Comment LVM snapshots for iterative backups? (Score 2, Informative) 300
Depending on how long you're keeping them around, LVM Snapshots are likely to be a bad choice anyway. Their intended use-case is to have a very short lifespan, because they're intended to be used like so:
1. Create snapshot
2. Mount snapshot & copy data to backup server
3. Unmount & destroy snapshot
The point behind them is to create an unchanging version of a live partition so that you can copy the data out without worrying about whether it is being updated while you copy. Since the snapshots keep a diff of all changes to the original volume, they continue to grow in size as you make changes to the original volume. When the snapshot runs out of space, it simply dies (completely... can't mount it or anything, just have to destroy it).
There are some other possibly valid use-cases (e.g., if you have simple throw-away virtual test machines, you can build a gold image, and snapshot it and then mount & use the snapshot, which allows for a quick restore to the gold state), but keeping iterative backup copies on the local volume for quick restoration isn't really the best idea.