I have 2 TB of data on an NTFS drive which I would like to convert to EXT4 filesystem. My OS runs on a (comparatively) small 60GB SSD. Is there any way to convert the filesystem, apart from backing up and reformatting?
I have 2 TB of data on an NTFS drive which I would like to convert to EXT4 filesystem. My OS runs on a (comparatively) small 60GB SSD. Is there any way to convert the filesystem, apart from backing up and reformatting?
Just for the record, there is a software (actually, a mini-distro) that does exactly the procedure arrange said in enzotib's answer:
It looks like a direct conversion from NTFS to ext4, but internally the procedures are:
So the more occupied your NTFS partition is, the longer it will take. If it is less than 50%, it will convert in one pass, in a single shrink-copy-enlarge iteration.
Although Parted Magic conveniently automates all of this, it is still essentially the same procedures described by arrange, so it is very risky and very time consuming. Backup-format-restore is much safer and much faster.