Block Level dedupe on Synology BTRFS VS adding more drives

[Mgrobins]

Hi,

I have a NAS Running Xpenology, Xeon based with BTRFS file system.

Synology DSM does not natively implement inline or offline deduplication with BTRFS.

I can however run a VM container using docker and install a package to do offline dedupe.

My question is, for a server that is majority media - MKV video and music files, how much block level duplication (thus reduction) will I likely see?

My alternative is simply to add more storage which of course costs money.

Id be interested in the risks of either approach (I know the risks with RAID 6 but not dedupe) and general comments relevant to the idea .

Cheers,

 

[marv]

Hi, compressed data will have negligible dedupe ratio, its not worth the trouble.

 

[BoredSysadmin]

agree with marv. you won't gain much (if anything) from storage side compression nor dedup on compressed media files.
Besides deleting files, your other option to extend the current storage for a longer lifespan is to transcode videos to lower resolutions (1080p->720p) and/or HEVC or H.265 video codec - it could deliver 2x compression over it's older H.264 parent.
Also, depending on your HT system, you probably you won't notice much difference in audio from DTS [or it HD options] to 6 channels AAC.

/me hides before DataHoarders crowd sees this blasphemy.