Re: Advice on upgrading to SSD
On Monday 02 March 2020 06:28:58 Tony van der Hoff wrote:
Hi,
I'm currently running Buster on a 5 year old GigaByte motherboard with
a 10-year old Raid-1 array on 2 500GB disks. Although it is running
fine, I'm becoming a bit concerned about the longevity of this
storage, so I'm planning to upgrade it to a 500GB or maybe 1TB SSD
from Crucial.
My plan would be to install the SSD in the cage, and dd the contents
of the array onto the SSD. I would then change the BIOS to boot from
the SSD, making the RAID array redundant.
Can someone please tell me whether this plan is feasible, and what
pitfalls I might encounter?
Thanks to all who replied.
Gene didn't address my problem, but made the very useful observation
that disks spinning 24/7 don't really die. Perhaps I shouldn't worry
about replacing them.
Dan gave a useful step-by-step procedure for copying at file level. This
method is slightly problematical for me as it includes "make changes to
new /etc/fstab" and "make changes to bootloader to set new root
filesystem", neither of which I feel feel comfortable with, due to lack
of knowledge. I'll certainly abandon my plan to dd the whole filesystem.
Basti and Deloptes propose to add the SSD as a third drive to the RAID.
Very attractive, but would involve complications if the SSD is not
identical in size to the old spinners.
Andrei supports file-level copying, so I'll stick to that.
Joe supports the idea of adding the drive to the RAID, but makes no
reference to dealing wth the size difference.
Alex highlights the downside of size difference.
David and Sarunas suggests doing a system reinstall on the SSD, leaving
my data on the RAID. Whilst a useful upgrade, I don't really understand
how that addresses my problem. (if I have one!)
Michael and Deloptes poo-poo that suggestion, with which I concur.
Andy suggests that I should continue using RAID, instead of reverting to
a single disk. Thank you very much for this helpful suggestion, I
considered it originally, but abandoned it on cost grounds. When I
originally built this system with RAID, 10 years ago, I was very reliant
on data integrity. I now no longer have such a pressing need, and am
quite happy to rely on a single disk, with nightly rsync backups to an
off-site server. I certainly have no need for the always-on data that
RAID provides.
Finally, Geoff supports Andy's suggestion, and in addition,
interestingly, mentions NVME to replace SATA SSD. Attractive, but costly.
So, you have all given me plenty to think about, for which I'm grateful.
I guess I'll go with s single SSD onto which I'll copy the data from the
RAID.
Thank you all for helping me make up my mind.
--
Tony van der Hoff | mailto:tony@vanderhoff.org
Buckinghamshire, England |
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