Re: SSD and HDD
On 13-10-2020 07:27, mick crane wrote:
> On 2020-10-11 19:01, Andy Smith wrote:
>> Hi Mick,
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 11, 2020 at 05:45:45PM +0100, mick crane wrote:
>>> Got a PC that has SSD and a HDD. I see that you are supposed to avoid writes
>>> to SSD for longevity.
>>
>> Flash write endurance has come on leaps and bounds over the last
>> decade to the point where most people don't have to worry about
>> this.
>>
>> You can look at "tune2fs -l" output or at SMART attributes to see
>> how much has been written to your current filesystems / devices over
>> their life times, to see how your use case matches up against the
>> write endurance advertised for your SSD.
>>
>> I wouldn't recommend taking any special measures unless you have
>> some doubt that the SSD endurance is up to it.
>>
>> With only a single SSD and a single HDD I'd rate device failure from
>> other problems as a higher risk than wearing out the SSD.
>>
>>> Is it a matter of putting entries in fstab for /swap /var /home to suitably
>>> formatted partitions on HDD ?
>>
>> If you still think you will have a problem then yes, that is one way
>> to go. Another is to leave some percentage of the SSD unpartitioned
>> and never used. That will increase its write endurance.
>>
>> [ Leaving aside the fact that if I were doing this I'd have an extra
>> storage device for redundancy… ]
>>
>> If I were in your position and still had concerns about write
>> endurance I'd probably put everything in LVM with a volume group on
>> the SSD and a volume group on the HDD. I'd then use separate logical
>> volumes for the filesystems that got a lot of writes. The use of LVM
>> like this would allow me to change my mind later and move LVs
>> between the SSD and HDD while the machine is online.
>>
>> Plus any time you are thinking of doing multiple filesystems, LVM is
>> a good bet.
>>
>> Plus you might be using LVM anyway for encryption.
>>
>> But again I can't emphasise enough how you are probably over thinking
>> write endurance.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Andy
Hullo,
>
> might I ask a favour for information on accepted wisdom for this stuff ?
> I being a home user have pfsense on old lenovo between ISP router and
> switch to PCs
I personally have apf-firewall onboard, and it's hard to beat in my
opinion, for ease of config as well as efficiency, but pfsense is
excellent and, in a separate box, very good.
> another old buster lenovo doing email
Any chance of putting this onto a separate drive in your firewall box?
This way it doesn't get any further into your system and you clear up
some clutter, with a machine you can allocate to something else.
> another Buster PC I do bits of programming on.
Perhaps upgrade this to your main box, which you also do your
programming on?
> Windows PC I play poker on and some games.
The only games I play are Chess and Go, but I believe Linux also has
poker, although I don't know how well that integrates with online game
venues. Install Steam, and you have it all! The last time I used a
Windows box was when XP came out, and that was one of their better ones.
But, I actually bought a second-hand Windows 10 box recently (HP
EliteDesk G1), and all I use it for is a driver box for better scanners
and printers Linux doesn't cater to as yet. When the market picks up in
that regard, I'll probably turn it into a home theatre box running Kodi.
A possible option worth looking at.
> My approach to backup has been to copy files I want to keep to
> external HDs and other disks when I remember. If something goes wrong
> so long as I remember what the config files do it's not such a big
> deal to start again.
> I suppose I should try to make it more formal
Yep, make the leap to learn about back-ups. Depending on your desktop,
it can be quite easy. KDE run a gui set-up that you barely have to think
about, but config files for back-up ninja and a couple of others are,
literally, trivial to figure out. Not that I can talk. I didn't become
the world's foremost authority on reinstalls by backing up. It's for
chickens! But keeping a separate \home partition is good policy.
Cheers!
Harry.
--
`Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false,
and by the rulers as useful'.
— Lucius Annæus Seneca.
Terrorism, the new religion.
Registered Linux User: 554515
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