Storage systems that use thin provisioning may present a very large logical capacity to a file system, when in fact the storage system may not be fully backed by physical storage. In such systems, the file system may operate as if the large logical capacity exists, but when the physical storage nears capacity, data may be lost if the file system continues to write data to the storage.
In one use scenario, thin provisioning may be used in many systems where multiple volumes may be stored on a single set of physical storage. When the physical storage may be configured, an administrator may not know how much physical space each volume may use over time. Rather than partitioning the physical drive, multiple volumes may be thin provisioned. This may allow any of the logical volumes to use the physical storage resource until the physical storage is full.