Directory storage volume free-space issue

R

RES

New Member
Sep 13, 2025
4
0
1
I'm a new Proxmox user and am finding it a fantastic product. I installed Proxmox on a new mini PC with only 256GB of internal storage. After a few VMs I started running short on space, so I added a 256GB USB SSD, mounted it and added the storage to the PVE. I created one VM on it with no issue, but trying to create another via clone, it is saying not enough space.

From the web interface when I look at Disks on the PVE, it correctly shows that it is 256GB, but when I select the disk on the left, below the PVE, it shows it's 86.4% full, with 3.49GB of 4.04GB in use. "df" on the host shows 245,940,508 1K blocks with only about 4% in use.

I obviously don't have something set right, but after much searching I still can't figure out what that is.

Can someone point me in the right direction?
 
Is this somehow related to it being a directory storage volume? My other 2 storage volumes are both LVM. Would changing it to an LVM resolve it?
 
I recommend using ZFS or LVM-Thin for storing guests but let's see what the issue might be. Please share

Bash: 
df -hT
lsblk -o+FSTYPE,MODEL
cat /etc/pve/storage.cfg
pvesm status
qm config YOURVMIDHERE
 
OK, I started over (cloned the only VM on that disk to the internal disk so I could clone it back when I was done), created a physical volume on the partition, created an LVM-thin pool, etc. That seems to be working much better. I cloned the VM back to that volume and it's only using a couple of percent of the volume. Cloning the 2nd one that originally started this whole exercise and that also seems to be working.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've never used LVM before, which is why I initially went with a standard directory storage group, but LVM-thin does seem to work much better.
 
OK, thanks for the tip. Interesting that discard isn't the default option for VMs with thin provisioned storage.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom