[CentOS] Errors on an SSD drive

Thu Aug 10 08:07:02 UTC 2017
John Hodrien <J.H.Hodrien at leeds.ac.uk>

On Thu, 10 Aug 2017, mad.scientist.at.large at tutanota.com wrote:

> what file system are you using?  ssd drives have different characteristics
> that need to be accomadated (including a relatively slow write process which
> is obvious as soon as the buffer is full), and never, never put a swap
> partition on it, the high activity will wear it out rather quickly.

I know this is common doctrine, but is this still generally held true?

For a well configured desktop that rarely needs to swap, I struggle to see the
load on the SSD as being significant, and yet obviously the performance of an
SSD would make it ideal for swap.

> might also check cables, often a problem particularly if they are older sata
> cables being run at a possibly higher than rated speed.  in any case,
> reformating it might not be a bad idea, and you can always use the command
> line program badblocks to exercise and test it.

Exercising an SSD?

smartctl will give you sensible information on what the drive thinks of
itself, and will give you actual figures on wear levelling and such like.

> keep in mind the drive will invisibly remap any bad sectors if possible.  if
> the reported size of the drive is smaller than it should be the drive has
> run out of spare blocks and dying blocks are being removed from the storage
> place with no replacements.

Coo, I've never seen a disk actually shrink due to failed sectors.  I don't
think I've got an SSD into a worn state yet to see this.

jh