Hi,

I have a Hetzner Dedi with 2 x 3TB HDD in which I am using as a seedbox as well as for a few project.

I can see the HDD within Settings > Disk and can see they have some sort of Raid 0? Setup.

Ideally I would like to work out where linux as a file system is installed and what is in use on the hard disks (if anything...there shouldn't be) so I can effectively format them and then utilise the full 6TB of space...

when running lsblk I get the below export.

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO FSTYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 2.7T 0
├─sda1
│ 8:1 0 16G 0 swap [SWAP]
├─sda2
│ 8:2 0 512M 0 ext3 /boot
├─sda3
│ 8:3 0 1T 0 ext4 /
├─sda4
│ 8:4 0 1.7T 0 ext4 /home
└─sda5
8:5 0 1M 0
sdb 8:16 0 2.7T 0
├─sdb1
│ 8:17 0 16G 0 linux_
├─sdb2
│ 8:18 0 512M 0 linux_
├─sdb3
│ 8:19 0 512G 0 linux_
├─sdb4
│ 8:20 0 2.2T 0 linux_
└─sdb5
8:21 0 1M 0


Am I right in thinking SDA has the linux file system installed and SDB is ready to be formatted and used?

Ideally I would like to to continue with raid 0 and see the 2 3TB HDD as 1 6TB disk to make it easier for me.

If I was to do this I would like to be able to run a backup command to backup my linux file system so if it was to go down the pan I can reload the linux file system and it will be almost like nothing happened...almost like a snapshot not involving the TBs of Plex data...(I would just have to re-download the TBs of Plex data etc. should I want to get hold of it again....no biggie...)

Basically I want to backup my Linux seedbox apart from the PlexData so should it all break and I need to buy a new Dedi somewhere, I can simply load my linux backup only...

Well... it looks like something's been done to "sdb" but I'm not familiar with a "linux_" filesystem type. I take it that this drive has been re-purposed from some other system.

I wouldn't have partitioned "sda" that way but what's there will work OK. (I prefer my swap partitions in the middle of the disk. YMMV.)

I trust that you're aware that, with any RAID0 configuration, a failure of either drive means a loss of all the data on that device. Backups are incredibly critical in any RAID0 setup. (RAID0 = striped data, no redundancy---as in: none, zero, nada. Lordy, I wish that RAID0 would get renamed "NotActuallyRAID".)

(I wish I had the bandwidth that made transferring terabytes of data was "no biggie". :^D )

Potentially, Ubuntu installed by Hetzner, I presume they would have used the standard installimage script? You can read up about it here: https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Installimage/en


Completely aware about the loss of data with RAID0, the Plex library has about 250GB of IMDB Top Rated bits and a few others...the server is on an unmetred 1Gbit line so it isn't the end of the world.

What is the best way to backup my linux setup (without the plex data) so that if it goes wrong I have something?

"Hetzner Dedi " What exactly is that? Online resource or local server?

Hetzner are a provider in Germany. The machine is a dedicated server from them.

I would be guessing these days the disks are actually SSD, so placement is probably of no concern. The allocation on /dev/sda (your system disk as you surmised) is probably just the installer taking (fixed) ratios of the full space on the device. A terabyte for the root is (usually) a bit excessive - however in this case the Plex media is probably under /var/lib or similar, so will mess with your backup plans.
You can't simply make both disks into a RAID0 - certainly not while you have data (including operating system) on them. You could/should shrink the root and maybe /home and then use LVM to add the freed up space to the space on /dev/sdb. Best option all round, and can be done in stages without affecting the running system.
First thing would be to format /dev/sdb as a pv and move the plex data over, then you can worry about the backup - look into timeshift for that.