Re: Snapshots shows "0" even though I see many snapshots in the shares
RN528X shows 0 snapshots (pic below), even though when I go into the individual shares (clicking the settings wheel and clicking "Recover" to see the snapshots), I see tons of snapshots for every share. My RN212 is displaying the same way, i.e., "0" Snapshots even though there are many snapshots in the Recover lists.
My RN424 shows 1.94TB of snapshots, which more in line with what I would expect. I don't know how to determine if the number is accurate but it surely isn't 0.
Is this a bug? Or am I missing something?
I started looking at this because my RN424 is complaining that it only has 921GB left out of 10.85TB space. I started looking into Snapshots to see if I could free up space, which led me to take a look at the other 2 NAS boxes... which show "0"... I ran a "balance" on my RN424, that actually reduced space slightly (by about 20 GB). I also removed over 1 TB of data from the RN424 but the free space didn't budge at all. Confusing.
@jimk1963 wrote:
I started looking at this because my RN424 is complaining that it only has 921GB left out of 10.85TB space.
If you use "smart" snapshots, you will eventually run into this problem. That's because the monthly snapshots are never deleted.
I always recommend using custom snapshots instead, and explicitly set retention. I use 3 months for most of my shares. That can be adjusted to create the balance you want between retention and disk space. I also use the setting to only take snapshots when there are changes to the main share, in order to reduce the clutter.
@jimk1963 wrote:
RN528X shows 0 snapshots (pic below), even though when I go into the individual shares (clicking the settings wheel and clicking "Recover" to see the snapshots), I see tons of snapshots for every share.
This is not a count of snapshots - it is the total amount of disk space that is allocated to snapshots.
If you want to see this information, you need to click on the volume settings wheel and make sure that "Quota" is checked for the volume. Note this does not actually set quota limits for any shares (the setting name is misleading).
@jimk1963 wrote:
I ran a "balance" on my RN424, that actually reduced space slightly (by about 20 GB). I also removed over 1 TB of data from the RN424 but the free space didn't budge at all. Confusing.
(a) did you delete any snapshots on the RN424 before you ran the balance?
(b) The data you deleted from the main share will still be in any snapshots taken before the deletion. So the free space won't change.
I suggest picking a reasonable retention period, and then delete all the snapshots for each share that were taken before the retention period. Run the balance again after you've deleted them. Generally if you want to reclaim space, the best strategy is to delete the oldest snapshots first.
Thanks @StephenB :
1) Yes all 3 NAS are using Smart Snapshots. I had read your earlier posts explaining the use of customized snapshots. I was investigating that when I came across this "0" snapshot issue.
2) Understand the snapshot number is the allocation in bytes - it's part of the overall disk allocation (which the pie chart also shows). What doesn't make sense is, on the RN528X and RN212, I can see many snapshots in the various shares, by going to Settings --> Recover , which brings up a list of snapshots. Since there are a bunch of snapshots, for every share, this number should not be 0. It should be a significant number of gigabytes.
3) Re: "quota" checkbox in Volume Settings to display the Snapshots cumulative size, I inspected all 3 NAS boxes:
- RN528X: quota box is checked (shows "0" for snapshots)
- RN424: quota box is checked (shows 292GB for snapshots - more on that later)
- RN212: quota box is unchecked (shows "0" for snapshots)
On the RN212, I checked the quota box, and restarted the NAS. It came back up with "0" snapshots again.
On the RN528X, I unchecked/re-checked the quota box, hit "Apply", and restarted that NAS. It too came back up with "0" snapshots again. Maybe it takes some time for snapshot sizing to appear?
Re: the RN424, something miraculous happened. I made only one change this morning, which was to delete a single snapshot file from one share (Documents), the oldest snapshot in the list, from November 18. After the deletion, I observed no change in Free Space nor Snapshots size. As it happens, I had to head out for appointments. I returned 4 hours later, and the RN424 has managed to freed up a ton of space - way more than that snapshot could have provided (the Documents share has barely been touched in months). All of a sudden my snapshots dropped by 600+GB and my Free Space jumped up by 1.6TB - huge! I'm speculating that the file deletions I made a few days ago (coincidentally about 1.6TB worth) finally showed up in the volume allocation. Not sure why it would take days, and also not sure why it wouldn't have been cleaned up by the "Balance" that I ran yesterday. The NAS was in "red" territory with <10% space remaining, perhaps in that state it takes much much longer for major file deletions to be accounted for... ??? Weird. But I'll take it!
