trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

djg1971 · 2008-10-22 20:11:46

Recently got a Lacie 1TB external hard disk. Need to get as close to 1TB actual capacity as I can.

Used cfdisk to create a single Linux partition, and thought I tried to "maximize" the size.
Used mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 to create the file system.
Tried to mount the disk. The first go around apparently failed (dmesg said there was no journal).

I repeated all of the above and the second time it mounted, but "df -h" reports:
/dev/sdb1 925G 200M 878G 1% /mnt/external_1

What the hell happened?

Can someone please advise on how to fix this, and actually maximize the real available space? Please include the exact utilities and flags you would recommend.

thanks much.

lucke · 2008-10-22 20:14:06

man tune2fs and look for -m flag.

djg1971 · 2008-10-22 20:21:18

yes, but, the default for reserved space is 5%, which should be about 50 GB on that disk. (fdisk does see just over 1 TB total size.)
In this case I see 200 GB as used, the very first time the disk is mounted.

Something seems hosed, so I would like to start from scratch. If someone could advise on a wiser plan than I used, please let me know the specifics.

lucke · 2008-10-22 20:29:13

Disks always have lower capacity than advertised, you can treat it as a marketing trick.

hdparm -I should show you real capacity.

Last edited by lucke (2008-10-22 20:30:57)

byte · 2008-10-22 20:34:08

hdparm -I /dev/sdb | grep "device size"

You could also try JFS, it should give you quite a few more MB than Ext3 (even with no reserved blocks).

Last edited by byte (2008-10-22 20:36:11)

djg1971 · 2008-10-22 21:33:03

lucke,

i know disks always have less capacity than the nominal size. but a 1TB disk should have more than 900 MB available. possibly as much as 980 MB. that would be commensurate with my past experience using other external drives. over 200 GB used off the bat is ridiculous, and i've never seen anything like that before.

as a revised question to people out there, which fs would you recommend to get the most out of this disk. it's going to have 900+ GB of files, each almost exactly 170 MB, and will be processed via the USB2 interface.

byte · 2008-10-22 22:17:59

You have to keep in mind that the Ext3 journal needs some space, and how much depends on the filesystem size, I think.
Also have a look at the mke2fs manpage, "inode-size"; the default got recently doubled to 256 byte per inode which leads to more wasted space.

And please stop mixing up GB and MB so much...

lucke · 2008-10-23 11:15:28

I think it's pretty normal for a 1TB hard drive to have 925GB real capacity, and that's what your df shows. Substract 5% reserved by ext3, you get 878GB (as shown by df). Note that even with 878G available it's not "over 200GB used".

Last edited by lucke (2008-10-23 11:16:05)

fukawi2 · 2008-10-23 22:20:46

djg1971 wrote:

which fs would you recommend to get the most out of this disk

JFS. I did a non-scientific test a while ago to work out which file system gave me the most "usable" (reported) space on a clean format. From memory I tried ext3, Reiser, JFS and XFS. And the winner was JFS.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-22 20:11:46

trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

#2 2008-10-22 20:14:06

Re: trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

#3 2008-10-22 20:21:18

Re: trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

#4 2008-10-22 20:29:13

Re: trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

#5 2008-10-22 20:34:08

Re: trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

#6 2008-10-22 21:33:03

Re: trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

#7 2008-10-22 22:17:59

Re: trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

#8 2008-10-23 11:15:28

Re: trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

#9 2008-10-23 22:20:46

Re: trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

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