Solid State Drive tweaks
Prepare
- check for ssd firmware updates
- Enable SATA AHCI mode in the BIOS (if available)
Note: in a dual boot configuration with Windows 7, Windows will not boot after changing AHCI. You will need to make some changes in Windows before proceeding.
Format SSD
Update: it is better to have journaling enabled for possible fault correction. Skip this section.
Format drive as ext4, journaling disabled.
MAKE SURE WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THE RIGHT DRIVE HERE
Physical drive: "sdb", partition "sdb1"
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb | grep sectors
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders
sudo fdisk -H 255 -S 63 /dev/sdb "d" delete partition "n" new partition, primary, 1 "w" to write partition table and exit sudo mke2fs -t ext4 -O ^has_journal /dev/sdb1
Access time
The "relatime" option writes the time-of-access to disk and causes unnecessary additional writes to disk. Mount volumes using the "noatime" option in stead of the "relatime" option.
sudo cp /etc/fstab ~/fstab-backup sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Notice the location of 'noatime,'. Do not change anything else:
UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx / ext4 noatime,data=writeback,errors=remount-ro 0 1
TRIM
The TRIM function prepares (wipes) free space and prevents significant slowdown of writes as the drive is used.
Manual TRIM
sudo fstrim -v /
Tip: use this tool to TRIM for example every 30 minutes using crontab. See MySQL#Schedule_a_backup_with_crontab for an example.
Discard TRIM
Note: this method will cause trimming with every deletion and can slowdown deletions.
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Notice the location of discard,, do not change anything other:
UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx / ext4 noatime,discard,data=writeback,errors=remount-ro 0 1
Reboot. To test if TRIM is working look here:
Swap
Lower the likelyness of swap
sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf # add/edit these lines # minimum swappiness vm.swappiness=0 # weak inode cache schrinking vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50
I/O scheduler
Change I/O scheduler strategy to "noop" (or "deadline")
Note: there are alternatives to add this option to grub or to install a "sysutils" package
cat /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
noop anticipatory deadline [cfq]
sudo gedit /etc/rc.local
Add these lines before exit 0 for drive "sda"
echo noop > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
Reboot
Temporary files
Use in-memory disk for temporary files to reduce the number of writes to the SSD.
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Add after the last line (exact text)
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec,mode=1777 0 0
After reboot, using df you should see a line like
df ... tmpfs xxxxxx yyyyy zzzzzz n% /tmp ...
Move firefox cache to the in-memory disk /tmp
In Firefox go to url "about:config"
- Look for the setting "browser.cache.disk.parent_directory"
- Create this setting as a New String if it does not exist.
- Set the value to "/tmp".
- Restart Firefox
- Folders as "/tmp/Cash/0", "/tmp/Cash/1", "/tmp/Cash/2" etc will be created by Firefox.
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is an activity logger that regularly writes to a database in your home folder. The following will prevent this without removing this functionality for all users:
rm ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite
The file will be recreated an be almost empty, then:
chmod -rw ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite zeitgeist-daemon --replace
To enable again do:
chmod +rw ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite zeitgeist-daemon --replace
Monitor I/O activity
To monitor I/O activity, user left/right to change sort order:
sudo apt-get install iotop sudo iotop -a
Monitor files open for writing, in this example:
- firefox
- zeitgeist
sudo lsof -c firefox -c zeitgeist -r 5 | grep -e "[[:digit:]]\+w"
Startup problems without journal
Note: not needed if you do not turn of the journal.
Did this from other Ubuntu and then it booted
sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sdb1
Moved aMule and Vuze folders to Data drive, NB: aMule will reset the folder when it is not found
