Want to move my file server over to linux

ulozas · 12-14-2003, 11:56 AM

I've got a file server with lots of hard drives in it that I want to change to linux. The problem is I don't know jack about linux and all of the harddrives are formatted in ntfs. So I wanted to know if I could install say mandrake and use those ntfs formatted hds?

david_ross · 12-14-2003, 12:05 PM

No. NTFS write support is not stable in linux. I would format them as ext2 or reiser.

ulozas · 12-14-2003, 01:06 PM

Linux newb here. ext2 or reiser? I know of fat32 and ntfs.

ulozas · 12-14-2003, 04:14 PM

J_Szucs · 12-14-2003, 05:49 PM

ext2 and reiser are native linux file system types. These should be preferred. However, you could give it a try with vfat, too, though that would probably not be efficient enough for long time use. Besides, it does not have a file permission system like the native Linux file systems.

ulozas · 12-15-2003, 08:13 AM

Is there anyway known to convert a ntfs partition to either ext2 or reiser without losing the data on the disk. I'm sure there isn't but I have hundreds of gigs of info all on ntfs partitions that I want to move over to either ext2 or reiser but I don't have enough free space to dump a whole harddrive's worth of info.

michaelk · 12-15-2003, 09:25 AM

Nope.