I have a miniPC running ubuntu with a usb connected 5 disk enclosure. I filled it initially with 6TB drives, and I'm reaching the point that I'd like to start swapping them for larger drives as prices have come down(12-14TB probably).
I've been having trouble understanding my options. I've got LVM2 partitions that use all the available space on each drive, and a single volume group that spans the 5 drives with an ext4 file system. I know this isn't a 'safe' way to do it, but this isn't critical data and I can get it all again if needed.
- Is there a way to 'move' any data from the VG that is currently on one drive and spread it out to the other 4 drives? I think this is what 'pvmove' does. Not sure how it figures out if I have the space to do this, but at a minimum I think I would need 6TB of free space across the other physical volumes/drives to be able to do this.
- If I can do this, can I then remove the 'empty' drive from the VG? Then I would swap in the new drive, format it and extend the VG across it.
- If I don't have the space to use pvmove, if I have a separate enclosure for the new drive, can I format it, extend the VG and then use pvmove? I'm just not sure about swapping the new HDD into the enclosure after that. The 'data' would be the same, but would it be able to recognize/mount it after the swap? Since it's a VG that spans drives, I can't just 'copy' the data from one drive to another.
Thanks!