Snapraid with 2x BTRFS and 1x EXT4 good?

  • Hi,


    I want to use SnapRaid for my three 8TB disks. The two data disks are BTRFS and I thought that for the parity disk I could use ext4, because with the -largefile parameter, I get 400GB more disk space available and I read multiple times, that the parity drive should be a bit larger...


    Does that make sense or should I stick with BTRFS for all drives?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    is there a reason to do that?

    You could do it (BTRFS and SNAPRAID) but it's kind of redundant and needlessly complex. SNAPRAID does more than BTRFS simple volumes. If using SNAPRAID, a simple file system would be best (EXT4 or XFS) and perform better.


    See the SNAPRAID page and the section titled:
    Which file-system is recommended for SnapRAID ?

  • You could do it (BTRFS and SNAPRAID) but it's kind of redundant and needlessly complex. SNAPRAID does more than BTRFS simple volumes. If using SNAPRAID, a simple file system would be best (EXT4 or XFS) and perform better.
    See the SNAPRAID page and the section titled:
    Which file-system is recommended for SnapRAID ?

    Ok thanks. Yes I saw the page, but it didn't really say which one they recommend... So, I would need to move all my data away from the disk in order to reformat it in ext4, right?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Ok thanks. Yes I saw the page, but it didn't really say which one they recommend...

    If there's a choice, always go with one that doesn't have caveats. (EXT4 or XFS)

    So, I would need to move all my data away from the disk in order to reformat it in ext4, right?

    I don't think I understand. A SNAPRAID parity drive has no other purpose than to be a parity drive. You'll need an extra (empty or wiped) disk for this function and it needs to be as large, or larger, than the disks to be protected. If you run a format command on a disk (below), with data on it, your data is gone.


    mkfs.ext4 -m 0 -T largefile4 /dev/sda is that correct?

    Since I'm using a collection of smaller disks, I haven't tried this feature. (/dev/sda is a device name) Again, be sure to get the right drive and it should be empty or at least have nothing on it that you don't want to lose.


    Yep, just did a quick check in a test VM. The drive formatted as it is above, is in the GUI, and it mounts.

  • I haven't looked at the forum in a few days and missed your question. I agree with everything crashtest said. Snapraid provides parity and bitrot protection, so EXT4 is really the way to go with Snapraid.


    I didn't know about the recommended command options for parity disks: mkfs.ext4 -m 0 -T largefile4 DEVICE
    I had just formatted mine using whatever OMV does by default.

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