Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...

[Dale]

james wrote:
> On 3/17/20 10:14 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 1:59 AM <tuxic@××××××.de> wrote:
>
>> Finally, ALL DRIVES FAIL.  It doesn't matter what the underlying
>> storage technology is.  I've seen hard drives fail in less than a
>> year, with the warranty replacement drive failing less than a year
>> after that.  I think next warranty replacement (still in the original
>> warranty period) lasted 5+ years of near-continuous use.  The typical
>> failure modes of hard drives and solid state storage are different,
>> but they all fail.  You can't perfectly predict WHEN they will fail
>> either.  Most drives have SMART and sometimes it can detect failure
>> conditions before failure, but not always.
>
>
> Hello Rich, et al.
>
> I have deleted most, because I agree with the thread details, you get
> what you pay for, but excess payment is rarely rewarded...
>
>
> HEAT is the enemy of all electronics and mechanical things, computer
> drives/memory are no exception. There are a myriad of interfaces/codes
> on modern motherboards, and quite a few on legacy motherboards that
> track heat. Some are not very accurate, but most, are reasonable.
>
> Hopefully, you kept your mobo book. A section somewhere talks about
> temperature sensors. If the cpu is loaded, the drives are most likely
> getting hot. If the fans are running on a relatively high speed, the
> system is generating tons of heat. If the GPU(s) are running ho9t, the
> drives are hot. tools that scan the hardware for sensors are great,
> use them!
>
>
> I now install 'water coolers' from thermaltake on all my chassis based
> system. new or large video cards have tons of processing going on
> inside the GPUs; thus a  large source of heat. Systems with lots of
> GPU cards, are like ovens. All of this heat, regardless of source,
> KILLS all forms of memory, especially 'drives'. Keep everything
> monitored, well vented and in a room, cool as possible. Many server
> farm rooms run below 50 degrees F, to extend the performance and life
> of electronics, particularly HDD and other forms of memory. Many
> chipsets, scale down, upon increased heat, auto-magically.
>
>
> Another (indirect) way to monitor heat, is to monitor the power
> consumption of a component. (relatively) large power draw, is entwined
> with heat production. Heat kills drives and memory.... no exceptions!
>
>
> Here are few one-liners I use to monitor
> (use/load==heat):
>
> watch -n12  sensors -f
>
> dstat -tcndylp --top-cpu  10
>
> htop
>
> What would be great, is if folks just list what they use to monitor
> the workload (and therefor heat indirectly) or the actual temperatures
> of given chipsets and "smart drives"? Perhaps we can then cull the
> responses and update of the gentoo help pages online with more
> detailed examples, scripts and tools to better organize heat, current
> and other relative performance parameters.
>
>
> hth,
> James
>
>


I agree that heat is a huge problem.  Run a CPU without a heat sink or
with a poor one for a while and see how badly that ends.  :/  That is
why I build my own rigs.  I have a Cooler Master HAF-932 case with those
large 230MM fans. It has one on the front, one on the side and one on
the top.  They don't spin fast but they move a lot of air.  The hard
drives are mounted right behind the front fan which gives them good air
flow.  When I build, I never use the stock CPU cooler.  I shop around
and get a large cooler with a large fan. I ended up with the ZALMAN
CNPS10X.  At the time, it was among the top coolers.  I've since
replaced the 120MM fan.  Using a IR sensor, which is pretty accurate,
everything on my computer runs cool.  Even my video card runs cool
compared to some I've seen posted.  My memory comes with coolers as
well.  They tend to run cool since that side fan blows air right on them
but the heat sinks make them run even cooler.

The other issue I've read about, start up.  When things start up, like
hard drives, they pull additional power, especially things like HDD
motors.  Those put stress on the motor itself plus the controllers that
drive them.  It also makes the power supply work harder trying to
stabilize power which can cause spikes, sags etc. That's not good for
the power supply or all the things connected to it.  Although, a good
power supply deals with that fairly well nowadays. Of course a poorly
designed power supply doesn't.

Of course, another killer, surges and bad power.  We all know those can
be bad, either immediately or as life shorteners when minor.  Lightening
strikes even far away can cause issues.  We won't even go into those
strikes that are close by and explode light bulbs and such.  You know,
those that even a surge protector has trouble stopping. 

I mostly use gkrellm to monitor my temps and such.  The temps I get from
IR sensors are pretty close to what I see with gkrellm. 

Since I've never had one, do SSDs get warm or hot?  Or do they run cool
bare?  Curious because I got some options to mount one in my computer
case.  I could make a bracket and mount it on the bottom right in front
of the side fan.  It would be in direct air flow that way.  If it runs
warm enough, heat sinks is another option as well.  Just curious.

Oh, I found this one since so many posted about Samsung.  I have their
monitor and cell phone so why not a SSD too.

Samsung Part number MZ-76E250B/AM Model 860 EVO  250GB and 5 year
warranty.  Only $58.00 too.

I got to get that new HEPA filter paid off first.  Dang allergy
Doctors.  As if I didn't have enough health trouble already.  :/

Dale

:-)  :-)