be NTFS otherwise Windows would not work. Somehow that crazy thinking completely overlooked that Windows is merely a Guest OS running in a Linux-hosted VirtualBox instance, & so VB itself of course takes care of the file communications. Doh. Now that i have belatedly realised my original setup error from 2015, it occurred to me now to see if i could now change this HDD partition to ext4, hence this thread now.
I deliberately wrote "Convert" rather than just Convert because i know this is not literally true in one step. However i was wondering if the following procedure would be considered reliable & safe [albeit i know it will be very slow].
Btw, i do know that the "proper" way to do this would be to backup all the hdd data, reformat the target partition as ext4, then restore all the data from backup. I do not unfortunately have any portable media large enough to hold all this data for a backup, but... because this 2TB hdd is less than half-full, i conceived the following plan whereby the hdd itself would become its own "temporary backup".
Rather than immediately launch into this, i felt it safer to ask others' opinions first.
Current hdd status:
Possible Procedure:
1. use gparted to shrink sdb2 in ~half
2. create a temporary ext4 partition sdb3 in the new space
3. move* all the sdb2 data to sdb3
4. reformat sdb2 to ext4
5. move* all the data back from sdb3 to sdb2
6. delete sdb3
7. resize sdb2 back to its original size with gparted
* For the actual moving back & forth, would Dolphin be sufficient, or should i use rsync [or my newly installed GRsync]? Either way, would all file dates, properties & permissions be preserved?
Background:
Looking back to when i first setup this Linux Tower in 2015, i think i was crazy in choosing NTFS not ext4 for this HDD partition [all my SSD partitions are ext4]. I know that Windows cannot access Linux file-systems, though of course Linux can happily access Windows'. The largest files on the HDD are the many VDIs for my VirtualBox VMs [the VB pgm itself is & runs on my SSD in Maui, but i store the VMs themselves on the large HDD]. Two of my VMs are Win10, & i think now that back then i stupidly thought that whatever partition held Windows VMs had to be NTFS otherwise Windows would not work. Somehow that crazy thinking completely overlooked that Windows is merely a Guest OS running in a Linux-hosted VirtualBox instance, & so VB itself of course takes care of the file communications. Doh. Now that i have belatedly realised my original setup error from 2015, it occurred to me now to see if i could now change this HDD partition to ext4, hence this thread now.