Re: Converting a partition from NTFS to Ext3

[Alvin Oga <aoga@ns.Linux-Consulting.com>]

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Frederico Rodrigues Abraham wrote:

> 	Hi.
> 	How can i do this without losing the data on my NTFS partition?
> 	This is the final step for moving completely from windows to linux! yay!
> 	Thanks

assuming your current kernel supports ntfs format
and you have lots of free space some place

mount [ -t ntfs ] /dev/hdaxxx /mnt/ntfs
	- du /mnt/ntfs		-- tells you how much spare space you need

cd /mnt/ntfs ; tar zcf /some-place-with-tons-of-space/ntfs.tgz *

umount /mnt/ntfs

#
# be sure you have your data saved first ... 
#
mke2fs -j /dev/hdaxxx

mount /dev/hdaxxx /mnt/ntfs
cd /mnt/ntfs ; tar zxvfp -  /some-place-with-tons-of-space/ntfs.tgz

sync ; umount /mnt/ntfs

put the data where you want it ... /mnt/real-ntfs-mount

c ya
alvin