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From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive storage questions
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2015 17:01:49 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <553FA0DD.1090101@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <553F474E.4040101@gmail.com>

On 28/04/2015 10:39, Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I have a 3TB hard drive that I use for my /home partition.  I'm going to
> be having to expand this before to long, lots of videos on there.  The
> 4TB is a bit pricey and I would end up having to expand that to before
> to long.  So, I got to thinking, why not buy another 3TB drive and just
> add that which would double my space.  I use LVM by the way.  I may try
> BTFS, (sp?).   Either way, adding a drive shouldn't be to much of a
> problem.
> 
> On one hand, adding a drive would double my space.  It would also spread
> out my stuff in the event a drive failed.  On the other hand, one more
> drive to have spinning that could fail too.  These large drives makes me
> wonder sometimes.
> 
> What do you guys, gals too, think about this?  Just add a drive or buy a
> larger drive and move things over?  Or is this a six of one and half
> dozen of the other thing?
> 
> Dale
> 
> 
> 
> P. S.
> 
> 
> Filesystem      	 Size      Used     Avail    Use%     Mounted on
> /dev/mapper/Home2-Home2  2.7T     1.8T      945G      66%     /home
> 
> 
> 


When you're up into the TB range you run a higher risk of losing data
than with disks of a few 100 GB simply because it's bigger and there are
more bits that can flip [1].

When you use only LVM for this and nothing else, you have a high risk of
losing everything if one disk fails. Why? Because LVM decides itself
which extent it will put data on. Maybe a whole file is on one disk,
maybe it's spread across two, because the software is designed so that
you don't have to be concerned with that. The only thing that LVM does
is expand your storage space as a single volume and make it easier to
shuffle things around without having to backup/repartition/restore.

The best solution for you depends on what you need and what you have. If
your disks are full of YouTube videos that you can easily download again
(or stream), maybe you don't care too much. Precious family photos that
can't be replaced? You need to care a lot.

Personally, I like the ZFS approach and do it all in software, catching
errors that RAID misses.
RAID is also an option - 1:1 mirroring works great if you are much more
concerned about data than about cost.

There is no general advice in this area[2], the trick is to understand
the various technologies, fully understand your own needs and budget,
then plan accordingly.



[1] All things being equal that is. A 3TB disk is probably not really
the same as a 500G disk, just bigger. It's safe to assume that disk
manufacturers pat attention to error rates etc and improve their
products over time to make them more reliable. As to by how much - I
don't know.

[2] There is however a vendor's desire to maximize their profit while
still leaving you with warm and fuzzies </sarcasm>

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com



  parent reply	other threads:[~2015-04-28 15:02 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 59+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-04-28  8:39 [gentoo-user] Hard drive storage questions Dale
2015-04-28 14:49 ` Francisco Ares
2015-04-28 15:01 ` Alan McKinnon [this message]
2015-04-28 15:24   ` Neil Bothwick
2015-04-28 17:38     ` Rich Freeman
2015-04-28 18:11       ` Neil Bothwick
2015-04-28 18:31         ` Rich Freeman
2015-04-28 18:41           ` Neil Bothwick
2015-04-28 22:02     ` [gentoo-user] " walt
2015-04-29  1:24       ` Rich Freeman
2015-04-29  6:20       ` Alan McKinnon
2015-04-29 14:31         ` Grant Edwards
2015-04-29  6:13     ` [gentoo-user] " Alan McKinnon
2015-04-29  7:52       ` Neil Bothwick
2015-05-04  7:39         ` Dale
2015-05-04  7:46           ` Neil Bothwick
2015-05-04  8:13             ` Mick
2015-05-04  8:26               ` Dale
2015-05-04  8:23             ` Dale
2015-05-04 10:31               ` Neil Bothwick
2015-05-04 10:40                 ` Dale
2015-05-04 11:26                   ` Neil Bothwick
2015-05-09 10:56                     ` Dale
2015-05-09 12:59                       ` Rich Freeman
2015-05-09 14:46                         ` Todd Goodman
2015-05-09 18:16                           ` Rich Freeman
2015-05-04 11:35                 ` Rich Freeman
2015-05-04 18:42                   ` Nuno Magalhães
2015-05-05  6:41                     ` Alan McKinnon
2015-05-05 10:56                     ` Rich Freeman
2015-05-05 11:33                       ` Neil Bothwick
2015-05-05 12:05                         ` Mick
2015-05-05 12:21                           ` Neil Bothwick
2015-05-05 12:39                             ` Mick
2015-05-05 12:53                             ` Rich Freeman
2015-05-05 21:50                               ` Neil Bothwick
2015-05-05 22:21                                 ` Bill Kenworthy
2015-05-05 22:33                                   ` Bill Kenworthy
2015-05-04 10:57               ` Alan Mackenzie
2015-04-28 15:02 ` Rich Freeman
2015-05-04  7:23 ` Dale
2015-05-05  3:01   ` Walter Dnes
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2018-11-09  1:16 Dale
2018-11-09  1:31 ` Jack
2018-11-09  1:43   ` Dale
2018-11-09  2:04     ` Andrew Lowe
2018-11-09  2:07     ` Bill Kenworthy
2018-11-09  8:39       ` Neil Bothwick
2018-11-09  2:29 ` Rich Freeman
2018-11-09  8:17   ` Bill Kenworthy
2018-11-09 13:25     ` Rich Freeman
2018-11-09  9:02   ` J. Roeleveld
2018-11-11  0:45   ` Dale
2018-11-11 21:41     ` Wol's lists
2018-11-11 22:17       ` Dale
2018-11-09  9:24 ` Wols Lists
2015-04-27  7:41 Dale
2015-04-28 18:25 ` Daniel Frey
2015-04-28 21:23   ` Dale

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