windows 7 - Is it possible to reformat an NTFS drive as Ext3 while keeping the data intact?

04
2013-08
  • AngryHacker

    I have a 2 TB drive with about 900 GB of data on it. I'd like to convert it to ext3. I understand that there is no way to actually do it. So I'd like to try the following:

    1. Shrink the 2TB partition to 1TB.
    2. Create a new partition and format it as ext3.
    3. Copy the data from the NTFS partition to the ext3 partition (I am not clear on how to do this).
    4. Once the data is copied, delete the NTFS partition.
    5. Extend the ext3 partition to include the newly empty space.

    My questions:

    1. Am I going about it the right way? Will this work? Is there a better approach that I should try?
    2. Is there an app that allows me access to both NTFS and ext3 partitions? I am on Windows 7.
    3. What apps will I need to do what I outlined?
    4. What are the chances of me losing data with this approach?
    • Answers
  • Renan

    This should work; but as always, when dealing with hard drives, backups are a good idea and you will not have to despair about chances of losing data. (anecdotal evidence: I never lost any critical data when modifying partitions, but I might just have been lucky).

    As for apps, you can read ext3 in Windows using this utility, but you are better working from a Linux live-CD like Ubuntu or GParted (the ext3 support will be much better, and NTFS works well for read-only use).


    • Related Question

    linux - Should I use VFAT or ext3 for a 1Tb external usb hard drive?
  • ihuston

    I have a 1 Tb USB external hard drive which I want to use to backup data from my home and office desktops (both running Linux).
    Should I format the drive (possibly split into a few partitions) as vfat or ext3?

    I don't anticipate using the drive with Windows very often so this is not a primary concern. The main thing holding me back from just using ext3 is the problems you can have when two different users (home and work accounts) try to access each others data.
    Is there any way to mount an ext3 drive with user id mapping?


    • Related Answers
  • tj111

    Definitely ext3/4 over VFAT.

    • Ext3/4 are journaling file systems, which means no fragmentation issues.
    • Read/writes will be significantly faster with Ext.
    • VFAT has a 4 GB maximum file-size, which can come back to haunt you when you need to store a large file on it after you already have it loaded up with data.
  • Ludwig Weinzierl

    If you only want to access it from linux I'd go with ext3 at any rate.

    The issues with VFAT are that you will lose much of the overall capacity due to fragmentation and it access will be noticeably slower.

    For the permissions, that has not been much of a problem for me so far. Either I don't care about the permissions, then I make the files world readable on my USB or eSATA drives or I do care then I tar the stuff.