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On Tue, 25 Dec 2012 07:41:01 -0800 |
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Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote: |
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|
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> Hi, |
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> Merry Christmas to all. |
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> |
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> Upgrading an external USB2 drive at home this Christmas morning to |
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> 1TB for more video storage space. One large partition, non-raid, files |
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> are around 1GB. The drive holds only static video files that get |
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> written once and don't change or get erased. No MythTV stuff or |
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> anything like that. |
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> |
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> This disk reside on my main desktop machine and gets backed up |
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> every couple of days to another USB2 drive (FAT formatted |
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> unfortunately) which attaches to the TV. |
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> |
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> With the previous local drive I used ext3 and have had no problems. |
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> I'm just wondering if there's a better choice & why. |
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|
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|
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I am *very* impressed with ZFS for this. Yes, I know, it's not really |
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there on Linux - I use it on FreeBSD (FreeNAS). |
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|
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It has everything I've wanted in a filesystem for a long time, and all |
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the crap I've stuffed into my head over many years related to storage |
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just goes away. It doesn't go to some place I don't have to deal with |
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it, it just ceases to exist. Very nice. |
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|
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There is no more weird partitions from the days of DOS, no PV/VG/LV to |
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remember the details of. There is only storage and ZFS knows what I |
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want to happen with each "chunk" of it. A "chunk" (my term) in this |
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context is a directory and everything below it. |
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|
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ZFS doesn't have partitions and filesystems. It has volumes. A volume |
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is sort of a cross between a filesystem (you mount it and can assign |
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quotas to it) and a directory (you assign permissions and ownerships to |
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it). You can overcommit storage space and quotas - you do not get "disk |
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full" errors and three days of nightmares while you figure out how to |
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deal with this. the FS just tells you it used more than the allocated |
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space and keeps telling you till you get it under the limit. |
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|
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mv'ing a few TB of video to a different FS to free up space is not fun |
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at all, but with ZFS it's like an mv on the same FS (that volume thing |
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again). It checksums every write and lets you know if things fail. It |
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has proper snapshots built in - that's proper as in copy-on-write so |
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they don't really take up space until you start modifying files. Your |
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media collection is like mine - I only add to it and seldom delete, so |
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I have months of snapshots that consume about 1% extras space. Dale's |
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rm problem cannot happen to me anymore hehehehe ;-) |
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|
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In summary, it does everything I want and does it well. It can also do |
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other things I don't want but others might (eg de-dupe). |
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|
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-- |
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Alan McKinnon |
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alan.mckinnon@×××××.com |