Is there a way to convert filesystem to Btrfs?
btrfs-convert will recreate filesystem metadata in your partition’s free disk space, while keeping all existing ext4 data at its current location. Unfortunately, the amount of free space required cannot be known ahead – the conversion will just fail (and do no harm) if you don’t have enough. Here are some useful ideas for freeing up space:
Can you convert Fedora live image to Btrfs?
Since you can’t convert mounted filesystems, we’ll be working from a Fedora live image. Install Fedora Media Writer and ‘burn’ Fedora 33 to your favorite USB stick. btrfs-convert will recreate filesystem metadata in your partition’s free disk space, while keeping all existing ext4 data at its current location.
How to recover files from Btrfs snapshots?
See also on Fedora Magazine: Reclaim hard-drive space with LVM, Recover your files from Btrfs snapshots and Choose between Btrfs and LVM-ext4. It’s advisable to read at least the following to have a basic understanding about what Btrfs is about.
Can you delete files from a Btrfs partition?
Due to the copy-on-write nature of Btrfs, you can otherwise safely copy, move and even delete files, create subvolumes, because ext2_saved keeps referencing to the old data. Now the partition is supposed to have btrfs file system.
What is the usage value for Btrfs balance?
Balances only block groups with usage under the given percentage. The value of 0 is allowed and will clean up completely unused block groups, this should not require any new work space allocated. You may want to use usage=0 in case balance is returning ENOSPC and your filesystem is not too full.
Is the Btrfs balance start command deprecated?
Note: A short syntax btrfs balance works due to backward compatibility but is deprecated and should not be used any more. Use btrfs balance start command instead. Balancing operations are very IO intensive and can also be quite CPU intensive, impacting other ongoing filesystem operations.
Why do I need a section profile in Btrfs?
For the constraints of the profiles please refer to mkfs.btrfs (8) , section PROFILES. The way balance operates, it usually needs to temporarily create a new block group and move the old data there, before the old block group can be removed. For that it needs the work space, otherwise it fails for ENOSPC reasons.