Re: must i consider zfs or lvm for smr large drive?
> i have a new 4tb portable external drive. i want it to have a huge partition.
I love LVM and use it as a matter-of-course everywhere (except for /boot
partition which I still keep as a separate partition out of habit).
But FWIW, using LVM with external drives is not super smooth: it's OK if
the drive is almost always connected, but otherwise I don't think LVM
handles the case of plugging/unplugging the drive smoothly enough
(AFAICT there's no real problem at the lower levels, but at the UI level
it's just not "plug&play" enough IMO).
The main issue is that after plugging the drive in, you need to
"activate" its volumes (e.g. `vgchange -ay`, which AFAICT does not
affect the disk itself but only the host OS, making the volumes appear
under /dev/mapper), and they won't get deactivated automatically when
you unplug it (so you end up with ghost entries in /dev/mapper unless
you're careful to unmount everything and `vgchange -an` before
unplugging).
Maybe you can activate them once and for all and later just
unplug&replug and that'll work but I wouldn't bet on it (IIRC it depends
on whether it gets the same /dev/sdX label when you plug it back in).
So if your plugging and unplugging is done in a disciplined enough way
(and is already accompanied by running some scripts, e.g. to initiate
a backup onto the drive) I would recommend the use of LVM, but otherwise
you're probably better off without it.
> but now i am thinking, with smr, the drive could pseudo-brick,
Last I heard, SMR drives aren't significantly less reliable than CMR, so
I'm not sure you should base your decision on that. Of course, you'll
want to keep backups (unless that drive is the backup for others,
obviously).
Stefan
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