Need to delete local-lvm and reuse the size in Proxmox

Need to delete local-lvm and reuse the size? It’s the default thin pool Proxmox creates at install, and it eats a chunk of your disk for VM storage you might not want. Removing it is straightforward if you do the steps in the right order.

What local-lvm actually is

local-lvm is an LVM thin pool named data sitting on the pve volume group. It’s separate from the root logical volume that holds the OS. If you’re not using it for VMs, that space is just sitting there.

Delete the pool and reclaim the space

First, make sure no VMs or containers are stored on local-lvm. Move or delete them. Then remove the storage from Proxmox’s config so the GUI stops showing it.

lvremove /dev/pve/data

That deletes the thin pool. The space goes back to the volume group. Now extend the root logical volume to use all of it.

lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/pve/root

Then grow the filesystem. Proxmox uses ext4 or xfs depending on the install. Check with df -T /. For ext4:

resize2fs /dev/pve/root

For xfs:

xfs_growfs /

That’s it. The space is now part of the root filesystem, and local-lvm is gone from the storage list.

One thing to watch

If you ever add another disk and want thin provisioning back, you can recreate a thin pool with lvcreate. But for a simple homelab, just extending root is less to think about. I’d rather have the space in one place than split it up.

If you’re dealing with other Proxmox storage quirks, the LVM-thin over iSCSI post covers a different headache with the same tools.