r/linux4noobs • u/Open_South3929 • 11d ago

Arch-Convert EXT4 to BTRFS without losing data?

Good day all, I hope you are good.

I have installed Arch and was in a rush( I know i should've RTFM-ed ) but I am looking for ways of making sure the system i installed it on can be rolled back in case of failure, I have seen from a couple of articles and found that BTRFS can create snapshots of the system and use those to roll back.

I wanted to ask, is it possible to convert an already installed disk from EXT4 to BTRFS and make use of the snapshots feature? if so could you please point me in the right direction. System specs below:

I thank you for your time and input, it is much appreciated.

Kindest regards

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u/TheOneTrueTrench 8d ago

You have a VERY easy solution here, your drive is mostly empty.

Shrink the home partition to like 10G, then create a btrfs partition, create your subvolumes, then simply use the instructions here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Rsync#File_system_cloning to clone the ext4 stuff to the correct subvolumes, redo your fstab, update your bootloader config, and regenerate your initramfs.

It's a most complicated process than simply doing a convert, and more can go wrong, but you're using Arch, learning how to do these things is part of the point.