[FC5] Change file system & merge drive without lossing data???

[Deepak Shrestha]

> I have no idea whether this actually works, and it is risky under any
> circumstances, however you may want to look at the following.  It
> won't help you merge the two file systems without substantial work,
> since you need to be concerned about overlapping inode numbers, etc.:
>
>
> http://anyfs-tools.sourceforge.net/
>
> anyfs-tools - toolset for recovering and converting filesystems and
>               recovering data from a block device.
>
> ...
>
> Convert filesystems
>
>     anyfs-tools anyfs-tools allows a user to convert filesystems. There
>     is only one requirement for the existing source filesystem: there
>     must be FIBMAP system call ioctl(2) support in the filesystem driver
>     (maybe read-only) for Linux OS.
>
>     Currently anyfs-tools supports filesystem conversion to ext2fs/ext3fs
>     or xfs, but it's hoped that in future there will be other filesystem
>     building support. For this to happen, there must first be interest
>     from filesystem maintainers and developers. The advantage of
>     anyfs-tools is that it is a convenient tool and does not require
>     much free space for saving of all of the meta-data for files ably
>     increase the number of users of a particular supported filesystem.
>
>     Generally, the steps to convert an existing filesystem are as follows:
>
>     1) build_it for reading all informaton about the physical location
>        of files on a disk and file access permissions, then saving that
>        information to an external inode table.
>
>     2) maybe anyfs driver for clear some space for new filesystem.
>
>     3) maybe reblock for changing filesystem blocksize where the
>        destination filesystem doesn't support the same blocksize as the
>        source one.
>
>     4) Finally, build a filesystem by using build_e2fs or build_xfs.
>
>     The whole converting process maybe automated with using the
>     anyconvertfs script.
>
> Regards,
>
>         Bill Rugolsky
>

Thanks bill for something new but it seems bit complicated. Though it
is good for learning, I can't afford to do this right now. I guess I
will use the older method for right now.

Thanks again!