Resizing a file system that has been converted to ext4

[Eric Sandeen]

On 4/7/11 4:08 PM, Sean McCauliff wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have an ext3 file system of about 8TiB in size.  At the rate data
> is added to the file system it will fill up in a few months so I'm
> weighing my options.  One option would be to create a new ext4 file
> system and copy everything over to a new, larger ext4 file system.
> Another option would be to modify the software that uses this file
> system so it can use multiple file systems.  Finally, I could could
> convert the existing file system to ext4 and then resize it.  Is this
> advisable?  Has anyone tried this?
> 
> Thanks, Sean McCauliff

Hi Sean -

Modern ext3 should be have a 16T limit just as ext4 does, so converting to ext4 doesn't really change your max fs size.

However, a fresh ext4 filesystem should in theory be a bit more e2fsck-able at that scale and have the best feature-set.

I always recommend migration rather than conversion when possible; you'll get the best features and performance, and run the most tested codepaths that way.

-Eric