To start off, I will tell you a bit about atime. Basically it writes to the file you have done anything with, whether it's creating it, modifying it, or reading it. This can cause slowdowns cause it makes the disk spin more than it needs to. So what we want to do is simply turn it off. This way when you open a file, it will not write the atime, saving you from having your disk spin (more than necessary). This is great if you have USB linux distributions installed, as it will minimize writing to the disk, saving the USB disk. If the prospect of noatime is too much for you, inserting relatime will be a good option. This way, it only writes to atime if permissions (chmod/grp) or last write is later than the atime currently recorded. So basically, if you open a file, close it, and open it again, it wouldn't adjust atime.
Another note, cause the examples are long they may go to the next line. If this is the case, use the code copy and place it in a text editor without line-wrap on. This will give you the proper view then.
Now to dig into the how to.
First, switch to a root terminal with
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sudo su
Next we edit the fstab.
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cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
gedit /etc/fstab
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# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda3 /home ext4 defaults 0 2
/dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
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noatime,data=writeback,commit=60,nobarrier
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# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext4 errors=remount-ro,noatime,data=writeback,commit=60,nobarrier 0 1
/dev/sda3 /home ext4 defaults,noatime,data=writeback,commit=60,nobarrier 0 2
/dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
Make sure that when you add ,noatime,data=writeback,commit=60,nobarrier that there are no spaces in between the comma and the option. This will not work otherwise, and I don't know if/how much it could screw your PC up.
Now we're almost done, but don't forget to add this last step, or you could render your OS unbootable. In the root terminal:
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tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sdxx
For instance, since I did this to partition 1 and 3, I would have to do
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tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sda1
tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sda3
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sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_ordered /dev/sdxx
Thanks for reading and good luck!