I recently migrated in a 100% from Widnows to Linux. I have managed (at last!) to have everything up and running the way I like it. But since in the windows days I had a partition shared between the two OS's I eded up with a 38 Gb partition in FAT32 format. I have a lot of sensitive data in it and would not risk to loose it, but I *do not* want any M$ remanent in my system, so is there a way to change the FS without destroying the data?

I know I can always do backups, but to do that I would need a new drive, for which I don't have the money at the moment. I've heard Partition Magic can change FS without destroying data, but I think it is a commercial product. Is there any Open Source alternative?

In that case don't risk converting it - copy it to other partitions, computers or CDs then mkfs the partition and copy the data back.

vfat is cool enough to not sound like MS filesystems

Cool

Just what I thought. Thanks anyway, man.

BTW which FS would you recommend me, ext2 or ext3?

Reiser4 has more support coming in 2.6 kernel, I'm gonna give it a try as soon as it comes out

For now, I'd suggest ext3 since it's ext2 with journaling

Cool

Thanks again

since I still use a 2.4 (2.4.20-9) kernel I'll wait for the 2.6 to try a different Journaling FS. BTW didn't IBM developped ReiserFS?

I second MasterC with ext3! I've been seeing some good reports on the forum about jfs so I may try htat myself soon.

I don't think so (but I could be completely wrong). I think IBM developed JFS, the one David mentioned. I think Reiser was developed by someone named Reiser something

I've given XFS a run before, great filesystem, however it was back when I didn't know anything about filesystems nor kernel compiling, and I lost support with a new kernel I compiled since I left out that component, since then I've just used ext3 from pure laziness

Cool

DON'T use Partition Magic !

Bruno

Don't worry, I'll just backup the stuff and mkfs the partition... I see now that lazzyness and sensitive data do not work together.... starting the long process of selecting and uploading/burning data.

Glad you woke up !

Bruno

At last! I have finished backing up and formatting the partition, now... how do I make to mount it under fstab as LABEL=/<partition name>?

hans reiser organized the reiserfs stuff, wrote some and
hired people for most. been in development for years.
fastest for really small files and directories with thousands
of files in them. www.namesys.org? com?
xfs was ported from sgi's unix
jfs from ibm's unix

i've used all three at some point or other and
ext3, cause thats the kind of guy i am. i used
to lose data with ext2 when i would overclock too much.
i don't lose stuff with reiserfs. xfs wouldn't let me-um,
well i backup hard drives with dd from one drive to another, and when i try something crazy, i mount the
backup, and copy back what i hosed, or copy the
whole partition if completely hosed, and xfs wouldn't
let me mount a mirrored filesystem. it has some unique
id or something, and wont let me mount it if the other
is mounted. jfs tested slower for me at some things,
so thats why i stayed with reiser. I also like it's tail
packing, which i use when copying all the files to
a filesystem, but turn off for regular use, for extra speed,
so the reiser uses less space, except on the newly
created files, when mounted with the -notail option.

make a directory name of your choice wherever you want
and add an entry to fstab like your root entry, but
different in the mount point.

Thanks Whansard! I forgot to specify a volume label at formatting stage... so I just mounted as I did vfat I guess I'll have to reformat (or is there any way to rename a volume's id using mkfs?).

tune2fs or man tune2fs

Cool