Converting ext3 to ext4

In the Linux world one is currently a little stuck with Ext4. Since the author of ReiserFS went into jail there is not much development happening with Reiser4 (and the plugin stuff was highly controversy anyway, I just would have wanted the FS basics, without the fancy plugin glue, anyway), and as the BetterFS is not quite there yet, your best bet in the near future gotta be Ext4, …

Fortunately there is a way to convert your existing Ext*FS to Ext4:

tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/theDevice
fsck -pDf /dev/theDevice

You could also just remount it with -t ext4, however this only gives you some of the new features (e.g. delayed allocations, etc.), but not the other, on-disk format changing goodies (extends et al.).

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