I'm planning to transition my Plex server from Windows 11 to Linux Mint. I have an old system that I've upgraded to Windows 11, but I've been experimenting with Linux Mint and really like it. My main use for the system will be Plex and some web browsing. Currently, I have a 1TB HDD as the OS drive, which I'm upgrading to a 2TB SSD. This part seems straightforward.
However, my media drive is a 12TB NTFS drive, with only 4.17TB of it being used. I want to switch this media drive to ext4 format without having to buy a new drive for the migration. I've read that Linux can sometimes struggle with NTFS drives, so I'm considering a process where I shrink the NTFS partition to about 5TB, then create an ext4 partition, copy/move the files over, unmount the NTFS, delete it, and finally resize the NTFS back to full capacity. I'm aware of the risks, but I'm curious about any potential issues I might have overlooked in this plan.
1 Answer
Switching the filesystem while your files are still there is risky, and there's a good chance something could go wrong. That said, Linux does a great job with NTFS these days, so I'd say stick with what you've got unless you really need to switch it. Just back everything up in case things go sideways!
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