On 7/25/2011 4:05 PM, Brian Mathis wrote:
On 7/25/2011 1:42 PM, Brian Mathis wrote:
I've wondered many times, though haven't tried it, if the issues with hard links and backuppc could be solved by using a container file with a loopback mount, and then that file could be moved around as needed without running into hard-link issues.
In this case, you could format the external drive in the optimal mode for 4k sectors, then create a container file and mount it using loopback. Then add the loopback device to the mdraid and have it sync.
It doesn't really help with the problem as it stands, which is that the target disk (a swappable sata, not really external) has no extra space that would permit shifting the alignment. It might work to shrink the existing size, then partition the new drives with the right offset, but I may just start from scratch and keep the old drives around in case I need the old history.
I thought this was a 3-disk RAID1? Can't you repartition the hotswap disk and still have the data on the other 2? Why would you need to shrink the existing partition? Just blow it away and resync the data once you rebuild the disk.
The disk I want to add is the same size as the existing disks if expressed in 512 byte sectors - and they have one partition taking all of the disk space. If I add a leading offset to get the 4k alignment, there won't be enough room for the existing partition size.