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Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Jacob
Jacob
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"Converting" a filesystem from ext3 to ext4

I've read on some Q&A on this website that one can "convert" an ext3 filesystem to ext4 without formatting, by issuing

tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/dev-name

And then running fsck.

I have a few questions regarding said operation, which weren't clarified in said Q&As...

  1. Is it really converted, as in "you'd get the same results formatting (except no data loss)"? It just seems strange for me (a layman) that it doesn't require formatting.

  2. Does it matter if you have an "old" version of tune2fs (I'd do it from a live CD - Puppy 5.4 Dec 2012 - but I guess fsck doesn't update that often)?

  3. Is there a significant performance gain by switching from ext3 to ext4 on the boot partition? I didn't want to mess with it and just do the switch on /home, but if there's a big difference I'd do some reading and apply it to the boot partition as well.