Hi. I’m new at the forums, so hi everyone
I have a couple of questions regarding the database size. My scenario is this:
I have a relative with a laptop that has a 500 GB ssd drive (main and only drive), and she travels all around the world because of her job. The info she carries in her laptop is very important to her, so she needed a backup solution. I’ve done it before with Syncthing with great results, so I used it to keep a backup of a specific folder (which is the one she uses for, well, almost everything. Almost all of her info is located inside that folder), and also to backup the user folder (the laptop has Windows 10 Pro, so that way it backs up the content of the Desktop, Documents, etc.).
Both folders are configured as send only folders, and the device is linked to my Linux Mint Server (which has plenty of hard drive space. Folders here are receive only, and every night those folders are copied automatically to a second drive in my server, so if one day Syncthing messes up something, I’d already have a backup of the backup). So I’m using Syncthing as a backup solution in this case (I know it’s not designed for that, but I’ve using it this way with great results for some time).
The thing is that I didn’t know about the minimum free disk space setting, and what impact it has in all this. Well, my relative tends to keep her hard drive full or almost full (2 GB of free space I would say is a good estimation of how much free space she usually has), and I started to notice that Syncthing stopped syncing frequently (all folders appear as up to date in my server, but the device is trying to sync, but can’t). Whenever she frees some space, Syncthing catches up and syncs without issues. I understand that this is not a bug, and it’s the expected behaviour.
My questions are:
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In this type of scenario (send only folders, 500 GB hard drive, almost no free space), what minimum free space disk would you recommend for the database? I don’t know if the default 1% is too much for this use case (that would be 5 GB, which is too much for this to work. She rarely has more free space than that), but I don’t want to mess things up with a lower value that could make Syncthing to not start at all. I don’t know what could be a reasonable value for this setting in this case.
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The same question, but regarding the value for every folder. Should I set roughly the same minimum free space than what I chose for the database?
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I get that the database is needed on both ends and that it has to have a minimum of disk space reserved for it, but in the case of folders set as send only (which wouldn’t have the problem of receiving files that can get corrupted because of lack of free space), is it a problem if I set that value to zero (or a very small size)? I repeat, this would only be for send only folders in a back up scenario. The receiving end (server) has 1% for both settings (database and folders), and plenty of free disk space.
Thanks in advance!
PS: Sorry for my English.