Puppy on a SSD drive (best settings for long life of SSD?)

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T_B
Posts: 160
Joined: Sun 08 Apr 2007, 12:54

Puppy on a SSD drive (best settings for long life of SSD?)

#1 Post by T_B »

Hi,

I am planning on using a SSD drive for a frugal Puppy install.
The SSD drive is primarily for starting up Puppy. I am using USB harddrives for storage of files. At first I wanted to install Ubuntu on the drive, but Puppy might be a better idea.

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/09/0 ... te-drives/

Lifetime of SSD disks are apparently highly affected by too much writing. One of my reasons for buying a SSD drive was they contain no moving parts, so no or less wear. Now it seems that you don't need moving parts to wear a drive out. Should have done some more research.

So.. to avoid too much writing to the drive I thought Puppy might be the best solution. A frugal install that does most of its work in RAM.

Are there settings I might have to change to avoid updating the pup_xxx.sfs too often?

Any other advise?

I have a PQ1 2.5"" SATA 32 GB S525 drive.
Also pretty interested if there are more people using SSD drives and their experiences.

mawebb88
Posts: 246
Joined: Sun 13 Jul 2008, 09:54
Location: France nr Lyon

Re: Puppy on a SSD drive (best settings?)

#2 Post by mawebb88 »

T_B wrote:Hi,

I am planning on using a SSD drive for a frugal Puppy install.
The SSD drive is primarily for starting up Puppy. I am using USB harddrives for storage of files. At first I wanted to install Ubuntu on the drive, but Puppy might be a better idea.

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/09/0 ... te-drives/

Lifetime of SSD disks are apparently highly affected by too much writing. One of my reasons for buying a SSD drive was they contain no moving parts, so no or less wear. Now it seems that you don't need moving parts to wear a drive out. Should have done some more research.

So.. to avoid too much writing to the drive I thought Puppy might be the best solution. A frugal install that does most of its work in RAM.

Are there settings I might have to change to avoid updating the pup_xxx.sfs too often?

Any other advise?

I have a PQ1 2.5"" SATA 32 GB S525 drive.
Also pretty interested if there are more people using SSD drives and their experiences.
I have a EeePC901 with 2 SSDs. So am also interested in this question. So I searched using Google for "eee ssd life". The general opinion is not to worry. The SSD will last longer that the life of the PC (assuming you will upgrade every so often) and SSDs will in any case drop in price so replacing it if it does go shouldn't be a problem.

I do however fool my SSD into thinking its a USB stick and then the save to RAM is only scheduled for every 30 minutes rather than continuously which should reduce the risk. See elsewhere on this forum for how to do this.

Rgds

Mike

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rjbrewer
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#3 Post by rjbrewer »

You can set "puppy event manager" to 0 so it only saves if
you want when rebooting or shutting down.

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prehistoric
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Joined: Tue 23 Oct 2007, 17:34

Re: Puppy on a SSD drive (best settings?)

#4 Post by prehistoric »

mawebb88 wrote:...
I do however fool my SSD into thinking its a USB stick and then the save to RAM is only scheduled for every 30 minutes rather than continuously which should reduce the risk. See elsewhere on this forum for how to do this.
Could we have a link to the post? My first few searches didn't find it, so I must not have used the right keywords.

I've been running with an SSD in my Dell D610 for months. Part of the time I've used an external USB flash drive for the save file. These are significantly slower than the internal SSD. I would like to run in RAM except for shutdown, but the system is too clever for me. It finds the internal drive, when I put the save file there, and decides it is not really a flash drive. If the save file is on a USB flash drive, I get the typical 'save every 30 minutes' behavior, plus a save icon on the desktop.

T_B
Posts: 160
Joined: Sun 08 Apr 2007, 12:54

#5 Post by T_B »

Writing once every 30 minutes seems like a great solution. A link would be nice indeed .

@moderator. Thanks for adjusting the title of my post, but my question was more general than only "long life of SSD"
I am also interested in fast boot up times or other settings that can help getting more out of my SSD drive.

mawebb88
Posts: 246
Joined: Sun 13 Jul 2008, 09:54
Location: France nr Lyon

Re: Puppy on a SSD drive (best settings?)

#6 Post by mawebb88 »

prehistoric wrote:
mawebb88 wrote:...
I do however fool my SSD into thinking its a USB stick and then the save to RAM is only scheduled for every 30 minutes rather than continuously which should reduce the risk. See elsewhere on this forum for how to do this.
Could we have a link to the post? My first few searches didn't find it, so I must not have used the right keywords.

I've been running with an SSD in my Dell D610 for months. Part of the time I've used an external USB flash drive for the save file. These are significantly slower than the internal SSD. I would like to run in RAM except for shutdown, but the system is too clever for me. It finds the internal drive, when I put the save file there, and decides it is not really a flash drive. If the save file is on a USB flash drive, I get the typical 'save every 30 minutes' behavior, plus a save icon on the desktop.
You have to edit the init file within initrd.gz to force PUPPYMODE=13

See:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 622d2b729c

and

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=13430

Rgds Mike

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prehistoric
Posts: 1744
Joined: Tue 23 Oct 2007, 17:34

forcing limited writes to SSD

#7 Post by prehistoric »

@mawebb88,

I think that method is overkill for my problem. I know how to modify initrd.gz, but prefer not to introduce differences between my kernel (plus initial ramdisk) and the stock system if I can help it.

What appears to be working for me is to boot with two parameters: "pmedia=ataflash" and "pupmode=13". I could eliminate periodic saves, if they bothered me, by setting another variable to 0. At present, my system shuts down without the message about "top layer already saved" and does save at shutdown.

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