Is 2 GB of disk space enough for x86 installation?

walteweiss · May 2, 2019 at 2:39 PM

Hello guys!

I have been playing with LibreELEC the last week and it’s running great on my Atom-based x86 Motherboard, playing me 1080P and serving as some very basic file (Resilio) sync server from a Docker-container.

I have a chance to get 2 GB SSD for it, should I?

I’ve tried to backup my LibreELEC installation via settings and it took me less than 2 GB (during the backup process I have noticed it stores thumbnails somewhere inside the backup, which I probably don’t need to). Though my first backups were like 50…100 MB or so.

I can either do a restore from my backup or try to do clean install and repeat the steps I need (won’t take too much time for me, since it’s very basic usage).

Would just 2 GB storage be enough for my needs, or is it too little? And if it would be enough for the very basic installation, will it be cluttered with things like thumbnails and another type of cache over time? Is there an option to symlink those folders to my SATA-connected HDD?

The reason of this solution is that I guess SATA interface would be better than USB Flash Drive (SATA 2 vs USB 2, actually).

I can get new 120 GB SSD for cheap ($25), but this option will delay me on time by few weeks at least, due to various local reasons. Or I can get my (used now) 32 GB SSD, but much later, like by the end of the year. That’s why I’m considering this 2 GB option, as I thought right now maybe it’s the best option among USB and just a regular HDD.

Would appreciate any thoughts on that! Cheers.

walteweiss · May 2, 2019 at 2:44 PM

Much bigger and non-default font, due to the message being written in my Google Docs first and copied then. Seems like the styles are kept. First post ever, sorry if there's something like community guidelines. As for the topic, I couldn't find it neither here, nor on reddit/LibreELEC.

trogggy · May 2, 2019 at 4:20 PM

2GB sounds very tight. A quarter of that will be taken up by your system partition (so not included in your backup).

If it costs pennies there's nothing to lose (as long as you back up) but if it were me I'd use a usb stick or a spinny hard drive until I could get hold of a bigger ssd.

**Iridium** · May 2, 2019 at 5:24 PM Official Post

I agree with trogggy 2G is sufficient but..... it won't take much to fill this up (addons, backups, dumps etc).

However, if you use the SSD as the primary boot and move /storage to a new SSD/HDD as and when they become available then you have the best of both worlds.

trogggy · May 2, 2019 at 11:41 PM

Quote from MoreBloodWine

Personal opinion, anything windows 4gb or more. Just depends on needs. But win + kodi= nothing else,3gb

Windows???

MoreBloodWine · May 3, 2019 at 2:37 AM

Quote from trogggy

Windows???

long day, removed post,nm

walteweiss · May 30, 2019 at 4:37 PM

Hello guys, excuse me for being away for that long, right after asking my question.

Thanks for your replies at first!

I've tried to work with 2 GB drives and it (seems like) works fine out of the box. I don't know whether there is a way of managing things somehow (with symlinks maybe), to have a bootable drive on that tiny SSD only, but it works for me, for a light system which I use only as a player, not having huge library, no add-ons, basically naked LibreELEC.

As for the computer with much bigger library I took 8 GB drive for the same (one dollar more) price. I heard that should be enough, I'm playing around with that, and that looks enough, at least at this point. I'm not sure where LibreELEC hosts all the thumbnails though, and how much space they take.

trogggy · May 30, 2019 at 5:11 PM

Quote from walteweiss

Hello guys, excuse me for being away for that long, right after asking my question.

Thanks for your replies at first!

I've tried to work with 2 GB drives and it (seems like) works fine out of the box. I don't know whether there is a way of managing things somehow (with symlinks maybe), to have a bootable drive on that tiny SSD only, but it works for me, for a light system which I use only as a player, not having huge library, no add-ons, basically naked LibreELEC.

As for the computer with much bigger library I took 8 GB drive for the same (one dollar more) price. I heard that should be enough, I'm playing around with that, and that looks enough, at least at this point. I'm not sure where LibreELEC hosts all the thumbnails though, and how much space they take.

I have a reasonably sized library - 1200 films / 80 tv shows - and my Thumbnails folder is around 1.2GB.

Location is storage/.kodi/userdata/Thumbnails.

8GB should be plenty for most of us - it might fill up if you start making multiple backups.

walteweiss · July 11, 2019 at 7:31 PM

Quote from trogggy

I have a reasonably sized library - 1200 films / 80 tv shows - and my Thumbnails folder is around 1.2GB.

Location is storage/.kodi/userdata/Thumbnails.

8GB should be plenty for most of us - it might fill up if you start making multiple backups.

Thanks!

At this point I have about 300+ films / 10 tv shows / a lot of music, I think 500+ GB of FLACs or something.

My /storage is just 1.2 GB of 6.8 GB (which is 18%, with 5.6 GB free). Theoretically, the 2 GB drive would be enough for not-so-huge library. I think 8 GB would be enough for a very long time for me, and at the same

As for the backups, I’m not doing them frequently, and I pull them with scp via SSH, so I don't store backups on the same machine, on the SSD. I would recommend doing this, if you're limited on space. And I think that's also safer, as if you'll have something with your disk, you'll have the copy in another place.