[SOLVED] Do I need to resize my HDD?

[austin.texas]

I might add a tip regarding an SSD. There is a thing called "overprovisioning" where you get better longevity from the SSD by leaving unallocated space for the SSD's firmware to use. I won't go into the technical details, but the best strategy is to leave at least 10% of the drive unallocated.
Your root partition for Mint does not really, normally, need to be any more than 20GB.

[mr.travo]

Awesome Austin!

You brought up a good point about Swap that I forgot to ask. I have read that swap can really shorten the life of my drive. What should I do with this? I do not plan on doing hibernation (and always disable it). This time I turned swap to either 10 or 0, IIRC. Do I even "need" swap partition or just create one and leave it small? My ram is maxed out at 8Gb. What do you recommend?

I have read about overpartitioning the other day. The article suggested not to let it get under 30% free. Overpartitioning is something I am interested in doing.

With all that being said, should I do:

/ = 20gb
/home = 200gb
swap = ?

Thanks!

[austin.texas]

If you are not planning on hibernating, the odds are that any swap partition you have will never be needed, with your 8GB of RAM.
The only cases would be if you do extensive video editing or open 50 tabs in your browser, or something else similar, that uses up all that RAM.

[Termy]

Considering you have plenty of RAM, I'd do as I think I said further above: create a small swap file just in-case and then you needn't concern yourself with it anymore.

[mr.travo]

Thank you both. If I create a small swap file and set swap to 10, would that work? Would 1GB be too small or good enough?

[Pierre]

that 1GB should suffice - - that's what most of my PCs seem to get.


With all that being said, you should use:

/ = 20gb
/home = 200gb
swap = 1Gb

and that should work, quite well.

[mr.travo]

that 1GB should suffice - - that's what most of my PCs seem to get.


With all that being said, you should use:

/ = 20gb
/home = 200gb
swap = 1Gb

and that should work, quite well.

Awesome! Thank you Pierre!

[mr.travo]

This should look right.... right?

Thank you for the help!

[austin.texas]

That looks fine. Good job.

[Termy]

Agreed. Looks good. Nice one. That partition setup should suit you for a long time. If ever you wind up needing more swap space, you can just create another partition using what's left over, or create a swap file. Sorted.

[mr.travo]

Awesome!

Thank you all for taking the time (and patience) to teach and explain to me how to do this. Knowledge increased!

Marking topic as solved.

[BG405]

I know this is solved but just thought I'd add my 2p worth:

As it sits right now, it doesn't have the SMART feature. I don't know if it has something to do with all the connections it has to go through and what not or if it's just that old.

Code: Select all

smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [x86_64-linux-4.13.0-26-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:               Seagate
Product:              FreeAgent Pro
Revision:             400A
User Capacity:        500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Logical block size:   512 bytes
Serial number:        9QG1JFSL
Device type:          disk
Local Time is:        Mon Jan 22 19:06:20 2018 EST
SMART support is:     Unavailable - device lacks SMART capability.

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===

Error Counter logging not supported

Device does not support Self Test logging

What else could I use to test it out?

Thanks!

The drive itself probably does have SMART capability; you are right with your thoughts in that It is more than likely the interface which doesn't support SMART monitoring. I've also found this to be the case with those USB-SATA convertors and also with USB docking stations.

Only way, for certain, to test all functionality is to connect it to a proper hard-disk controller. It's likely an IDE/ATA drive.

If you do add a second drive to the laptop, you could always create a swap partition on that, maybe also one for /tmp to save wear on the SSD. Then if something happens (like a power cut) you can use hibernate if you need to.

[mr.travo]

Awesome! I figured it would be that connection that was not allowing the SMART controller to work properly. I have a true SATA III to USB 3.0 connector now, so when I take it out of the case I will plug it in to confirm.

I appreciate the input!