I have 1 Volume Group (VG), and 2 Logical Volumes (LV). I only want one LV

Hey folks,

I just installed Zorin OS Pro like last week and I loved it on Day 1. I was very surprised that it installed (based on what I picked), an LVM so well right off the bat. I have 2 SSDs and I always have to make sure to choose LVM to combine both drives to make a bigger drive logically after I install a new OS.

By inspecting the pvdisplay, vgdisplay, and lvdisplay I found out that I have 2 PVs, 1 VG, but 2 LVs! I thought the whole point of the LV is to combine multiple PVs into one single LV...no? Can someone explain why I may want to keep things this way with 2 LVs?

satoshi@satoshi:~$ sudo lvdisplay
  WARNING: Couldn't find device with uuid T0Fk23-KVMp-YcID-lArQ-QlZP-wahG-VpSSyj.
  WARNING: VG data is missing PV T0Fk23-KVMp-YcID-lArQ-QlZP-wahG-VpSSyj (last written to /dev/mapper/cryptdata).
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/data/root
  LV Name                root
  VG Name                data
  LV UUID                65b97d-N5ds-kyxr-JPdo-rYY3-ecQL-UoLdL1
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Creation host, time pop-os, 2024-05-17 23:35:34 -0400
  LV Status              NOT available
  LV Size                <229.43 GiB
  Current LE             58733
  Segments               2
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/vgzorin/root
  LV Name                root
  VG Name                vgzorin
  LV UUID                4blR9R-eGLC-NovJ-3nI8-oaRw-RwFS-ThcVZM
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Creation host, time zorin, 2025-04-12 14:52:30 -0400
  LV Status              available
  # open                 1
  LV Size                115.14 GiB
  Current LE             29477
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  - currently set to     256
  Block device           252:1
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/vgzorin/swap_1
  LV Name                swap_1
  VG Name                vgzorin
  LV UUID                CVVogs-9mel-gpbj-YMeL-Qvyo-jkYB-W0lKr4
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Creation host, time zorin, 2025-04-12 14:52:30 -0400
  LV Status              available
  # open                 2
  LV Size                1.91 GiB
  Current LE             489
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  - currently set to     256
  Block device           252:2
   
satoshi@satoshi:~$
satoshi@satoshi:~$
satoshi@satoshi:~$

Hi, and welcome.
I am no LV expert and no SSD expert. I noticed the first one is labeled 'data' with some reference to Pop!OS, the second 'vgzorin'. Does this indicate that the OS is on the second SSD and /home (data) is on the first? cf. HDD partitioning sequence, /boot/efi, root file system (/), /home, swap area. I notice you also have swap enabled, not needed for SSD if you have plenty of RAM; perhaps that is the issue?

1 Like

Many say it's not a good idea to span drives. if one drive fails, you loose everything in the volume that spans the drives. I try to follow that advice.

So, here there are 3 LVs and 2 VGs.
LVs: root, root, swap
VGs: data, vgzorin

You need to run sudo pvs to see the physical volumes.

It's ok to have two LVs with the same name, provided they are in different VGs.

1 Like

For different partitions. A Logical Volume is effectively the same as a partition, except that it can expand across multiple drives. If you have no need for SWAP, you can delete it.

Make sure you have proper backups of your data. With LVM set up in this way, if one drive fails you'll lose the data on both.