How to change the fs on the root partition?

atheist · 06-12-2004, 04:14 PM

How do I change the file system of the root partition?

After reading up on various file system I thought that reiserfs would be the best file system for the root partition of my laptop. That partition is currently ext3.

I tried "mkfs.reiserfs /dev/hda7" but of course that didn't work since it was already mounted. I'm afraid of doing "mkfs.reiserfs -f /dev/hda7" since I'm afraid if that might screw anything up...

How can I change the file system of / before I mount it?

Thanks.

david_ross · 06-12-2004, 04:40 PM

mkfs will actually format the partition and remove all of your data so I suggest you make a good backup and then use a live cd or the first CD for your distro which usually has some kind of recovery mode and do it from there.

atheist · 06-12-2004, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by david_ross
mkfs will actually format the partition and remove all of your data so I suggest you make a good backup and then use a live cd or the first CD for your distro which usually has some kind of recovery mode and do it from there.

Ugh. Good thing I hadn't done it on my /usr and download partitions... Thanks man.

Some kind of recovery mode? And do it from there? Could I do it from there without erasing all my data? How would I go about it then?

david_ross · 06-13-2004, 11:15 AM

You will not be able to do it without removing the data. The filesystems are very different so writing conversion tools would be difficult. The only 2 conversions that I know can be done are:
ext2->ext3 (using tune2fs - I think this can be done in reverse too)
fat32->ntfs (using convert.exe)