[HELP/CHECK] btrfs - Add new drive to the system

Issues & Assistance Newbies
1

:wave: Moin Moin! Yes newbies section for me as well :wink:

Garuda is my first system utilizing btrfs, I am used to EXT4 just working.

So I got started reading about btrfs.
Watched some videos, for example from Chris Titus Tech.

And then I remembered that I have 2x 1TB HDD drives in my system which are not really used.

After reading this part of the manual:
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Using_Btrfs_with_Multiple_Devices

It should go something like this.

I format my drive /dev/sda to btrfs.
Either by shell or a GUI and then simply add the device to the pool? (bad terminology I guess, that's why newbie section :P)

sudo btrfs device add /dev/sda /
sudo btrfs balance start /

But that's it?
Do I need to do something with btrfs subvolume?

My desired outcome would be to have the 1TB drive as extra space for snapshots and files since I would like to include my /home in timeshift as well.

Also is it even wise to do that with my main drive being a NVMe SSD and the other just a HDD?

Thanks for reading and help out a newbie - Thanks!

2

Well this cleared up some part of my question.
The snapshots will only be stored in my main drive /dev/nvme0n1p1 1TB

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But you can back them up to a separate drive if what I’ve read is correct.

BTRFS literature is rather brutal. :wink:

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You can do, but after restoring you got old files from snapshot, you lost changed and new files.
Use rsync and save your importend files (or /home) on other SSD/HDD/nvme or ext. Disk.
Timeshift is not a backup system, if your main device break you lost all files, its more a rescue system if upgrade break the system.

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5

GRUB RESCUE - YIKES!

Okay so here is what I did.

I formatted /dev/sda and added a btrfs partition /dev/sda1

Then I created /data

btrfs device add /dev/sda1 /data

After the I thought hey now I have 1TB more space in df -h nice!

I should balance right? I balance

btrfs filesystem balance /data

Okay that took quite long.

A subvolume for my data sounds solid.

cd /data
btrfs subvolume create eha_data

Nice.

After some time doing other stuff, I decided to reboot. (just because I felt like it)
And grub rescue.

I am now in live garuda and undoing my steps, checking if that helped and if not..
Time to read some
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB

Note I took this guide for chrooting

https://logan.tw/posts/2015/05/17/grub-install-and-btrfs-root-file-system/

1 Like
6

Okay my system is back after undoing my unholy work of doom.

I chrooted.
Deleted the subvolume.
Deleted the drive.

reboot. and I am back again.

pew..

What did I do wrong? :frowning:

1 Like