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Forum Discussion
albback
Oct 24, 2019Aspirant
cannot free up storage on nas box
help when i delete files my remaining storage does not change(increase)
- Oct 31, 2019
firmware 6.10.2 the latest one, OMG thank you stephen,its working im doing a balance at the moment have retreive nearly 1.5 TB so im more than happy,i will change from never to custom 3 month after i delete one more snapshot which will leave me the latest one.can i back up to a external hard drive.i cannot thank you enough for you help.i will look into what you are recommending and no doubt you will be helping me again.
Regards
Alan
JohnCM_S
Oct 30, 2019NETGEAR Employee Retired
Hi albback,
Do you have the snapshots enabled?
You can try running a volume balance. You can find that option under System > Volumes then click the gear icon on your volume then select Balance.
Regards,
albback
Oct 31, 2019Aspirant
snapshot is set to daily.i only have 160GB out of 3 TB,can you help ,it looks like i snapshots from Jan2014 to 31 Oct 2019
- albbackOct 31, 2019Aspirant
Hi John.Thank you for your help
cheers
Al
- StephenBOct 31, 2019Guru - Experienced User
albback wrote:
snapshot is set to daily.i only have 160GB out of 3 TB,can you help ,it looks like i snapshots from Jan2014 to 31 Oct 2019
That's likely the issue then. If you don't have a backup of your data, you should take care of that first. BTRFS can misbehave if it runs out of free space, so your data is at risk. If you don't have a backup disk handy, then disable snapshots for now, and avoid writing more data to the NAS until you can make one.
Delete all the snapshots you don't care about (starting with the oldest). You do that from using the web UI - just select them, and right-click. You'll see a delete option. It will take some time for the space to come back after you delete them. After you get some space back, run another balance.
Another option (IMO better) is to do a factory default, reconfigure the NAS and restore the data from your backup. There have been improvements to the BTRFS file system setup since 2014, so you likely would see faster performance if you rebuild the NAS (especially on an RN102). If your firmware is very old, then update it after the factory default, and then do a second factory default.
You can prevent this problem from recurring by switching over to "custom" snapshots and explicitly setting retention. I set most of my shares to 3 months retention - which keeps the snapshot space reasonable for me. Though this does depend on how much file deletion or in-place modification you do. Shares that are used for torrent downloads or which hold on-line databases should have snapshots disabled.
Or of course disable snapshots altogether. Though I do find them useful, so I wouldn't do that myself.
- albbackOct 31, 2019Aspirant
hi Stephen.
im deleting all snapshots apart from 30/10/19 and 30/10/19 in all my folders,when will i get some storage back also can i add another hard drive without losing everything that is on the drive i already have.
cheers
Al
- StephenBOct 31, 2019Guru - Experienced User
albback wrote:im deleting all snapshots apart from 30/10/19 and 30/10/19 in all my folders,when will i get some storage back
What firmware are you running?
I don't want to harp on the need for backups too much, but you do need to understand that your data is particularly at risk at the moment (and even if you add a second disk, RAID-1 isn't enough to keep your data safe). A lot of people who've posted here have learned that lesson the hard way. Backups are less expensive than data recovery, and data recovery often doesn't get your data back.
I'm not sure how long it will take to get all the storage back - it runs as a background activity. But you should start to see it climb fairly quickly (less than an hour).
albback wrote:
also can i add another hard drive without losing everything that is on the drive i already have.
The process for adding a disk depends on the goal. Is your goal to add more storage capacity, or is your goal to get RAID-1 protection from a routine disk failure?
If you are using the default XRAID, then hot-inserting a second (blank) disk will add it to the existing volume. You'll see no space increase, instead the volume will end up protected as RAID-1. If the current disk is healthy, there will be no data loss. If the current disk has errors (perhaps not detected yet), the volume might fail, and there will be data loss. The new disk needs to be at least as large as the one you already have installed ( 3 TB?). I recommend NAS-purposed disks for the RN100 series - WD Reds or Seagate Ironwolf. I don't recommend desktop drives for any NAS, and IMO enterprise drives are over-kill for that NAS.
If you want more space, then you'd turn off XRAID before you hot-insert the new disk. Then you'd create a second (jbod) volume for the new disk. You create some shares on each volume (possibly moving some of your existing shares to the new one). Generally speaking, you want to balance the free space so it is approximately the same on both volumes. With BTRFS you really don't want to get more than about 80% full - especially if snapshots are enabled.
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