Hello Mark, Question, do you really need to recover files from the snapshots on a
routine basis?
No I don't. I have never recovered anything from ZFS and hope to never have to. ZFS is a last ditch line of defense against some of my co-authors who have a terrible habit of working on old files, saving them out with the same name as the current working file. More than once a changed introduction has destroyed years of work and it has only been my paranoia in having about 6 backups of everything that has saved the project.
I would suggest that you consider the frequency of the snapshots, and of backups. If you truly understand, and take care with your actions, how much do you need to recover and undelete as the snapshots enable? If you do not need quite so frequent, nor so many snapshots, then you will have more usable space when you transfer to a new drive.
The trouble is I am often working on 4 - 5 academic papers at the same time; some of them maybe neglected for a couple of months hence errors won't be noticed until I come back to work on it again. In the worst case I had to dig up files from 3 years ago to recover data. The other matter is that the snapshots are not a backup strategy, they
too are lost along with the current copies if you have a hard drive crash.
I realise that. The reasons for ZFS are outlined above. I know a better strategy would be to use GIT but as my co-authors are very smart in maths and economics but have almost zero computer knowledge, trying to tell them what GIT is let alone why we should be using it is impossible.
I would suggest looking at something like a Network Attached Storage device, with multiple drives in a suitable RAID array.
This is the ultimate plan to build a NAS from an HP Microserver. I am leaning towards Nas4Free on an SSD or internal USB and 3, 6TB mirrors. This is a project that has to wait because right now due to Covid19 and Brexit we are not sure where we are. I am here and can't leave but expecting to be out of work (which won't stop my research), my husband is British/Australian, resident in Austria to avoid Brexit but is stranded by Covid in Greece. When it all settles down and we have a home again building this NAS is going to be pretty high on the list of things to do. There are others on the LUV lists who can better advise on which strategies
will actually provide a reasonable measure of security of data. Remember that there are repositories from which you can restore the OS and applications, but that your data, including particular configuration, can only be recovered from a suitable backup on another device, and best often stored on a separate site.
Much of the data is on external disks located in 3 different countries so hopefully it is safe. These are pointers to think about as to what is important, and what
can you afford to loose, possibly because you can regenerate, possibly because it is not really that critical. As to life, yes the data has meaning to each of us, but it is not food and water even if it can be used in exchange for such.
True.
First things first ZFS is choking due to lack of disk space. However, I
have a lot of totally unused diskspace on a windows partition so how can I reduce the windows partition and increase the ZFS to stop it choking. It has 560GB of which I do not need more than 200max to leave for Windoze.
From this I gather that you find a need to have the Microsoft malware available. I have problems now and then when I have to deal interactively with a Microsoft Word document in the newest format. I usually point out that Word may well be widespread, but that is not universal, and a PDF can be locked to prevent being tampered with.
Windows certainly is malware. I have it to run Scientific Workplace (SW) as some of my co-authors are unable to deal with Latex. In an ideal world I would only use Kile or Eclipse but sometimes I don't have the hours / days necessary to edit the perverted abomination that Scientific Workplace thinks is a tex file into an actual tex file, hence the need to have the windoze to run SW.
Gparted apparently doesn't like ZFS but does this matter? I can I assume
use it to shrink the Windows partition and free up about 360GB, then how do I expand the ZFS to use that free space? Second, I have checked /etc/cron and find auto snap shot commands for hourly, daily, weekly & monthly hourly = 24, daily = 31, weekly = 8, monthly = 6. It seems I could change that to hourly = 24, daily = 7, weekly = 4, monthly = 6 and get pretty much the same coverage with a lot less snapshots.
Listing snapshots shows some from 2019, where are they coming from as with monthly only storing 6 months there shouldn't be anything newer than February 2020 or am I not understanding something here?
I would think that if the computer was not in use at the critical time, the snapshots could remain. Cron cannot do things while the computer is off. I know that there is an alternative, anacron, that is coded to cope with doing the actions that fell while the computer was off, when it is next booted. It would be worth checking which is installed and used.
I didn't know about anacron, but it makes sense that it could be installed, I will have to check.
The computer is a Lenovo W541 laptop, the longer term plan is to double the
memory to 32GB and put a 2TB SSD in this box. Does that sound sensible?
In the meantime, a thorough backup is running in at least two external drives (one incremental and one fresh).
Again, consider backups on a separate device. Again, look to your use patterns and practices so that you have less need for the snapshots and recovering deleted files, and as such can use less snapshots. Look at what you are trying to achieve, and ask how to be reasonably effective. Try to make the most of the resources you can afford, rather than spending too much to compensate for suboptimal habits and practices.
Good advice. Find new co-authors? LOL Thanks again for your help.
Stripes.
Regards,
Mark Trickett
-- Stripes Theotoky -37 .713869 145.050562