Convert FAT32 to ext3?

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Tue Aug 16 20:59:17 UTC 2005


On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 10:34:16AM -0400, Steve wrote:
> I have a large FAT32 partition with still a bunch of stuff on it, that I 
> want to convert to ext3. Is this possible, keeping the data on it? I'm 
> trying to avoid burning onto a bunch of DVDs!

Assuming the filesystem is not full but has some space left, you could
try something like:

1: Shrink FAT32 filesystem with a partition resizing tool as much as
   you can, then create a new partition in the free space and make an ext3
   filesystem there,  Move as many files as you can from fat32 to ext3.

2: Shrink fat32 filesystem as much as you can after moving files.
   Enlarge ext3 as much as you can.  Move as many more files as you can.

3: Repeat step 2 until FAT32 is empty.

4: Remove fat32 partition and resize ext3 to full size.

Buying another HD or even borrowing one from a friend to use as
temporary storage would be much faster and simpler of course.

There is a filesystem convertion tool for linux that does this for you
without using multiple partitions, but it has the requirement that the
source filesystem supports sparse files, and fat32 doesn't, so it won't
work for your case.

Lennart Sorensen
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