I have a 2TB (external) HD, with 1.5TB used. What's the best way that I can (on the hard drive) convert it from ntfs to ext2?
My only thought was to resize, create a new partition, and move stuff over slowly, but that's going to require (eventually) moving a whole 1.5TB disk to the left 500GB (at least with with how gparted works).
Code:
1) resize sdb1 (ntfs) from 2TB to 1.5TB
* <500GB
2) create new partition (sdb2 -- ext2)
3) move 500GB of data from sdb1 to sdb2
* 500GB
4) resize sdb1 from 1.5TB to 1.0TB
* <500GB
5) move sdb2 to the left 500GB and add 500GB
* 500GB
6) move 500GB of data from sdb1 to sdb2
* 500GB
7) resize sdb1 from 1.0TB to 500GB
* <500GB
8) move sdb2 to the left 500GB and add 500GB
* 1TB
9) move 500GB of data from sdb1 to sdb2
* 500GB
10) delete sdb1
11) move sdb2 to the left 500GB and add 500GB
* 1.5TB
Cost: 4.5-6TB
without having to move partitions to the left: 1.5TB - 3.0TB
So you see, the issues are steps 5, 8, and 11. If only I could add the data to the head of the partition, instead of having to move all the data over...
I guess my question comes down to: Is there any easy way to do something like this? If not, is there any way to "incorporate" free space before a partition, without moving the whole partition?