see here if u create ur btrfs with 2 hard disks with raid1 metadata and raid1 data that is , examble below mkfs.btrfs -L Test -m raid1 -d raid1 /dev/sda /dev/sdb in this case of two hard disks all files will be stored 2 times ( one copy of each file on each hard disk ) and if u remove one hard disk u can mount (the attached hard disk to ur PC) with mount -o degraded /dev/sda /mnt/Test u can recover ur data here _________ now you wont be able to recover ur data if u created mkfs.btrfs and added 3 hard disk at a time with a raid1 data and raid1 metadata such as mkfs.btrfs -L Test2 -m raid1 -d raid1 /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc in this setting , data is divide and spread on all hard disk such as a 1gb file will be stored as 333 mb on sda 333 mb on sdb 3333 mb on sdc sure u can remove 1 hard disk and mount the remaining 2 in degraded but that 300 mb in hard dish which is not connected is not going to be there so just stick with 2 hard disk , do scrub command daily , and all good ______ the geparted shows true disk usage and "btrfs filesystem show" command shows somewhat fake disk usage so check disk usage in geparted .