My SSD cache drive is xfs, should I change it to BTRFS?

[trurl]

My 2x120GB btrfs raid1 cache has never given me any trouble. But I still follow the usual advice about having backup copies of critical data even if it is fault-tolerant. I have a weekly cron script backing up my appdata to another disk in the array.

[Furby8704]

BTRFS 2x250GB SSD with 7 dockers + 1 VM. havent had a problem yet for 2 months

[Lebowski]

Hey Everyone,

 

I'm new to unraid. It's my first exposure to Linux besides Openelec. So far so good, it's been an amazing learning experience. I have only had my server up and going for a few weeks. I have also built up a new beast for my unraid system, (Supermicro 1151 board with E3-1275-V5 + 32GIG ECC Ram, want this to last me the next 5-10 years) I am using an older 120GIG SSD for my cache formatted to XFS. However I have been looking at redundancy for my dockers and Windows 10VM.

 

I was going to order 2 x 512 M.2 Drives for cache and run BTRFS but this thread has me a little worried about doing it. What is the go? Is it safe to do so? The new CA update for backups looks like an option (need something like this for VM and then we are in business). Has anyone been running a cache pool for a year or so and all ok? I see more negative than positive.

[gundamguy]

IDK, I'm using BTRFS now and have been for several months (not a full year) with no problems.

 

Also I saw that BTRFS has more guidance on using btrfsck and recovering from errors now... (as in only do btrfsck as the last possible thing, and use btrfs restore first as it's non-destructive) so maybe recovery tools are progressing.

[Lebowski]

Well, I will give it a go and report back, I'll keep some backup's just in case.

[gundamguy]

Well, I will give it a go and report back, I'll keep some backup's just in case.

 

 

Always the best policy. Let us know how it goes!

[Lebowski]

Well its up and going, no issues so far.

 

Had to upgrade to 6.2 beta as my drives are nvme.

 

Is it normal for this message in the btrfs status?

 

    No balance found on '/mnt/cache'

 

 

Everything seems ok / balanced.

 

    Total devices 2 FS bytes used 83.75GiB

    devid    1 size 476.94GiB used 85.03GiB path /dev/nvme0n1p1

    devid    2 size 476.94GiB used 85.03GiB path /dev/nvme1n1p1

 

 

[JorgeB]

Is it normal for this message in the btrfs status?

 

    No balance found on '/mnt/cache'

 

Yes, it will only change when doing a manual balance.

[gundamguy]

Is it normal for this message in the btrfs status?

 

    No balance found on '/mnt/cache'

 

Yes, it will only change when doing a manual balance.

 

this really bothers me though... why does it say No Balance Found when there is a balance?

[JonathanM]

this really bothers me though... why does it say No Balance Found when there is a balance?

I could be wrong, but I think it's indicating that there is no balance operation in progress or pending.

[RobJ]

Also I saw that BTRFS has more guidance on using btrfsck and recovering from errors now... (as in only do btrfsck as the last possible thing, and use btrfs restore first as it's non-destructive) so maybe recovery tools are progressing.

 

Thanks for that information.  I spent some time reading through it and its linked info, didn't gain much confidence, but did add some of it to the wiki, the BTRFS section.

[Lebowski]

Updating, 10 days later no issues at all.