How worried should I be about my hard drive?

Arnulf · 10-22-2023, 07:49 AM

Two kinds of screw threads are common for computer drives:

UNC 6/32: 3½″ & 5¼″ HDD, some 3½″ & 5¼″ FDD
M3: 2½″ HDD & SSD, some 3½″ & 5¼″ FDD, 5¼″ CD/DVD/BD drives

Shank length is limited to 5 mm (or nearest inch equivalent).

hazel · 10-22-2023, 07:54 AM

A church friend of mine has ordered the drive from Amazon and it will be delivered to him on Monday. I'll go on Tuesday to pick it up and pay him. I'm amazed at how little it costs, £14.99 including delivery.

hazel · 10-24-2023, 05:04 AM

I've got it! It's tiny, only a bit bigger in area than a playing card. The piece of coated wire that I found to tie it on would go around it twice. But first I have to get it out of its plastic case and I have no idea how to do that. There doesn't seem to be any kind of fastener.

In the mean time, I have discovered that I can run Firefox out of the AntiX Live cd, which means that I can pick up my email while I'm recovering. My LFS system doesn't have FF, only links, because you can't build FF these days without rust and I don't want that on my machine. And you can't do webmail with links because the servers depend on javascript. It will be some days before I have FF running on Slackware again.

Oops! I've just discovered why it's so cheap. It only has 120 GB while my current one is 500 GB. I am going to have to downsize some of those partitions for the new setup.

beachboy2 · 10-24-2023, 05:32 AM

hazel,

I did mention in my edit that the 256GB version was even cheaper.

The 512GB one is £24.95.

If the 120GB is insufficient, then ask your friend to do a return at Amazon.

hazel · 10-24-2023, 05:49 AM

I think it will be OK. I've been overgenerous on the old drive.
Here is the current situation:

Code:

EFI: 260 MB
Swap: 4.9 GB (for 4 GB core memory)
Data: 97.7 GB (used: 5.7 GB)
Slackware: 30 GB (used 14 GB)
LFS 1 and 2: 30 GB each (used 4-5 GB but more needed for building)

Total ca 200 GB

And here is the proposed new one:

Code:

EFI 260 MB
Swap: 5 GB 
Data 10 GB
Slackware:  30 GB
AntiX: 10 GB (AntiX guide says 3.8 GB for the system)
LFS1: 30 GB (recommended but possibly 20 would be OK)
LFS2: 30 GB  (ditto)

Total 115.25 GB

fatmac · 10-24-2023, 07:34 AM

I use 120GB SSD on my machines, not a gamer, so don't need a lot of room, & create very little data myself - I give my system about 1.5X what it needs, (just in case I want to add a program or two), & that usually works out at around 8GB, the rest I leave available for /home, (music & videos mainly), leaves plenty of room - & this has worked for me for quite a few years now.

hazel · 10-24-2023, 08:21 AM

I don't collect music, videos or photographs so I don't need a lot of space for data. When I set up the existing drive, I made myself a big data partition because that's what everyone says you should do, but I haven't really made use of it.

LFS needs a fair amount of empty space because you're building sometimes quite large programs. Also I've got into the habit of keeping two LFS partitions and making each new one with the old one as host. But that isn't really necessary because slackware itself makes a very good LFS host.

I'm surprised that you find 8 GB to be enough for the system. My slackware currently uses 14 GB and that's very far from a full install.

beachboy2 · 10-24-2023, 08:36 AM

hazel,

Plastic packaging can be a pain at times.

If all else fails, attack the plastic with heavy duty kitchen scissors.

fatmac · 10-24-2023, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

...I'm surprised that you find 8 GB to be enough for the system. My slackware currently uses 14 GB and that's very far from a full install.

I use Devuan/XFCE, installed from the 'live' version, it has everything that I need, (& more), programs already installed, (web browser, music player, video player, office suite, all the regular stuff), & takes up about 4.5GB disk space, I even run it from an 8GB M2 SSD, (obviously using external drive for media in this case).

Arnulf · 10-24-2023, 02:19 PM

A rule of thumb for EFI partition size is 100 MB per OS "type". If you only want run (one or more) Linux 100 MB should be enough. Use 200 MB for a Linux/Windows dual boot.

30 GB for Slackware64 is a good choice. A more or less complete Slackware64-15.0 installation may require 20+ GB disk space but distinctly less than 30 GB disk space.

Avoid swap on a SSD. It is highly recommended to install more memory (8+ GiB) in your system and completely disable swap because swap can dramatically reduce lifetime of SSDs with heavy write load.

mrmazda · 10-24-2023, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arnulf

A rule of thumb for EFI partition size is 100 MB per OS "type". If you only want run (one or more) Linux 100 MB should be enough. Use 200 MB for a Linux/Windows dual boot.

Where did you get that rule from?!?!?

Code:

# inxi -S
System:
  Host: ab250 Kernel: 6.4.12-1-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    Console: pty pts/0 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20231019
# df -h | egrep -i 'disks|p7|p1|avail' | sort -r
Filesystem       Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p9   7.7G  6.6G  749M  90% /disks/s151
/dev/nvme0n1p8   7.7G  3.7G  3.6G  51% /disks/s153
/dev/nvme0n1p7   7.7G  6.6G  709M  91% /
/dev/nvme0n1p19  7.8G  3.1G  4.3G  42% /disks/sslo
/dev/nvme0n1p18  7.8G  4.5G  2.9G  61% /disks/f38
/dev/nvme0n1p16  7.7G  4.9G  2.5G  67% /disks/s154
/dev/nvme0n1p15  7.8G  4.3G  3.1G  58% /disks/f39
/dev/nvme0n1p14  7.7G  6.5G  878M  89% /disks/deb11
/dev/nvme0n1p13  7.7G  4.3G  3.1G  58% /disks/deb13
/dev/nvme0n1p12  7.7G  5.3G  2.1G  72% /disks/ub22
/dev/nvme0n1p11  7.8G  4.8G  2.6G  65% /disks/s155
/dev/nvme0n1p10  7.7G  4.2G  3.2G  57% /disks/deb12
/dev/nvme0n1p1   320M   12M  308M   4% /boot/efi
#

hazel · 10-25-2023, 12:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arnulf

Avoid swap on a SSD. It is highly recommended to install more memory (8+ GiB) in your system and completely disable swap because swap can dramatically reduce lifetime of SSDs with heavy write load.

Now he tells me! When I've already bought the damn thing. There is no way at all that I or anyone I know around here can install memory on this machine. I used to know a few people who could do that sort of thing for you, back when the Harrow Computer Club still existed around the turn of the century, but they were all old men and I think they're all dead now.

No, if a second drive fails too, then it's curtains. I shall just have to fork out a couple of hundred on a modern laptop.

mrmazda · 10-25-2023, 12:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

Now he tells me! When I've already bought the damn thing. There is no way at all that I or anyone I know around here can install memory on this machine. I used to know a few people who could do that sort of thing for you.

Any church that regularly has over 200 or so in attendance surely has some kind of younger adult or teenager with more than cursory knowledge of computers and related electronics who would likely to be eager to find the right cover screw(s), remove them and cover, and swap or add memory sticks for a nominal incentive. Most churches any more use (a) computer(s) to control what appears on the screen(s) up front, which requires someone or more who understands such things to run it, or at least knows who to call when something breaks. Don't dismiss all grayhairs either. Some of us have been using PCs since times when 640K was more RAM than anyone could possibly need for a personal computer.

All this about more assumes one is really in need of more RAM. If what one does rarely causes swapping, one can well do well without more. Is your work routine inhibited by noticeable swapping? Is there any?

hazel · 10-25-2023, 01:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrmazda

All this about more assumes one is really in need of more RAM. If what one does rarely causes swapping, one can well do well without more. Is your work routine inhibited by noticeable swapping? Is there any?

How do I test for that? You used to be able to hear the disk grinding away, but this hard drive makes no significant noise.

OK, I've found that top will do it if suitably configured. But what kind of usage makes a test? I don't stream or edit video or anything like that so the only thing I can think of is a compilation, and the only time I am compiling heavily is when I have a new LFS going. Most of the time, I'm browsing, doing sudokus or using Libreoffice.

hazel · 10-25-2023, 02:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrmazda

Any church that regularly has over 200 or so in attendance surely has some kind of younger adult or teenager with more than cursory knowledge of computers and related electronics

This is England, not America. An average communion service in my church has about 20 people, mostly of my own age. And in any case, I'm not going to ask my friend to buy something else for me. It's undignified.