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What Filesystem?
(lemmy.world)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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So you're going to make snapshots of the ext4 filesystem onto the BTRFS one?
On the contrary, my intention is to make snapshots of the OS (btrfs) and my idea is to store the snapshots on the /home nvme drive (ext4).
I don't know if that's the standard practice or if I'm over complicating things. My SSD is only 240Gb (I think) while my nvme is a 1Tb drive, thus the intention to store snapshots on the nvme. Maybe the 240Gb is sufficient for say a month's worth of snapshots plus the OS?
No, that’s a very bad idea. BTRFS has deduplication, without that the snapshots would take up way to much space. Also it’s too many writes since ext4 doesn’t use cow and would have to do distinct writes for every snapshot.
The 240 gb are plenty for a root system without /home and years worth of snapshots on a btrfs volume, only the changes take up space so the amount of snapshots hardly matters.
For /home either ext4, xfs or btrfs is fine. Personally I only use a single btrfs volume and put certain folders in their own subvolumes so they can have different settings for snapshots(no snapshots for /home, tmp and cache folders).
Noted. Thanks for your clear response. I'll just keep it simple have the OS snapshots on the same partition.
It's more important to backup your /home than /. /home is where you store your crucial files.
Yes, that's true. Then again, I'm mainly using my PC for gaming and most of what will be in /home will be game installs. I have my photos and music backups in a separate HDD.
I think at the end of the day, what I'm trying to achieve with the btrfs snapshots is to be able to roll back my OS in case a system update goes wrong, or I did something I shouldn't have. :p