I have 3 disk which i would like to format from reiserfs to xfs. My question is, do I need to move the data off the drives to do this or is there a easy way? Idon't mind doing one at a time as I have enough space to move data around if needed.

 

https://ibb.co/nPWf5hY

 

 

11 minutes ago, rcmpayne said:

My question is, do I need to move the data off the drives to do this or is there a easy way?

Yes.   A format will remove any existing files/directories on the drive.

 

So you will need to copy the contents to somewhere else, reformat a drive and then copy the contents back onto the newly formatted drive.

There's a pinned thread discussing exactly that, you can read it for some ideas:

 

 

2 hours ago, remotevisitor said:

Yes.   A format will remove any existing files/directories on the drive.

 

So you will need to copy the contents to somewhere else

Can "somewhere else" be another drive in the array? Example:

 

1. Use terminal to move data from Disk1 to Disk2

2. Format the drive1 to XFS

3. Add the drive back to the array?

13 minutes ago, rcmpayne said:

Can "somewhere else" be another drive in the array?

Yes. That is what most do.

Yes.

 

the steps are more like ...

1. Move data from disk1 to disk2.

2. Put array into maintenance mode.

3. Format disk1 to XFS.

4 Start array.

 

disk1 was never removed from the array so no need to add it back.