Nikos Chantziaras wrote: > On 16/04/2023 01:47, Dale wrote: >> Anything else that makes these special? Any tips or tricks? > > Only three things. > > 1. Make sure the fstrim service is active (should run every week by > default, at least with systemd, "systemctl enable fstrim.timer".) > > 2. Don't use the "discard" mount option. > > 3. Use smartctl to keep track of TBW. > > People are always mentioning performance, but it's not the important > factor for me. The more important factor is longevity. You want your > storage device to last as long as possible, and fstrim helps, discard > hurts. > > With "smartctl -x /dev/sda" (or whatever device your SSD is in /dev) > pay attention to the "Data Units Written" field. Your 500GB 870 Evo > has a TBW of 300TBW. That's "terabytes written". This is the > manufacturer's "guarantee" that the device won't fail prior to writing > that many terabytes to it. When you reach that, it doesn't mean it > will fail, but it does mean you might want to start thinking of > replacing it with a new one just in case, and then keep using it as a > secondary drive. > > If you use KDE, you can also view that SMART data in the "SMART > Status" UI (just type "SMART status" in the KDE application launcher.) > > >
I'm on openrc here but someone posted a link to make a cron job for fstrim. When I get around to doing something with the drive, it's on my todo list. I may go a month tho. I only update my OS once a week, here lately, every other week, and given the large amount of unused space, I doubt it will run short of any space. I'm still thinking on that. I've read about discard. Gonna avoid that. ;-) Given how I plan to use this drive, that should last a long time. I'm just putting the OS stuff on the drive and I compile on a spinning rust drive and use -k to install the built packages on the live system. That should help minimize the writes. Since I still need a spinning rust drive for swap and such, I thought about putting /var on spinning rust. After all, when running software, activity on /var is minimal. Thing is, I got a larger drive so I got plenty of space. It could make it a little faster. Maybe. I read about that bytes written. With the way you explained it, it confirms what I was thinking it meant. That's a lot of data. I currently have around 100TBs of drives lurking about, either in my rig or for backups. I'd have to write three times that amount of data on that little drive. That's a LOT of data for a 500GB drive. All good info and really helpful. Thanks. Dale :-) :-)
