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

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

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Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 16, 2023 at 1:44 AM William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au
> <mailto:billk@iinet.net.au>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 16/4/23 15:18, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > > On Sunday, 16 April 2023 02:47:00 BST William Kenworthy wrote:
> > >
> > >> look into mount options for SSD's (discard option) and "fstrim" for
> > >> maintenance. (read up on trimmimg - doing a manual trim before
> the drive
> > >> reaches full allocation (they delete files, but do not erase them
> > >> because erasing is time consuming so its an OS controlled
> operation) or
> > >> auto trimming (which can cause serious pauses at awkward times) can
> > >> prevent serious performance degradation as it has to erase before
> > >> writing.  I am not sure of the current status but in the early
> days of
> > >> SSD's, this was serious concern.
> > > In short, see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SSD .  :)
> > >
> > Excellent, condenses it nicely.
> >
> > BillK
> >
> >
>
> OK Dale, I'm completely wrong, but also 'slightly' right.
>
> If you have an SSD or nvme drive installed then fstrim should be 
> installed and run on a regular basis. However it's not 'required'.
>
> Your system will still work, but after all blocks on the drive have
> been used for file storage and later deleted, if they are not
> written back to zeros then the next time you go to use that
> block the write will be slower as the write must first write
> zeros and then your data.
>
> fstrim does the write to zeros so that during normal operation
> you don't wait.
>
> I've become so completely used to Kubuntu that I had to read
> that this is all set up automatically when the system finds an
> SSD or nvme. In Gentoo land you have to do this yourself.
>
> Sorry for any confusion. Time to unsubscribe from this list
> I guess and leave you all to your beloved distro.
>
> Bye,
> Mark


Oh, please, don't go anywhere.  <begging>  We already lost the long term
Alan.  BTW, I checked on him a while back.  He's still OK.  It's been a
while tho. 

I read during a google search that some distros handle this sort of
thing automatically, some sort of firmware thing or something.  I
figured Gentoo didn't, it rarely does since that is the point of
Gentoo.  So, no harm.  Heck, I just now applied power to the thing.  I
don't even have it partitioned or anything yet.  Just rebooted after
rearranging all the cables, adding power splitter etc etc.

I do have one gripe.  Why can't drive makers pick a screw size and stick
to it on ALL drives?  It took some digging to find a screw that would
fit.  Some I bought that are supposed to work on SSDs were to short.  It
would likely work on a metal adapter but not a thicker plastic one. 
Luckily, I found 4 screws.  No clue where they came from.  Just in my
junk box.  Before this week, never laid eyes on a SSD before.  Anyone
know the thread size and count on those things?  I want to order a few,
just in case. 

Is running fstrim once a week to often?  I update my OS once a week but
given the amount of extra space, I'd think once a month would be often
enough.  After all, it is 500GB and I'll likely only use less than half
of that.  Most of the extra space will be extra boot options like
Knoppix or something.  I'm just thinking it would give it a longer
life.  Maybe my thinking is wrong???

Now to play with this thing.  I got to remember what all has to be
copied over so I can boot the new thing.  :/  Been ages since I moved a
OS to another hard drive.  Maybe a reinstall would work better.  :-\

Thanks to all. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S.  CCing Mark just in case. 

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