filesystem question
 

how to see HDD filesystems??
can i switch from ext3 to ext2??

Try googling "update EXT2 to EXT3"
Thre is a command for this in most distros...

Apart from that, more clairification would be nice...

Do you want to be able to view your files on the EXT2/4 filesystem on Windows or something?

how to see each partition's filesystem??
how to update ext3 to ext 2??

what filesystems you want to see? meaning partition type? probably you can type 'mount' at command prompt.
2nd question i don't know.

i try to see how partitions are formatted during install...

1. Use the command ' df -Th '
2. tune2fs Check out this post. http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-L...3-11/1271.html several more on www.google.com

Brian1

If you have gnome-system-monitor installed, you can use that to see what file system is used for each partition.
To switch ext2 to ext3 you can use "tune2fs -j"

df -Th - 10x
howto change ext3 to ext2 - is there any point to do that??

One benifit of using ext2 over ext3 is it is far easier to recover deleted files.
Also you have a little more drive storage space.

Brian1

what about defragmentation?

if i change fstab
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 0 1uid,nodev 0 2
from ext3 to ext2
will it change the filesystem after reboot??

No, modifing fstab will not do it. I think you can change it to ext2 but not sure how it will handle the journaling potion of ext3.

Ext2 does not fragment like a fat32 partition does.

Check out www.google.com and type ' linux ext defrag '. Lots of links on that. You can also do the same for ' convert ext3 to ext2 ' as well. I use google quite extensively for help like this.

Brian1

i made hda6 - ext2 and it won't mount, so i switched t back
ext3 also defragments itself..

You mean on a reboot it is doing a filesystem check. Normal if not unmounted properly. It just clean up the orphan chains and so fore.

Brian1

without reboot, i tried to mount right after "tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/hda6