Hello, I am running Lenny on my desktop pc, I currently have XFS filesystem, but I want to switch to EXT3 .
Is there a way I can copy the whole data from XFS partition to ext3 or make an image of the data and extract it over the ext3 partition and edit fstab's entry?
I tried partimage, but it converts an ext3 fs to xfs when It extracts the image.
I want switch to ext3 and to avoid the hustle of re-installation due to a number of reasons

ok, if your '/' (called root) is on this xfs partition, then you will need to reinstall. or, if you truly don't want to reinstall, then you can get a live cd, copy out the data on your xfs drive, reformat, and copy back. but that is complicated, and you have the potential for data loss. just do reinstall, it really is much easier.

formatting means to totally erase everything, and put a new format down. think of it like a change in political systems. you have to tear down the old one, then rebuild the new one.


good luck,
rabbit2345 ^_^

Yeah I am aware what format does, but I wanted to avoid that because I am having my exams, and when I am done with them , I will have my exam for another study that I am doing so I am pretty much caught up for next 3 months, so I wanted to avoid formatting.

Depending on the size of your harddrive, reformatting can take from 30 seconds ( <40GB) to 3 minutes (500 GB and more). Problem is your data. Dunno how much data you have (presumably quite a lot, given you're still in school) but copying that may take 10 minutes or more. Provided that is, you have a place to put it...

Question: why do you want to change filesystems all of a sudden? I presume you can live with XFS for a few more months, can you? If it's for your study (studying Ext3 is a good subject for understanding journaled filesystems!) I suggest using virtualisation like VMware, Qemu and VirtualBox instead.