Future-proofing an installation with multiple drives
What time is it? Recycling time!
For my Desktop,
I have a few HDDs of various sizes that I could LVM to make one big drive.
Most likely, the simplest way for now would be to use one big LVM only with the different HDDs, and split them in half, to leave one part for backup for Deja-Dup for example (supposing it's easily extensible with later hardware modifications).
That involves zero spending, and would leave me with more than enough space.
Easy to encrypt as well.
But no SSD. But I can wait 8 seconds for GIMP to start (and that's on an X200).
Also, how reliable is it to have the backup spread on 2 or 3 HDDs?
If one fails, The whole backup is most likely useless.
But I might be able to keep the backup strictly on one of the drives.
But if I later add an SSD, I would need a bigger drive for backup, since
I suppose the minimal requirement is equal size.
Last aspect is maybe having a small SSD to hold "/".
Since I want to have my data on a separate disk (an HDD, most likely the LVM'ed ones), I'd have to :
- create a partition using the SSD for "/" (64Go should be enough)
- create a partition with LVM the 3 HDDs I hopefully can group
- create a partition for a backup drive
- encrypt everything
Or create one LVM of everything and then create partitions over it (with steel the need to have the right data on the right drives.
Anyway, sorry if it's not too clear:
most likely I'll LVM/LUKS a few HDDS and keep one half of the space (hopefully strictly on one drive) for backups.
But I would like to make sure it's a good idea, so I'm trying to take into account future improvements, that would hopefully not be blocked by bad planning.
And if it's better to spend more now, is the way I would like to do it realistic in your opinion ?
Oh, and would 3 to 5 drives be heavy on electric consumption?
I am a translator!
>But I can wait 8 seconds for GIMP to start (and that's on an X200)
Indeed gimps is one of those slow start application no matter the hardware.. You can launch it like this for a slight speed up:
gimp -d -s
See the man for explanation.
Cool, thanks :)
If the hard disks in question are quite old (say 8+ years old), expect failures. You can try a RAID 1, 5 or 6 setup instead of backups: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SoftwareRAID
And, yes, energy consumption may be an issue. Using one single large disk may be cheaper in the long run.
Thanks for the idea!
RAID looks harder to setup though. Plus, I wonder if it would work with the "3 drives" option (SSD+HDD as one, backedup by one bigger HDD).
If Deja-Dup can backup two drives (/ and home+swap), then 3 drives seem to be the best.
4To for backup, 3To for HDD and 60Go for SSD would be great. But that's 300€. Ouch.
Else I can try and pry open my existing (smaller) external HDDs and use them, but that's much less overall space (and no SSD, though I could get one anyway actually).
I think I should go through my existing data and start throwing stuff away first and foremost. Maybe I have tons of things I don't need.
I definitely should start there since it will decide how much space I really need (plus some anticipation).
Also, I might be able to use old drives for other projects maybe. This looks cool (though I wonder where the need for a hard drive would come up): http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-best-raspberry-pi-smart-mirror-projects-weve-seen-far/
Oh well, worst case, I could give them away if I really don't need them.