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Looks like when I go to enable quotas on a Share it gives me the attached message about quotas being disabled on the volumes.
Leave quotas off on the shares - unless you want to limit the amount of storage in the share for some reason.
Quota on the volume doesn't do what you think it does. It improves the btrfs "accounting" so that the file system has more detailed knowledge of how the space is being used. If you want to see the amount of snapshot space, you do need to enable quota on the volume settings wheel. I do want to see those details, so I have volume quota turned on, but share quotas turned off.
That KB is old and appears outdated. You disable taking snapshots by setting the schedule to "never". And of course you can manually delete any old snapshots you want to remove.
BTW, checking "allow snapshot access" also makes the snapshots writable. I recommend not checking that box. You can still access the snapshots from Windows by right-clicking on the file, and looking at previous versions.
Not sure why yours don't appear to be being created. How full is your data volume?
Just to clarify, the UI is correct as I can see in Windows there are only 2 snapshots (1 for the Pictures Share and 1 for the Videos Share) and both are from 2018
Just to clarify, the UI is correct as I can see in Windows there are only 2 snapshots (1 for the Pictures Share and 1 for the Videos Share) and both are from 2018
Try making a manual snapshot, and see if it shows up.
So it looks like manual snapshots are working, just not the automatic ones on a weekly basis.
I've noticed when either turning off "Allow snapshot access" (as you advised) or changing from "Smart" Snapshot Management to "Custom" I briefly see the yellow Snapshot part but then it disappears after applying changes to the Share snapshot settings.
Check the settings for the volume (the settings wheel on the volume page). If quota is not enabled, then try enabling it. If it is enabled, turn it off, and then back on again. That should help with the snapshot color not being shown.
I also am thinking you might want to create a new test share, and enable snapshots on it. Then see if they work normally.
The creation of the snapshots is shown on the log page, so you should look there, and see if you have messages like
Aug 19, 2021 11:00:20 PM Snapshot: Snapshot c_1629428411 was successfully created for share or LUN Photos.
FWIW, I don't recommend using the "smart" snapshot settings. The reason is that there is no retention limit, so eventually the snapshots will consume all the disk space. Though that hasn't happened to you yet, eventually you will need to manually delete snapshots.
My own settings are attached.
These are daily, but are easily adapted to weekly by setting a different schedule. The 3 month retention is a bit arbitrary - it's a balance between the disk space needed for the snapshots, and the desire for long retention. The idea is that if you see too much snapshot disk space for a share, you can adjust the retention downward (and of course you can increase it upwards if the disk space is ok).
As I mentioned earlier, I don't check "allow snapshot access" because I want to make sure the files in the snapshot read-only. Their purpose is to allow me to retrieve earlier versions of the file if something goes wrong. Since "allow snapshot access" makes the files in the snapshots writable, that defeats my purpose.
Thanks Stephen for the detailed reply! Looks like when I go to enable quotas on a Share it gives me the attached message about quotas being disabled on the volumes. I must have done this a while back. I assume I can turn these back on by going to System > Volumes > Cog icon next to the pie chart > Summary > ticking Quota?
Yeah I've disabled Smart snapshots in favour of Custom ones as I remember a while back the snapshots ate all my disk space and I had to delete a ton of them. I also disabled Allow snapshot access for the reasons you mentioned.
Looks like when I go to enable quotas on a Share it gives me the attached message about quotas being disabled on the volumes.
Leave quotas off on the shares - unless you want to limit the amount of storage in the share for some reason.
Quota on the volume doesn't do what you think it does. It improves the btrfs "accounting" so that the file system has more detailed knowledge of how the space is being used. If you want to see the amount of snapshot space, you do need to enable quota on the volume settings wheel. I do want to see those details, so I have volume quota turned on, but share quotas turned off.
