Question

3

Is it safe to remount btrfs with compression?

rated 0 times [ 3] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 2490 / 1 Year ago, fri, february 17, 2023, 1:22:37

I've finally found how to enable compression in btrfs, and would like to do so. However, as my main drive, I'm not really wanting to risk a change that could corrupt the hard drive.

Everything I've read indicates that these options are safe to change, as they only apply on new writes, but I'd like some more assurance...

Can I have a rough explanation on how the compression algorithm works? Is it per file (as I think it has to be?)

After this is on, what options/commands are there to recompress the hard drive?

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

tubequ

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 11

Total Questions: 113

Total Answers: 115

Location: Equatorial Guinea

Member since Thu, Oct 7, 2021

3 Years ago

tubequ questions

1 I cant see Desktop icons option in appearance settings, and icons are gone

Sat, May 27, 23, 07:00, 1 Year ago

1 How to stop a service when a CIFS share becomes unavailable?

Fri, May 20, 22, 00:18, 2 Years ago

1 After today's boot, XMG laptop screen only shows noise

Sun, Dec 25, 22, 20:39, 1 Year ago

1 Increment operator does not work on a variable if variable is set to 0

Fri, Aug 20, 21, 06:54, 3 Years ago

1 How do I search for a specific installed app using `apt list --installed`?

Sat, Mar 4, 23, 22:56, 1 Year ago

View All

answered 1 Year ago ippalogu · Accepted Answer

I can only answer with the available information in the different related btrfs sites. As you say, using compression is relatively safe as compression is only applied to the new written content. As per the stability of the FS, it is still in testing stage, although it seems to be pretty stable right now. About recompressing the whole disk, I'm not sure you can do it (I haven't seen it). It shouldn't be difficult to write such tool. Right now the obvious way is to copy/move the data from the partition to other disk/partition, and then re-copying, but it implies having enough space in another disk or partition to do the copy (and a fair amount of time)...