# LVM (Logical Volume Manager)

21 Hacker News commenters recommended LVM (Logical Volume Manager) and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free Linux volume manager that makes resizing storage and taking snapshots easy. Critics say it only checksums metadata, not data, and lacks ZFS features.

## Why people recommend it

- Snapshots for backups and forensics (3 comments): "You could use LVM or btrfs snapshots (at the filesystem level) if you're ok restarting your database between runs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46365275)) "LVM has benefits, e.g. snapshots for backups, debugging and forensics." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49655676)) "Not a big problem to make snapshots with lvm or zfs and others." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46594002))
- Flexible, easy storage resizing (4 comments): "We have a script that basically slowly expands volume when demand grows, up to a limit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47688405)) "With LVM, if you get it wrong you just resize the LV and the filesystem it contains." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49664596)) "It's really not hard to setup LVM and Samba." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49496078))
- Standard tool for sysadmin storage (4 comments): "I use LVM on all my non-appliance Linux systems, both servers and desktops." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49664805)) "LVM for a *nix sysadmin is cheat mode for managing storage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49662583)) "just use LVM or other dynamic volume management" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47688421))
- Combines RAID, volumes and filesystem (2 comments): "xfs/lvm-raid10 or ext4/lvm-raid10, obviously." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49769813)) "how it unifies lvm, RAID, and the filesystem" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47526519))

## What people warn about

- Snapshots can become invalid or unrecoverable (2 comments): "The docs were terrible, almost as bad as MDADM. snapshots were for a long time unrecoverable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48829382)) "If a snapshot reaches 100% of its allocated space, it will become invalid." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833216))
- Older design, more limits than ZFS (2 comments): "Conventional LVM was pretty old and really designed for a different time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708540)) "much heavier limitations and far more inconvenience than ZFS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46846301))
- Poor docs and layout recovery (2 comments): "None of the Linux bare metal backup systems I've tested have been able to recover exactly same disk layouts, usually LVM part is poorly done." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45875143)) "The docs were terrible, almost as bad as MDADM. snapshots were for a long time unrecoverable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48829382))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "LVM (Logical Volume Manager)", https://hackerapproved.com/p/lvm/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).