Disks swaps in kid2, btrfs continued...

Disk (end of) life

Kid2 is happily running the urBackup system for 3 windows laptops but doesn't really have the disk space required to continue the lifesize test (i.e. backuping my most disk-intensive Linux systems). So I ordered a 2TB drive from Amazon. Got i/o errors then sent it back. Still waiting confirmation for the refund, not a terribly good experience so far. I recycled two 2.5" hard disks, one from an older laptop and another from a thrift store, so I could continue running urBackup in the meantime. Then I got i/o errors from the PATA drives (both of them, the 6.4GB from an older desktop and also the 200GB from the thrift store). Long story short, I did order another 2TB drive from eBay this time, it arrived yesterday so I mounted and tested it. I removed the PATA drives and currently the 300GB is still in the box but not connected due to lack of SATA power cables. Benchmarked the new drive, seems OK:

Add to btrfs

Like so:

sudo btrfs device add -f /dev/sdd /var/backup/urBackup

Then:

 sudo btrfs filesystem show
Label: none  uuid: 4881245e-bed5-4526-b9ff-3b5ba39b283d
    Total devices 3 FS bytes used 145.29GiB
    devid    1 size 465.76GiB used 74.03GiB path /dev/sdc1
    devid    3 size 596.17GiB used 74.03GiB path /dev/sda1
    devid    4 size 1.82TiB used 0.00B path /dev/sdd

Make some use of the new available space:

sudo btrfs balance start /var/backup/urBackup

 WARNING:

    Full balance without filters requested. This operation is very
    intense and takes potentially very long. It is recommended to
    use the balance filters to narrow down the scope of balance.
    Use 'btrfs balance start --full-balance' option to skip this
    warning. The operation will start in 10 seconds.
    Use Ctrl-C to stop it.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Starting balance without any filters.

....after...a...long...while...

Done, had to relocate 75 out of 75 chunks

Label: none  uuid: 4881245e-bed5-4526-b9ff-3b5ba39b283d
    Total devices 3 FS bytes used 148.21GiB
    devid    1 size 465.76GiB used 50.00GiB path /dev/sdc1
    devid    3 size 596.17GiB used 51.03GiB path /dev/sda1
    devid    4 size 1.82TiB used 51.03GiB path /dev/sdd

Add a new Linux client

Host run12l is a good candidate now that we have more space available.  It has a 300GB HDSSD quite filled up with photos and videos.  It used to have a client already installed, so it was just a matter of reactivating it and defining it in the "Unix" group so that the /home directory becomes the default backup directory instead of the C:\Users windows default.  First full backup started, looks good.

New disks

Received an Amaz0n order for a 2TB Hitachi disk. Never worked (I/O errors). Sent it back without investigating too long, waiting for the refund.

Yesterday I found a used 200GB (also Hitachi) PATA drive in a thrift store, for 5€ -40% sales = 3€. Not large enough for backups but might be a good idea as playground while experimenting with btrfs, LVM and such. So got it and testing it currently. So far so good. Had to re-create the GPT however, seems like there wasn't any partition table initially but the reformatting went fine. Here's the results of f3write & f3read:

Data OK: 182.31 GB (382329456 sectors)
Data LOST: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
        Corrupted: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
 Slightly changed: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
      Overwritten: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
Average reading speed: 58.11 MB/s

Contemplating buying another 2TB SATA from same source or a used one from local classifieds. In both cases around 60€ or so.

Tested a "2TB USB stick" from China. Obviously it was a fake but I got most of my money back. Just a confirmation of what I thought already, these things don't exist, or at least not at the prices they're selling for.

On a side note I also received my PCI Express USB3.0 interface card and installed it. It needs a MOLEX power cable and I have only one in that box (kid2) so now I need 3 of those (2 PATA drives + the USB3 card). So I ordered a 3-way splitter and in the meantime I can test these devices one-by-one. The USB3 card seems to work (at least with a mouse) but I'd need to check with a real USB 3.0 HDD to be sure.