Re: vfat to ext3 without data loss

On 4/6/06, Mike McCarty <Mike.McCarty@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Frank Lanitz wrote:
> Am Donnerstag 06 April 2006 10:48 schrieb Mirco Piccin:
>
>>But a stupid question as mine was, is finalized to know if is possible
>>convert the vfat filesystem without backup/copy in other location!!
>>If there's no way to do this, of course i'll backup/copy data before
>>formatting in ext3 HD!
>
>
> Still a real bad idea.
>
> But maybe
> http://bolug.uni-bonn.de/archive/mailinglisten/BoLUG/2003-09/msg00388.html
> gives you some tip.
>
> Kid's, you better don't try this at home! :)
>
> Frank
>

For those who don't speak German, here's a translation of the key
part...

10 FAT-Partition auf Mindestgröße schrumpfen
20 im freien Bereich ext2-Partition anlegen
30 Linux booten, soviele Daten wie passen verschieben
40 wieder DOS/PartitionMagic starten
50 FAT-Partition auf Mindestgröße schrumpfen
60 ext2-Partiton so weit wie es geht vergrößern
70 goto 30

10 shrink the FAT-Partition to the smallest size possible
20 in the free space create an ext2-Partition
30 boot Linux, and copy over as many files as will fit
40 start DOS/Partitionmagic again
50 shrink the FAT-Partition to the smallest size possible
60 enlarge the ext2-Partition as much as possible
70 goto 30

I suppose one should delete the copied files and defrag.

I agree with the admonishment that this is not for the
faint of heart. I'd do a backup first, anyway. I suppose
one could use a compressed format for the files. Say,
compress one directory at a time using PKZIP like

C:\> pkzip -a -ex -p -r some_dir some_dir\*.*
C:\> pkunzip -t some_dir
C:\> deltree/y some_dir

On the Linux side, one could use

$ cd copied_files
$ mkdir some_dir
$ cd some_dir
$ unzip -La ../some_dir

I believe that there is also a TAR for MSDOS around somewhere.

Another possibility is to copy off to another Linux machine, using
SAMBA and MSCLIENT or LANMAN for MSDOS. I've got an MSDOS machine
which can do that set up now. It wasn't easy, but it works.

Or, if you are starting from Windows, then it sets up easily using
a share on one side, and SAMBA on the other.

By far, the best way to go, if you simply refuse to do a backup,
is simply to buy/borrow/beg/steal another disc and do a copy using
Linux. After all data have been verified correct, reformat the original
disc and copy back. Then return the borrowed disc.

Mike
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