Converting FAT32 to EXT3

Schnippzle · 28 Sep 2008 at 08:55

Howdy,
I have one hard drive in my fileserver which is FAT32. This hard drive is 500gig and only has about 60gig of free space and I wish to convert it to EXT3 without moving the data off the hard drive. I know in windows you can convert a hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS without shifting the data off it but can you do FAT32 to EXT3?

Schnippzle · 28 Sep 2008 at 09:17

uk_viper said:
not that im aware of, but linux based systems can read and write to fat32

Yep, Iv had the FAT32 drive in my linux system for a while now but have never had to use it to store large files until now.

Schnippzle · 28 Sep 2008 at 10:25

masterluke said:
I don't know of a non-destructive way to do FAT32>EXT3, but I know you can do a non-destructive FAT32>NTFS using windows. Maybe you would stick the disk into a windows machine and do that? NTFS supports v large files and ive been using read\write on NTFS using ubuntu for a while without any issues.

Very good point. I may very well have to do that.......but that would mean I would have to use an IDE device in my main rig

Oh the horror!

Schnippzle · 29 Sep 2008 at 09:46

FAT32 isnt allowing me to store 4GB+ files on that partition.

Schnippzle · 29 Sep 2008 at 19:05

JC said:
SNIP!

I could do, but that would take aaaaages and I might as well go with ntfs tbh until I get another hdd in there. Cheers guys!