How to extend (ncdata) storage space to another flashdrive on NextCloudPi (on Raspberry Pi 3b+)

ā„¹ļø Support šŸ“¦ Appliances (Docker, Snappy, VM, NCP, AIO)
1

Hello everyone!
I am a freshman here, so please donā€™t be mad at me if I have posted my concerns under the wrong category or did not searched the entire forum for all possible variations of my problem! :slight_smile:

So, I have a Raspberry Pi 3b+ and I have installed an NC image from https://www.ownyourbits.com/ onto a 8GB SD card, inserted in the SD slot of the Pi. For the storage itself, I have inserted a 128GB SD card into a USB-card reader and labeled it ā€œUSBdriveā€ and set the nc-datadir to it = /media/USBdrive/ncdata.
So far, so good! My NCP is working as expected and I am syncing my data to it (storing the data to the ncdata dir on the 128GB SD card.)
Now I want to add an additional 200GB SD card in another USB-card reader into a 2nd USB-port of the Pi. I have formated it through the admin pannel (TOOLS >> nc-format-USB) as a BTRFS partition and labeled it ā€œSD_200GBā€.
And here comes the tricky part, which I am unable to figure out since almost 2 weeks, searching across the whole Internetā€¦

  1. How to extend the ncdata forlder, so it could combine the space of the 2 SD cards together (128GB + 200GB) and to use the whole amount of the available space? :thinking:
  2. How to create the proper RAID# option to merge the space from the 2 SD cards (or even more USB/SD storage drives in the future)? :thinking:

I will really really appreciate your help on that concern, folks!
Huge thanks in advance! :vulcan_salute:
Cheers! :slight_smile:

2

One easy method is to mount the additional card via fstab and then mount within NextcloudPi as local storage.

3

I use LVM (Logical Volume Manager) and/or btrfs to manage space across drives.

2 Likes
4

Hi @just!

Thanks for your reply!
Both SD are auto mounted in NCP every time through the nc-automount system function. I see them when I list all mounts with ā€œmount -lā€. Do I still need to mount them via /etc/fstab or you mean something else?
I even installed the app ā€œExternal drive storageā€ and set the 200GB SD as an external storage for all users, but to be honest, I canā€™t quite understand the endresult. I mean: what will happen, if (for example) my general storage drive (128 GB) is 126GB full and I want to upload a 4GB file? Would it be devided in 2 parts (of course invisible for the users): 2GB on the 1st (128GB) SD and the rest on the 2nd (200GB) SD card???

5

Hi @OliverV!

I should dig deeper into that! Thanks a lot! :+1:

6

Perhaps you can better move all data to an external device, change the settings in config/config.php and rescan the data with occ.

7

Hi @devnull!

Why it is better to do that? I mean, where is the added value? :thinking:

8

Sorry to have to say: using LVM or btrfs, requires a bit more Linux and command line practice. There is no app to do it for you. Although most, if not all, Linux distroā€™s support LVM and btrfs.

With LVM and btrfs, you can virtually join any number of drives and address them as if they were a single drive and mount them to a single mount point.

Your 2 (or more) drives would be available as a single mount

simple example

mkfs.btrfs /dev/sdb /dev/sdc
mount /dev/sdb /media/mydrives

Warning: This will wipe clean the drives, all data is lost. No going back.!!!
You can then move NC data folder to /media/mydrives/ncdata
Check permissions/ownership of /ncdata and set datadirectory to new location in config.php.

1 Like
9

ā€˜datadirectoryā€™ => ā€˜/var/www/nextcloud/dataā€™,

to

'datadirectory' => '/mnt/sd',

If your new sd/ssd/hdd has a lot of space i think it is better to use only one space without ā€œexternal dataā€. Set the correct user rights an rescan. I think NextCloudPi has got an option to do this.

10

Many thanks for the explanation, @OliverV!
I am not a ā€œPROā€ in GNU/Linux, but a passionate user (home admin, who is ā€œlearning-by-mistakingā€ :smiley: ) and I will definetelly try that out A.S.A.P. and give my feedback to the whole community here!

11

Warning again: It deletes both devices.

Use perhaps:

mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda
mkfs.btrfs /dev/sdb

Check the devices.

12

Your best bet is to follow @OliverVā€™s advice. Iā€™m just stuck in the old school and have yet to switch to the new and cooler lvm + btrfs land. Perhaps it is time. :wink: