Are You Killing Your SSD with Dual Boot ?

[bob466]

Yet there are you are, teaching newcomers stupid things with FUD. Your "advice" is way out of date. You need to catch up.

Really...you claim..."Modern SSDs are capable of lasting for petabytes written, not merely the terabytes written specified by manufacturers".and..."In short, SSDs have a lifespan far exceeding the regular hard disk". Then how do you explain two members of this Forums SSDs failing after a few weeks...you can't can you...because what manufacturers claim and what happens in real life are two different things.

That's like saying...new cars don't have problems SSDs may be capable of lasting a long time but it all boils down to maintenance and good luck...believe what you like.

[Pjotr]

For me, it's a matter of "best practice", not of science. If I can severely reduce the number of writes to my SSD with just a few simple measures that have no negative impact at all, and don't hinder me in any way, I think it's just plain horse sense to do so.

This article, which is only three years old, is just an example of what you may have to deal with if you do nothing:
https://www.servethehome.com/firefox-is ... to-fix-it/

Key quote:
"Bottom line is that if you have a lower capacity consumer level SSDs in some of your machines, you may want to check and tweak your Firefox config. Those drives can be rated for about 20GB of writes per day and Firefox alone might be using more than half of that."

The fix for that is also mentioned in my SSD how-to, by the way:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... tml#ID12.2

It boils down to this: better safe than sorry.

[catweazel]

...believe what you like.

Et tu, Brute.

[cliffcoggin]

The fix for that is also mentioned in my SSD how-to, by the way:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... tml#ID12.2

It boils down to this: better safe than sorry.

That sounds reasonable, Pjotr. Would changes to the session store interval survive Firefox and Mint updates, or would it have to be reset each time?

[Pjotr]

The fix for that is also mentioned in my SSD how-to, by the way:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... tml#ID12.2

It boils down to this: better safe than sorry.

That sounds reasonable, Pjotr. Would changes to the session store interval survive Firefox and Mint updates, or would it have to be reset each time?

It should survive updates, because the modification is being done in the copy of the Firefox settings in your /home.

[athi]

For me, it's a matter of "best practice", not of science. If I can severely reduce the number of writes to my SSD with just a few simple measures that have no negative impact at all, and don't hinder me in any way, I think it's just plain horse sense to do so.

Fully agree with this, with proper steps to reduce write/erase operations, SSD can last much longer than spinners. Have a Kingston SKC100S3120G 120GB SSD that has almost 12 years of constant use that still works like new. Spends a couple of years running Win7 and then Mint, it is the boot drive in my main rig now. Except for when it was running Win7, it was used mostly for boot drive with volatile data stored on the network.

[Rocky Bennett]

Yet there are you are, teaching newcomers stupid things with FUD. Your "advice" is way out of date. You need to catch up.

Really...you claim..."Modern SSDs are capable of lasting for petabytes written, not merely the terabytes written specified by manufacturers".and..."In short, SSDs have a lifespan far exceeding the regular hard disk". Then how do you explain two members of this Forums SSDs failing after a few weeks...you can't can you...because what manufacturers claim and what happens in real life are two different things.

That's like saying...new cars don't have problems SSDs may be capable of lasting a long time but it all boils down to maintenance and good luck...believe what you like.

This is one of the silliest things that I have ever read on the internet. Good luck with your logic!!!!

A fact of life in the modern world, things fail. Sometimes things don't work at all.

If it was made in a factory then the simple fact is... there is no way of telling if something will last one trillion hours or one hour.

[rene]

This is one of the silliest things that I have ever read on the internet.

I want your internet!

[Portreve]

And now, this is all I've got to say about this topic.

[HaveaMint]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0x6gkZmqcc

[Shadow in Fire]

I don't believe in having more than one OS per drive, even if it's just another GNU/Linux distro. It's a risk not many people are aware of.

You have to dedicate a secondary machine or just go cold turkey. Back up first, though.

[bob466]

Yet there are you are, teaching newcomers stupid things with FUD. Your "advice" is way out of date. You need to catch up.

Really...you claim..."Modern SSDs are capable of lasting for petabytes written, not merely the terabytes written specified by manufacturers".and..."In short, SSDs have a lifespan far exceeding the regular hard disk". Then how do you explain two members of this Forums SSDs failing after a few weeks...you can't can you...because what manufacturers claim and what happens in real life are two different things.

That's like saying...new cars don't have problems SSDs may be capable of lasting a long time but it all boils down to maintenance and good luck...believe what you like.

This is one of the silliest things that I have ever read on the internet. Good luck with your logic!!!!

A fact of life in the modern world, things fail. Sometimes things don't work at all.

If it was made in a factory then the simple fact is... there is no way of telling if something will last one trillion hours or one hour.

Silly is it...you said exactly the same thing Who's silly now.

Pjotr...thank you for your knowledgeable input as always. Mods...I think it's time to close this Thread as it not going anywhere.

[RollyShed]

Mods...I think it's time to close this Thread as it not going anywhere.

Yes going downhill and about to reach terminal velocity E=MC2 and it will turn to ashes. Hang on "Ashes" and Aussies, there's something there isn't there? Sorry USA, it is a Brit and Aussie thing.....

[cliffcoggin]

The fix for that is also mentioned in my SSD how-to, by the way:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... tml#ID12.2

That sounds reasonable, Pjotr. Would changes to the session store interval survive Firefox and Mint updates, or would it have to be reset each time?

It should survive updates, because the modification is being done in the copy of the Firefox settings in your /home.

Thank you Pjotr. I have now done that and a few of the other changes you mentioned.

[LordOfTheNet]

Have to completely disagree with the above statement of additional distros only in VM. There simply are too many limitations in vm. I personally wouldn't recommend anything more than dual boot, but I would recommend installing that second os alongside your current os if you are going to be using it on a regular basis. VM is for testing purposes only in my opinion.

[Neil Darlow]

Hi,

I am very conservative about the use of SSDs. I restrict mine to serving /usr only. This provides speed-ups for binaries, libraries and application resources. Outside of updates, this can be viewed as largely a read-only scenario with minimal writes. The gains from using a SSD are there without the impact of excessive writes. I put everything else on a conventional HDD to avoid things like cache writes etc. in /home from diminishing SSD lifetime.

ATB,
Neil

[Minux1]

Another pseudo crisis on the horizon.
Accurate information is usually the best cure for panic mode.
500 GB Crucial SSD drives on my netbooks.
1TB Crucial SSD on my 11.5" laptop.
From what I read on SSDs they made the SSDs cheaper by making manufacturing/materials compromises that reduced the max number of overwrites before degradation.
That had to be done.
When SSDs first appeared on the scene I´d have to mortgage my house to buy a 1 TB SSD.
That being said the information also revealed that my great great grandkids would likely be pushing up daisies before the smallest of my drives degraded to the point of unusability from overwrites.
The next ice age is probably a more imminent threat than the failure of my SSDs due to too many overwrites.

[bob466]

Mods...I think it's time to close this Thread as it not going anywhere.

Yes going downhill and about to reach terminal velocity E=MC2 and it will turn to ashes. Hang on "Ashes" and Aussies, there's something there isn't there? Sorry USA, it is a Brit and Aussie thing.....

Ashes and Aussies = Winners

Here's something for you...only in NZ...https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=aeM8Y_1568958458

[Arch_Enemy]

I´m thinking of dual booting LM MATE v19.2 and the latest version of Kali Large.
I am starting with a pristine new outta box Crucial 1 TB SSD so I´m particularly interested in this discussion.
I have several Linux eligible laptops so I´m debating whether or not to have a Kali dedicated laptop or dual boot.
Dual/triple/quadruple booting Windows O/Ss didn´t seem to be fraught with the same snags and pitfalls that Linux presents.
Just install the latest Windows O/S last and everything fell into place.
No messing with GRUBs, command line code or any of that stuff.
A reasonably adept 10 year old could do it.

Ubuntu has for a while now installed a swapfile on the drive. Now, I don't know if this is default behaviour or not, but I have SO much RAM in my system I never enable a swap at installation. So, whether Ubuntu says "Hmmm...no swap partition, so I'll do it myself" or not, I dunno.

If you have enough RAM to avoid a swap partition, do so, and before rebooting after installation go to the new filesystem, /etc/fstab, and turn OFF the swapfile.

You'll save a lot of wear and tear on your SSD. I believe at least for right now, RAM is less expensive, so on a laptop I'd put in as much as the system can handle and forge the swaps altogether.

[athi]

Ubuntu has for a while now installed a swapfile on the drive. Now, I don't know if this is default behaviour or not, but I have SO much RAM in my system I never enable a swap at installation. So, whether Ubuntu says "Hmmm...no swap partition, so I'll do it myself" or not, I dunno.

If you have enough RAM to avoid a swap partition, do so, and before rebooting after installation go to the new filesystem, /etc/fstab, and turn OFF the swapfile.

You'll save a lot of wear and tear on your SSD. I believe at least for right now, RAM is less expensive, so on a laptop I'd put in as much as the system can handle and forge the swaps altogether.

If you use hibernation, you will need SWAP file. Also, a small SWAP file is always a good idea even with lots of ram since it is cheap insurance against system lock-up if you somehow run out of ram. As far as saving wear and tear on a SSD, use of SWAP file in place of SWAP partition allows the SSD to fully utilize TRIM and wear levelling algorithm.