Hi Peter, Thanks, but that's not the problem I'm having. My problem is copying a bunch of files (ALL smaller than 2GB) totalling 46GB at the source (servers running SCSI RAID drives) to RH9 running on IDE drives. It seems that what takes 46GB on the SCSI drives will not "fit" on a single 120GB IDE drive, since the blocks appear to be much larger and even the smallest files probably take 64KB if not more. I just need to figure out a way, if it's at all possible, to reformat the IDE drives with smaller blocks, say maybe 1K, 4K, or something smaller than the default, so that I can copy 46GB from remote SCSI drives to IDE drives, for backup purposes, and have it take approximately 46GB on the IDE end of things. It seems now like you need about 160GB worth of disk space on IDE drives to copy just 46GB worth of files from SCSI drives. Complete waste of resources and utilization of the IDE drives, as the data more than "tripples" in size. Anyone has any ideas how to reformat an IDE drive with smaller blocks than whatever the default might be, and is it safe to do so? Any caveats? Thanks, Chris ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Smith" <pasmith@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 4:59 PM Subject: RE: IDE hard drive blocks > Hi Chris, > > I had a problem like this. Officially Windows cannot handle single files > greater that 2GB (or thereabouts). In practice, Win2K can fudge around this > limit. > > However, when a RH7.3 system tried to copy such a file through a Samba mount > of a Windows share, the size became effectively infinite and the copy only > stopped when the 250GB disk was full. > > Hope this helps. > Peter Smith > (Ancient Newbie) > > -----Original Message----- > From: redhat-list-admin@xxxxxxxxxx > [mailto:redhat-list-admin@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Chris > Sent: Saturday, 20 December 2003 5:49 PM > To: redhat-list@xxxxxxxxxx > Subject: IDE hard drive blocks > > > Hi guys, > > Please excuse this simple question, but is it possible (and safe to do so) > to format large IDE drives better in RH, using smaller blocks? > > Here's the problem. I have a RH9 system that I use for some remote backups > and have couple WD 120GB drives in it (/home2 and /home3) in addition to the > boot drive, ie: three physical drives. The data I'm backing up is on remote > servers all running SCSI RAID-5 and the total amount of disk space used on > the server side is 46GB (as indicated by 'df'). A simple rsync to this > remote RH9 system on IDE drives fails to back up 46GB worth of data to a > single 120GB drive, it keeps running out of disk space. The only thing I > can figure out is that the block size on the IDE drives is much larger and > small files, say 1KB, take the full block, which is perhaps 64KB or maybe > even bigger, and that's how a 120GB drive is "too small" to back up 46GB > worth of data. > > Is my reasoning correct? If so, how can I find out what the block size is > now on the IDE drives, and how can I reformat existing /home2 and /home3 > drives with smaller block sizes using ext3 fs? > > Thanks, > > Chris -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
