HD wear and tear - celena vs. daryna. which is better?

[GrayWizardLinux]

I posted this in another thread but decided that it may be better for a separate thread. Sorry Husse if I did the wrong thing.


Re: Is Hardy Heron a bit too buggy?
by GrayWizardLinux on Fri Apr 25, 2008 1:22 am

a very serious question here. a bit off topic and also related with an underlying structure here re: ubuntu and mint.

I am getting a brand new Thinkpad. last one pooped out - I should have it next week. I was going to load daryna on it since the last one I used before it pooped out was celena and i loved it/her. At the time the HD winding up and down was wearing the hell out of the HD's and some people had command line fixes that i could not follow and some said it won't work and some said don't worry about the HD issue. It pooped out and i have been away. I am rescanning certain situations re: the new Daryna and Ubuntu versions and this HD thing and I have read that this is a Gutsy problem - and that I believe is where daryna is from as such. so does Daryna have this problem? also - if Celena was prior to Gutsy was celena clean/free of this issue? I may have to install Celena then instead. I could afford the new thinkpad and I'd hate to wear out the HD in a year as many people have said or even 2 years. I have seen articles about this HD problem not being solved in hardy heron and so maybe you can see this interconnectdness to this thread.

I really want and need the truth. not opinions. I am a neophyte linux dude but i am serious about running linux - the laptop as the last was 100% pure mint linux - no Windows. I use macs other than linux.

thank you in advance!

I would be happy to rn celena, no big deal - I want stability not a bunch of eye candy that drains my system or doesn't work or a version that has bugs and crashes, etc. So I am interested in all of these various permutations to my questions re: HD issues and celena vs. Daryna.


and serious step by step fixes if there is such a thing since I know squat about command line unix code stuff.

Best wishes,

An old Gray Wizard of a man.
Linux Mint - Pure Bliss!





does anyone have any clue as to what is actually occurring in celena? and in Daryna? Is celena free of this? or does Celena and daryna both have this problem? Is it fixed in daryna? I really would love to know.

[Fred]

GrayWizardLinux,

Well... This is such a complicated issue, I hardly know where to begin. Let me tell you what some of the problems and trade offs are in no particular order.

1) The file system. The journaled file system, which ext3 is, must be synced on a regular basis to reduce the likely hood of loosing data. In order for a sync to take place the drive must be spinning at operating speed. The more often a sync takes place the better your data integrity. I read somewhere that Ubuntu did a sync every 5 sec., but I am sure that must not be in power save or battery/notebook mode. At any rate, the sync timing can be adjusted from the command line. From what I have read, a number of people seem to think that you can lengthen that time out to as much as 60 sec. with ext3 without getting into trouble, but I would think that would depend on how much ram you had and the applications you were running.

2) There is another completely different setting that adjust the spin up time. So that once the drive spins up it will run for a minimum amount of time.

These are the two adjustments that you have available to control the disk cycling and run time.

Ok, lets look at disk drives. Usually the most critical rating is the number of spin up cycles the drive can reasonably tolerate before failure. the next most important is the continuous number of hours of operation one can reasonably expect.

A hard disk is a mechanical device. For the sake of this discussion the parts we are most concerned about are the motor, the bearings, and the read/write head or heads.

The hardest load on the motor is starting it and bringing it up to speed, or spin up. The hardest load on the heads is the spin down or parking the heads when the unit cycles off. The hardest load on the bearings is continuous run which generates heat in the bearings and causes them to wear faster. As well as make the entire unit run hotter, which isn't good for the magnetic media either.

Thinking about all of these factors you begin to see that you can't win for loosing, so to speak. What is a distro maker to do? Power the drive down for longer periods of time and take a bigger risk of loosing data, or risking a system freeze on low RAM machines, and save lots of battery power, and have a cool running hard drive? Or should s/he on the the other hand, run the drive almost constantly and risk early failure of the bearings and media due to heat build up as well as reduce battery life considerably?

If you run somewhere in the middle you can kind of balance all the competing factors to get the best hard drive life at a reasonable battery drain and still have a responsive machine.

As you can see this is a very subjective decision. Each distro developer must weigh the pros and cons and pick what they think is the best compromise.

Every OS has exactly the same problems to solve. Some do a better job of making educated guesses than others, there is no doubt about that.

Is the problem fixed in the current version? Will it be fixed in the next version? Difficult question to answer. First, is there a problem? Well there will always be a problem for some machines and some application loads, at any given set of settings. If you change the settings then it will fix some peoples problems and create problems for others.

So you tell me if the problems will be fixed. I would say if they change the timings, yes, some people will be happy, others will not. Could Ubuntu do a better job with the default settings to have a lesser number of people having problems? I suspect so, but I don't know that. After all Ubuntu users are probably the most diverse group of users in Linux.

Windows has drive problems too, the exact same problems. The difference being that drive mfg.'s build and tailor their hardware to run as good as possible on Windows. So they probable have the edge here. But make no mistake, Windows notebooks go through drives right and left too.

I know I didn't really answer your question but maybe you understand now why the question is so hard to answer honestly without a lot of spin, pro or con.

Fred

[GrayWizardLinux]

Fred! Thank you for the info. I guess that some of the 'spin' (not the HD) out there about this issue a while ago seemed rather serious and I was just trying to be as proactive as I could with a new machine.

I guess i will put Daryna on and see what happens. Again, Thank you!!!

[Fred]

GrayWizardLinux,

You are in an excellent position to compare the two versions. Is your new computer going to have about the same amount of ram?

It will be a Thinkpad too so you would probably be a good indicator it the defaults have changed, and if so, enough to help or hurt you.

I would be curious as to what you discover in this regard.

If it is more of a problem for you we can try adjusting some of the settings up or down to see if it helps you. That's what is nice about Linux. At least you can change it if you don't like it. Of course it is also a temptation to some that get themselves into more trouble than they can get of of too.

Fred

[GrayWizardLinux]

Fred, the new one has 1 gig and is a core duo. The old one had a pentium M and had 512 ram.

I am installing over the crappy Windows. 100% linux mint. I will try Daryna and see how it is. I can always install Celena because i was happy with that version this past Fall/early Winter. I should have it next week from the person I talked to yesterday.

thank you.

[Fred]

GrayWizardLinux,

My pleasure sir. I hope it was helpful.

Fred

[GrayWizardLinux]

Thank YOU!