Quick Question about Min. Free Space

[TonyTheTiger]

Hi Everyone.

 

 

I just have a quick question about the Min. Free Space field in the Share Settings. I've read that you should set it twice as large  as your largest file. I've also read that we should keep the drives at 95%-98% capacity.

 

 

Should I set my Movies Share (spanning four 4TB drives) at 15000000KB (twice a 7.5GB movie) or at 80000000KB (98% of 4TB)?

 

 

Or something else entirely?

 

 

I'm running v.5.04, now, but I've already purchased an extra Registration Key to test v.6.10a (v.6.12 now). Will I  still use the same settings? Or does v.6 (or one of the other File Systems) change it?

 

 

Thanks.

 

 

~ Michael

[itimpi]

Which value you use is up to you as they are about different criteria.

 

The statement about 95% relates to the fact that creating new files on a ReiserFS formatted disks slows down as the disks get near full (reads are not affected).  there are those who are not worried about this and let their disks approach 100% full on the basis that the content is static once written so write speed is not critical so why not fully utilise a disk.

 

The twice the largest file statement is to stop copying files onto the array unexpectedly running out of space.  I would think for many users this is the more important criteria.

[TonyTheTiger]

Thank you itimpi.

 

 

I'm sure the question has been asked and answered before. I just couldn't find it in the forum.

[garycase]

The only important criteria is that you don't want to run out of space during a copy -- setting the min free space to something larger than the largest file you're likely to copy will accomplish that.    "Twice the largest file" provides a bit of extra "headroom" in case you copy something a bit larger than you had planned for.

 

As for v6 -- if you want to test that, I'd build a 2nd array for that purpose ... it's simply a safer approach.  It can be on the same box -- but with a different set of disks, so when you boot to either version they're completely isolated.