Change Partition Type

[Mark]

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Keith Clark
<keithclark at waterloohosting.com> wrote:
> Is it possible to change my partition on my USB drive from NTFS to ext3
> or ext4 without losing data?
>
Sure - back it up, change the file system and restore the files!  :-)

Seriously, why would you be using either NTFS or ext3 on a flash
drive?  Neither one is particularly portable unless you NEVER use a
system that doesn't understand your choice.  (OTOH, that *is* one way
to secure a flash drive from use on Windoze machines....)

I don't believe I've ever heard of a file system conversion like that
that "just works."  If you're going from ext2-ext3-ext4 to one of the
others on that list, maybe, but when you're changing the basic
structure of a file system from any base format to any different base
format, no.  IIRC, even the utilities that "let" you do something like
that require enough temporary space to back up your data before the
conversion.

I stand quite ready to be corrected on this.

Mark