Re: [gentoo-user] Qustions re Dell M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives under Gentoo

[thelma@sys-concept.com]

On 5/28/21 8:16 AM, thelma@sys-concept.com wrote:
> On 5/28/21 7:13 AM, Walter Dnes wrote:
>> On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 06:11:51PM -0600, thelma@sys-concept.com wrote
>>> On 5/27/21 3:05 PM, Walter Dnes wrote:
>>>>   It was nice to have a newer "hot backup" (XPS8940) to switch over to
>>>> quickly when an older machine started locking up occasionally.  Now I
>>>> need a "hot backup" for the newer machine that I ordered last October.
>>>> Dell Inspirons seem to top out at 12 gigs ram, so I'm looking for an XPS
>>>> model in order to get more ram as the bloating of linux continues.  All
>>>> current XPS models seem to have 256G or 512G M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State
>>>> drives in the base configuration.  Questions...
>>>>
>>>> * do NVMe drives function well under Gentoo (driver issues, etc)?
>>>>
>>>> * how long do they hold up (wear and tear)?
>>>>
>>>> * can I simply disable them if I run into problems?
>>>>
>>>>   If someone can suggest an alternate supplier to Dell, that ships to
>>>> greater Toronto, at similar prices, I'd be willing to take a look at
>>>> them.
>>>  
>>> Checking out XPS8940 (about 1799.00CAD) it seems to me expensive.  They did not mention if the NVME is Gen. 3 or Gen. 4
>>
>>   I don't know what happened between last year and now, but Dell's
>> XPS8940's now all seem to come with NVME (expensive) and fancy-shmancy
>> Nvidia (i.e expensive) video.  Also, reading the specs on the website
>> *V-E-R-R-R-R-Y* carefully, I see that the XPS machines come mostly with
>> *ONLY* 256 or 512 gig solid state drives; no SATA drive.  On the other
>> hand a $600 CAD (on sale) Inspiron desktop with...
>>
>> * 10th Gen Intel® Core# i5-10400 processor
>> * Intel® UHD Graphics 630 with shared graphics memory
>> * 12GB ram
>> * 1TB 7200RPM 3.5" SATA HDD
> 
> Anything with spinning disk "is obsolete" they are trying to give it way because nobody is buying them (you can buy them for few dollars), don't expect it to last long.

In a remote location I have ATOM-box 500GB SSD running asterisk, hylafax and is a backup unit; it is running 24/7 since 2014.
The only thing I changed few times is the External Power supply few times.