Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Finally got a SSD drive to put my OS on

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

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

:-)  :-)