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I currently have 3 external USB drives in NTFS mounted to my Ubuntu box that i just took off my windows box. Looking to permanently convert them to a Nix partition but i dont have the spare hard drive space to back up, format, restore the data.

Referring to this existing article...

Convert filesystem NTFS -> EXT4?

The top answer is referring to using parted magic to convert the partitions to ext3/4, does this micro-distro work with external USB drives?

I have ZERO issue buying if it serves my purpose but there is no demo and its doesn't explicitly say its USB functional other then to boot from it.

Many Thanks

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random australian
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1 Answers1

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There is no tool that will "convert" a NTFS file system to EXT4 in place. Even if it existed, it would be extremely dangerous. Handling data is serious business, I guess you do not want to play russian roulette with your important files.

The procedure described in that answer can be replicated manually but it is still a workaround and it will only work if you have some free space on the drive. "Some" means slightly more than the size of the biggest file you have.

Nevertheless, the answer is pretty clear:

it is very risky and very time consuming

You have been warned.

Regarding Parted Magic:

Does this micro-distro work with external USB drives?

Sure, it's a Linux distro. It has excellent support for USB drives and many kinds of file systems.

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Andrea Lazzarotto
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  • from what i been able to research up.. apparently linux has no issues with ntfs so i'll just leave the drives as they are for now and might look at changing them when i buy another external drive so i have the space to move the data around – random australian May 30 '16 at 03:47
  • I agree that is a reasonable choice. I use NTFS for my external drive as well. – Andrea Lazzarotto May 30 '16 at 09:30