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+title = "Multi-HDD support"
+weight = 15
++++
+
+
+Since v0.9, Garage natively supports nodes that have several storage drives
+for storing data blocks (not for metadata storage).
+
+## Initial setup
+
+To set up a new Garage storage node with multiple HDDs,
+format and mount all your drives in different directories,
+and use a Garage configuration as follows:
+
+```toml
+data_dir = [
+    { path = "/path/to/hdd1", capacity = "2T" },
+    { path = "/path/to/hdd2", capacity = "4T" },
+]
+```
+
+Garage will automatically balance all blocks stored by the node
+among the different specified directories, proportionnally to the
+specified capacities.
+
+## Updating the list of storage locations
+
+If you add new storage locations to your `data_dir`,
+Garage will not rebalance existing data between storage locations.
+Newly written blocks will be balanced proportionnally to the specified capacities,
+and existing data may be moved between drives to improve balancing,
+but only opportunistically when a data block is re-written (e.g. an object
+is re-uploaded, or an object with a duplicate block is uploaded).
+
+To understand precisely what is happening, we need to dive in to how Garage
+splits data among the different storage locations.
+
+First of all, Garage divides the set of all possible block hashes
+in a fixed number of slices (currently 1024), and assigns
+to each slice a primary storage location among the specified data directories.
+The number of slices having their primary location in each data directory
+is proportionnal to the capacity specified in the config file.
+
+When Garage receives a block to write, it will always write it in the primary
+directory of the slice that contains its hash.
+
+Now, to be able to not lose existing data blocks when storage locations
+are added, Garage also keeps a list of secondary data directories
+for all of the hash slices. Secondary data directories for a slice indicates
+storage locations that once were primary directories for that slice, i.e. where
+Garage knows that data blocks of that slice might be stored.
+When Garage is requested to read a certain data block,
+it will first look in the primary storage directory of its slice,
+and if it doesn't find it there it goes through all of the secondary storage
+locations until it finds it. This allows Garage to continue operating
+normally when storage locations are added, without having to shuffle
+files between drives to place them in the correct location.
+
+This relatively simple strategy works well but does not ensure that data
+is correctly balanced among drives according to their capacity.
+To rebalance data, two strategies can be used:
+
+- Lazy rebalancing: when a block is re-written (e.g. the object is re-uploaded),
+  Garage checks whether the existing copy is in the primary directory of the slice
+  or in a secondary directory. If the current copy is in a secondary directory,
+  Garage re-writes a copy in the primary directory and deletes the one from the
+  secondary directory.
+
+- Active rebalancing: an operator of a Garage node can explicitly launch a repair
+  procedure that rebalances the data directories, moving all blocks to their
+  primary location. Once done, all secondary locations for all hash slices are
+  removed so that they won't be checked anymore when looking for a data block.
+
+## Read-only storage locations
+
+If you would like to move all data blocks from an existing data directory to one
+or several new data directories, mark the old directory as read-only:
+
+```toml
+data_dir = [
+    { path = "/path/to/old_data", read_only = true },
+    { path = "/path/to/new_hdd1", capacity = "2T" },
+    { path = "/path/to/new_hdd2", capacity = "4T" },
+]
+```
+
+Garage will be able to read requested blocks from the read-only directory.
+Garage will also move data out of the read-only directory either progressively
+(lazy rebalancing) or if requested explicitly (active rebalancing).
+
+Once an active rebalancing has finished, your read-only directory should be empty:
+it might still contain subdirectories, but no data files. You can check that
+it contains no files using:
+
+```bash
+find -type f /path/to/old_data
+```
+
+at which point it can be removed from the `data_dir` list in your config file.