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Wanye_7300

Member

Registered: 2025-06-16

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] (WSL2) How (or Can I) convert my WSL2 filesystem to btrfs?

I want to convert my filesystem (currently ext4) to btrfs on my Arch Linux WSL subsystem. Is this possible? Since this is WSL, methods like chrooting from a LiveCD or re-registering (which is like reinstalling) likely won't work—the latter because it still gives you an ext4 system after re-registering.

Thanks! If this isn't the right place to discuss Arch Linux on WSL, please let me know.

Last edited by Wanye_7300 (2025-06-16 15:08:46)

Antiz

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From: France

Registered: 2022-06-04

Posts: 11

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Re: [SOLVED] (WSL2) How (or Can I) convert my WSL2 filesystem to btrfs?

Hi,

As far as I know that is not possible (or rather there is no officially supported way to do so at least).

From Microsoft WSL official documentation:

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2) uses a virtualization platform to install Linux distributions alongside the host Windows operating system, creating a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) to store files for each of the Linux distributions that you install. These VHDs use the ext4 file system type and are represented on your Windows hard drive as an ext4.vhdx file.

Ext4 is the default filesystem used (and most likely expected) by WSL and, as far as I can tell, they do not provide any tool / way to switch to another filesystem.

Last edited by Antiz (2025-06-16 15:04:21)

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Wanye_7300

Member

Registered: 2025-06-16

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] (WSL2) How (or Can I) convert my WSL2 filesystem to btrfs?

Hi,

As far as I know that is not possible (or rather there is no officially supported way to do so at least).

From Microsoft WSL official documentation:

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2) uses a virtualization platform to install Linux distributions alongside the host Windows operating system, creating a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) to store files for each of the Linux distributions that you install. These VHDs use the ext4 file system type and are represented on your Windows hard drive as an ext4.vhdx file.

Ext4 is the default filesystem used (and most likely expected) by WSL and, as far as I can tell, they do not provide any tool / way to switch to another filesystem.

Got it, thanks!

mhegreberg

Member

Registered: 2025-06-16

Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] (WSL2) How (or Can I) convert my WSL2 filesystem to btrfs?

The documentation on the WSL CLI tool says it only supports ext4:

if you're feeling really adventurous, you could try to create a blank btrfs VHDX, manually build the WSL image, copy the files onto it, and see what happens. I suspect this will not work, and would certainly be unsupported by either Microsoft or Arch.