Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive

[William Kenworthy]

On 25/8/22 06:45, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
>> [..]
>> Also, if you're using ext2/3/4, there's the preset, i.e. if you're
>> rather sure about what kind of data is going to be on there, you
>> can tune it so that it reserves more or less place for metadata like
>> inodes, which can be another bit.
> When I format a partition (and I usually use ext4, with some f2fs mingled in
> on flash bashed devices), I always set the inode count myself, because the
> default was always much too high. Like 15 m on a 40 GiB partition or so. My
> arch root partition has 2 m inodes in total, 34 % of which are in use for a
> full-fledged KDE setup. That’s sufficient.
>
> On Gentoo, I might give it some more for the ever-growing portage directory.
> But even a few percent on a 10 TB drive amount to many gigabytes.
>
Keep in mind ext4 is created with a fixed number of inodes - you cant 
change it once its created so you have to deal with reformatting the 
filesystem and replacing the data.  Just another reason to use something 
more modern - running out of inodes, especially on a large disk is not a 
minor matter as you have to find somewhere to copy/store the data so you 
can reformat the disk with more inodes and then put it back.  I seem to 
remember the last time it happened to me (its not an uncommon event) I 
had to deal with mass corruption too.

On the other hand, at one inode per file and Dale primarily storing 
large media files it may be safe to reduce them.

BillK