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[SOLVED] Can I delete BTRFS snapshots from middle? (lemmy.today)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by gpstarman@lemmy.today to c/archlinux@lemmy.ml

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Let's say i made 10 snapshots on top of the base.

Now can i delete snap no. 5? Will the snaps after 5 will be affected?

Solved

Yes, one can delete consecutive snapshots. The data won't be deleted unless all snaps ( reference points ) get deleted.

Note: If you delete the original file and delete all the snapshots made when the file is still there, the file will get deleted permanently.

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[–] nous@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You missed an important part of that quote:

Send/receive of subvolume changes, efficient incremental filesystem mirroring and backup

This is explicitly talking about a different feature that can incrementally sending changes to the filesystem to another filesystem as a backup. Not at all about how snapshots work.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

Hmm, yeah, I guess I'm wrong there.

My interpretation was that since send/receive foots on snapshots, those would be related, but I guess, the incremental backup is actually a separate thing.
Some articles online call them "incremental snapshots" as well, which is where I might've gotten that initially, but I agree that on a logical level, they're not that, even if they're similarly space-saving.