Should I convert partitions to ext 4 after installing pclinuxos 2010?

[ternor]

I raised this question in another thread before realising that the thread was in the 'fun' section.  I would appreciate confirmation of the action I should take.

I want to retain my 2009 installation as a backup after installing 2010.  I gather that 2010 will use ext 4 for all partitions.  I would prefer not to format my /data and /home partitions and I want to be able to use those partitions for both 2009 and 2010.  I was referred to an article about ext 4.

I drew the conclusion that after installing 2010, I should log in as root, unmount /data and /home and run the two commands, tune2fs and fsck.  For "/dev/yourfilesystem" I should substitute "/dev/sda1" [home] and "dev/sda7" [data].  I thought that, if I do that, those partitions could not be mounted by pclinuxos 2009 so, unless I see some benefit in converting the partitions to ext 4, I should leave them as ext 3, in which case they can be mounted by 2009 as well as 2010.

I think I may be wrong and that 2009 could mount the ext 4 partitions as well.  What is the situation?

[marian]

I raised this question in another thread before realising that the thread was in the 'fun' section.  I would appreciate confirmation of the action I should take.

I want to retain my 2009 installation as a backup after installing 2010.  I gather that 2010 will use ext 4 for all partitions.  I would prefer not to format my /data and /home partitions and I want to be able to use those partitions for both 2009 and 2010.  I was referred to an article about ext 4.

I drew the conclusion that after installing 2010, I should log in as root, unmount /data and /home and run the two commands, tune2fs and fsck.  For "/dev/yourfilesystem" I should substitute "/dev/sda1" [home] and "dev/sda7" [data].  I thought that, if I do that, those partitions could not be mounted by pclinuxos 2009 so, unless I see some benefit in converting the partitions to ext 4, I should leave them as ext 3, in which case they can be mounted by 2009 as well as 2010.

I think I may be wrong and that 2009 could mount the ext 4 partitions as well.  What is the situation?

As far sa I know you can't mount ext4 with PClinuxOS 2009 1 or 2 as live CD because of an older kernel which has no ext4 support.
And I think ext4 will be the default file system but you can chose ext3 if you wish.
I already converted all of my ext3 to ext4 except /. Waiting for PCLOS 2010 to do that.

[Xenaflux]

Backward compatibility
    The ext4 filesystem is backward compatible with ext3 and ext2, making it possible to mount ext3 and ext2 filesystems as ext4. This will already slightly improve performance, because certain new features of ext4 can also be used with ext3 and ext2, such as the new block allocation algorithm.

    The ext3 file system is partially forward compatible with ext4, that is, an ext4 filesystem can be mounted as an ext3 partition (using "ext3" as the filesystem type when mounting). However, if the ext4 partition uses extents (a major new feature of ext4), then the ability to mount the file system as ext3 is lost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4

[muungwana]

I want to retain my 2009 installation as a backup after installing 2010.  I gather that 2010 will use ext 4 for all partitions.  I would prefer not to format my /data and /home partitions and I want to be able to use those partitions for both 2009 and 2010.  I was referred to an article about ext 4.

2010 will default to creating ext4 partitions when partitions are created. It will still have ext3 support and can still handle that file system. You will not be required to convert them to ext4 and you can keep them just the way they are if you dont have any complains with them and you can convert them sometime in the future when you are bored or when you have time and just feel like tinkering.

leave them as ext3 and you wont have to worry about what system you are running and if they have ext4 support or not

[ternor]

Many thanks for the replies.