Ideas for conversion/data backup

I am getting rid of my linux home server for a windows based server, maybe whs 2k11. In any case, I have about 1tb of data that I have spent a day transfering to a 2 tb drive... only to realize that the drive is formatted ext3/4. So for obvious reasons, I need to get a drive formatted NTFS. So i'm looking for options on how to get from start to finish in as least time as possible. assume 2 current drives formatted ext3/4.

So far i've had some ideas:
Convert a disk to FAT32 and move files- then convert other disk to NTFS and move back. Problem: FAT32 doesnt support files over 4GB, which I do have.

NTFS-3G- Im not sure of its performance or if it can be used to accomplish this goal.

thoughts/ideas?

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ratbuddy

Is there anything else on the 2TB drive? Why not just use gparted or whatever to make it NTFS, then recopy the data?

edit: Or install Windows on the new drive, then copy over the data with ext2fsd.. Had to switch my OS just now to make sure this worked, and it does

SephStorm

the 2 TB currently has all the data, are you saying use GParted on the smaller disk to make it NTFS, and copy the data over? Hmm, it looks like gparted can access both ext3/4 and NTFS, and can be run live... seems like a decent idea. Anyone foresee any issues?

ratbuddy

Ahh, I thought you had a blank 2TB and a 1TB full of stuff to copy over. Anyway, the process should be the same. The only thing to (maybe) watch out for is filenames that are ok in Linux but not Windows. I can't remember offhand if that'll be an issue.

SephStorm

Ugh, used gparted last night. Not a bad app, the problem is it detected the file system on the drive as NTFS, and it wouldnt mount it because it got a correupted GPT partition error of some kind, ill post it later.

I was able to format the 1TB to NTFS last night and install WHS, which detected the partition on the drive as unknown.

What I need is something that will let me mount the drives side by side and I can just move the files over.

ratbuddy

Install Ext2Fsd Project on the Windows install and you should be able to read the ext3 partition.

SephStorm

thank you, I will try that tonight.

SephStorm

ratbuddy wrote: »

Install Ext2Fsd Project on the Windows install and you should be able to read the ext3 partition.

That was a god send last night, worked well, I've got most of what I need copied over, but right now while I can see the files, it is saying unable to read from disk when I try to copy them over. When I get off work I will try again, get my critical files.