Snapshots taking up same size as original folder

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Snapshots taking up same size as original folder

6
5
NAS
ds218+
Operating system
  1. Windows
I am on a DS218+ on DSM 7. I have snapshots enabled for a shared folder that is 19gb in size. I have snapshots enabled for this folder that are taken every 12 hours and 30 snapshots saved. When I use calculate size it shows estimated size to be 4.8gb. However when I login using a terminal I see the size of @sharedsnaps folder is 490gb and each of the 30 snapshots is taking up 19gb, the same size as the original folder. This 19gb folder is the only shared folder with snapshots enabled. The contents of this shared folder is not often changed.

I thought the snapshots are only supposed to be composed of changes and not copies of the entire folder. What is going on here?
 
I am on a DS218+ on DSM 7. I have snapshots enabled for a shared folder that is 19gb in size. I have snapshots enabled for this folder that are taken every 12 hours and 30 snapshots saved. When I use calculate size it shows estimated size to be 4.8gb. However when I login using a terminal I see the size of @sharedsnaps folder is 490gb and each of the 30 snapshots is taking up 19gb, the same size as the original folder. This 19gb folder is the only shared folder with snapshots enabled. The contents of this shared folder is not often changed.

I thought the snapshots are only supposed to be composed of changes and not copies of the entire folder. What is going on here?
Make sure to check what storage manager is saying regarding used space for your volume. That’s the real usage of your volume.
 
Last edited:
Make sure to check what storage manager is saying regarding used space for your volume. That’s the real usage of your volume.
That's what got me searching in the first place.
Capture.PNG


Storage Analyzer
storage manager.PNG


And snapshots reportedly taking up 4.6gb. So thats quite a few gigs unaccounted for. I checked folder sizes from the terminal and thats where I found the sharedsnap folder taking up alot of space. But if that's not accurate, what else would be taking up the unaccounted space?
 
@nasnoob102 - Welcome to the forum!

I'm probably not alone when I say I am slightly confused as to exactly where you are gleaning your information from or your exact concern. We seem to be doing this in reverse, with snapshots as your conclusion to a problem we have not fully seen.

To clarify my previous post, the 'size' reported by metadata for snapshot folders is not a true picture of storage as it represents the size of that snapshot if it was to be restored.

For example, this single folder is 2.91 TB and resides on a volume with 6.1 TB data with a capacity of 17.4 TB (ie 35% full):

 2022-04-11 at 21.25.18.png

Clearly the 107.32 TB reported for snapshots in no way represents the actual size of the snapshots when they contain little more than a record of changes*.

I suspect you are trying to understand the composition of your volume and how the actual amount of storage was used. Is that the case?

☕



*(for simplicities sake)
 
@nasnoob102 - Welcome to the forum!

I'm probably not alone when I say I am slightly confused as to exactly where you are gleaning your information from or your exact concern. We seem to be doing this in reverse, with snapshots as your conclusion to a problem we have not fully seen.

To clarify my previous post, the 'size' reported by metadata for snapshot folders is not a true picture of storage as it represents the size of that snapshot if it was to be restored.

For example, this single folder is 2.91 TB and resides on a volume with 6.1 TB data with a capacity of 17.4 TB (ie 35% full):

View attachment 5654
Clearly the 107.32 TB reported for snapshots in no way represents the actual size of the snapshots when they contain little more than a record of changes*.

I suspect you are trying to understand the composition of your volume and how the actual amount of storage was used. Is that the case?

☕



*(for simplicities sake)

Yes sorry if I'm not being clear. My main issue is exactly as you stated. Storage manager shows I have 2.8TB/3.5TB being used. However when I run storage analyzer, as pictured in my previous post (1.83TB + 310.55GB + 18.24GB) the total seems to be about 600GB less than the 2.8TB being used. I understand there may be some size being used up by DSM but could it really be this much?

I opened an ssh terminal and ran `du -h -d1` and it showed my @sharedsnap folder taking up about 480GB. Looking into this folder it shows each snapshot taking up the same size as the original folder. So I thought there was some problem with snapshots taking up too much space.

I now understand it is not accurate to look at the sharedsnap folder this way because of the way BTRFS works. So now I am still wondering where is this 600GB discrepancy.
 
Do you have Synology Drive installed? There's a database associated with it that maintains file versions, though it's a lot more storage efficient when using Btrfs than it was with ext4. It won't be visible in Storage Analyzer and it can eat up space.

The only way to recover its space is to reduce the number of versions you have configured for each enables Shared Folder.
 
Do you have Synology Drive installed? There's a database associated with it that maintains file versions, though it's a lot more storage efficient when using Btrfs than it was with ext4. It won't be visible in Storage Analyzer and it can eat up space.

The only way to recover its space is to reduce the number of versions you have configured for each enables Shared Folder.
I do have Synology Drive installed with version control set to 2 on the team folder where it is enabled. This folder is 318gb in size. Is this correct that enabling version control doubles the space requirements for the folder? If so then this accounts for another 300gb in space.
 
Do you also have hyper backup? Usually HB stores a large cache file.
Yes I do.

I removed the versioning from Synology Drive and this brought down the size of @synologydrive but it didn't change any used space shown in Storage Manager, so I assume @synologydrive and @sharedsnaps work the same way where it's not actually taking up that mount of space that it says.
 
The Synology Drive database size is actual space used. It should have have an effect of the reported available space, in Storage Manager.
Before I turned off versioning in Synology drive, the @synologydrive folder was roughly the same size (300gb) as the shared folder that synology drive was enabled on according to the `du` command in the terminal. Once I turned off versioning, the reported size in the terminal for @synologydrive dropped down to less than 1gb, but Storage Manager reported usage did not change at all.

In synology drive admin console there is an area that reports size of the folder and database size, and the database size was only 200mb if thats what you are referring to.
 

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