I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....

https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a

So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of it!)
reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing MageiaLinux 9 ....
and disabling MSIE or whatever Browser/Mail/News system is installed. If
I disable MSIE will I also lose MS Office??

Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not be too
difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I last used it??
;-P )

Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
(By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be interesting!!)
--
Daniel

On 07/03/2024 09:36, Daniel65 wrote:
> I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....
>
> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a
>
> So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of it!)
> reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing MageiaLinux 9 ....
> and disabling MSIE or whatever Browser/Mail/News system is installed. If
> I disable MSIE will I also lose MS Office??
>
> Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not be too
> difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I last used it??
> ;-P )
>
> Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
> (By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be interesting!!)
In my limited experience, HPs don't play very well with Linux. Had
difficulty getting WiFi to work, installing Mageia caused cancellation
of the warranty....
My HP laptop is just single boot Mageia 8 now.
Good luck - hope it all works out for you.
--
Grimble
Machine 'Haydn' running Plasma 5.27.10 on 6.6.18-desktop-1.mga9 kernel.
Mageia release 9 (Official) for x86_64

On Thu, 07 Mar 2024 04:36:40 -0500, Daniel65 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:

> I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....
>
> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a
>
> So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of it!)
> reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing MageiaLinux 9 ....
> and disabling MSIE or whatever Browser/Mail/News system is installed. If
> I disable MSIE will I also lose MS Office??
>
> Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not be too
> difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I last used it??
> ;-P )
>
> Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
> (By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be interesting!!)

When you first boot the windows system to remove stuff and reduce the partition
size, don't connect to the internet, assuming win11 can run without internet
access, like prior versions of windows.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

On 2024-03-07 06:41, Grimble wrote:
> On 07/03/2024 09:36, Daniel65 wrote:
>> I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....
>>
>> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a
>>
>> So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of it!)
>> reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing MageiaLinux 9 ....
>> and disabling MSIE or whatever Browser/Mail/News system is installed.
>> If I disable MSIE will I also lose MS Office??
>>
>> Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not be too
>> difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I last used
>> it?? ;-P )
>>
>> Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
>> (By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be interesting!!)
> In my limited experience, HPs don't play very well with Linux. Had
> difficulty getting WiFi to work, installing Mageia caused cancellation
> of the warranty....
> My HP laptop is just single boot Mageia 8 now.
> Good luck - hope it all works out for you.

I have 2 HPs, both purchased used. Probook 6550b and a Pavilion 15. Both
are very happy with Mageia. BUT, on both I completely removed the
travesty that is Windows, so it's not necessary for me that they play
well with both OS's installed. In addition, because each was a few years
old when I got them, no warranty worries.

TJ

Grimble wrote on 7/3/24 10:41 pm:
> On 07/03/2024 09:36, Daniel65 wrote:
>> I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....
>>
>> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a
>>
>>
>> So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of it!)
>> reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing MageiaLinux 9 ....
>> and disabling MSIE or whatever Browser/Mail/News system is installed.
>> If I disable MSIE will I also lose MS Office??
>>
>> Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not be too
>> difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I last used
>> it?? ;-P )
>>
>> Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
>> (By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be interesting!!)
> In my limited experience, HPs don't play very well with Linux. Had
> difficulty getting WiFi to work, installing Mageia caused cancellation
> of the warranty....

It's not 'the weekend' yet so I am still on my old system, a HP 6730b,
which I purchased, second hand, in 2009 with Win7 installed.

I installed Mandrava 2009 on it but could not get Internet, via USB
Dongle, up and running, so, one weekend when I was going to be away, I
gave it to my ISP to see in he could get things running.

The conversation, when I picked my Laptop up on the Monday, went
something like ....

Him: mumble, mumble, bloody Linux, mumble, mumble.
Me: But, hang on, it's Linux which is sort of like the Unix that you use
to run your server.
Him: mumble, mumble, bloody Linux, mumble, mumble.

.... but he HAD gotten me connecting!! :-P

I've since upgraded through MGA4 and MGA6

> My HP laptop is just single boot Mageia 8 now.
> Good luck - hope it all works out for you.

So do I .... we shall see ...... and to think it's all because I spilt a
drink on my Laptops keyboard a couple of years ago, so have been using a
$15 wired USB Keyboard and that some of those keys are loosing their
lettering!! Perhaps I should have just brought another $15 keyboard!! ;-P
--
Daniel

David W. Hodgins wrote on 8/3/24 3:07 am:
> On Thu, 07 Mar 2024 04:36:40 -0500, Daniel65
> <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>
>> I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....
>>
>> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a
>>
>> So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of it!)
>> reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing MageiaLinux 9
>> .... and disabling MSIE or whatever Browser/Mail/News system is
>> installed. If I disable MSIE will I also lose MS Office??
>>
>> Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not be
>> too difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I last
>> used it?? ;-P )
>>
>> Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
>> (By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be interesting!!)
>
> When you first boot the windows system to remove stuff and reduce the
> partition size, don't connect to the internet, assuming win11 can
> run without internet access, like prior versions of windows.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins

Thanks, Dave, I had thought about that .... maybe I can turn off the
Wi-Fi Internet access whilst the computer is booting.
--
Daniel

On Fri, 08 Mar 2024 05:40:24 -0500, Daniel65 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:

> David W. Hodgins wrote on 8/3/24 3:07 am:
>> On Thu, 07 Mar 2024 04:36:40 -0500, Daniel65
>> <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....
>>>
>>> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a
>>>
>>> So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of it!)
>>> reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing MageiaLinux 9
>>> .... and disabling MSIE or whatever Browser/Mail/News system is
>>> installed. If I disable MSIE will I also lose MS Office??
>>>
>>> Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not be
>>> too difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I last
>>> used it?? ;-P )
>>>
>>> Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
>>> (By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be interesting!!)
>>
>> When you first boot the windows system to remove stuff and reduce the
>> partition size, don't connect to the internet, assuming win11 can
>> run without internet access, like prior versions of windows.
>>
>> Regards, Dave Hodgins
>
> Thanks, Dave, I had thought about that .... maybe I can turn off the
> Wi-Fi Internet access whilst the computer is booting.

Don't forget to disable restricted boot (aka secure boot), and to turn off
fast boot in windows.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_in_dual_boot_with_Windows8_and_over#Troubleshooting

As the new system will be uefi, I strongly recommend using refind as the boot
loader instead of grub2.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

On 2024-03-07, Grimble <grimble@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
> On 07/03/2024 09:36, Daniel65 wrote:
>> I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....
>>
>> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a
>>
>> So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of it!)
>> reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing MageiaLinux 9 ....
>> and disabling MSIE or whatever Browser/Mail/News system is installed. If
>> I disable MSIE will I also lose MS Office??

In what? Mageia does not use MSOffice, so when you run Mageia you will
use Libreoffice, which is very close to MSoffice ( and you can save
files in MSOffice format if you wish.)
Remember that the various MSoffice programs are incompatible with each
other.

>>
>> Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not be too
>> difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I last used it??
>> ;-P )
>>
>> Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
>> (By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be interesting!!)

SSD is just a hard drive technology. There should be nothing interesting
about it.

> In my limited experience, HPs don't play very well with Linux. Had
> difficulty getting WiFi to work, installing Mageia caused cancellation
> of the warranty....

Crap. Installing Mageia will not cancel the warrenty. It will mean that
HP cannot help you when you have problems with Mageia, which is fair
enough, but just go to windows and show tha tthe problem is also there,
and they have to help you. But if the problem does not show up in
Windoes but does in Mageia then you are on your own. (or rather then you
come here to ask for help)

> My HP laptop is just single boot Mageia 8 now.
> Good luck - hope it all works out for you.

William Unruh wrote on 9/3/24 6:36 am:
> On 2024-03-07, Grimble <grimble@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>> On 07/03/2024 09:36, Daniel65 wrote:
>>> I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....
>>>
>>> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a
>>>
>>> So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of it!)
>>> reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing MageiaLinux 9
>>> .... and disabling MSIE or whatever Browser/Mail/News system is
>>> installed. If I disable MSIE will I also lose MS Office??
>
> In what? Mageia does not use MSOffice,

Yes, so I must have meant on the Win11 Installation.

> so when you run Mageia you will use Libreoffice, which is very close
> to MSoffice ( and you can save files in MSOffice format if you wish.)
> Remember that the various MSoffice programs are incompatible with
> each other.
>
>>>
>>> Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not
>>> be too difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I
>>> last used it?? ;-P )
>>>
>>> Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
>>> (By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be interesting!!)
>
> SSD is just a hard drive technology. There should be nothing
> interesting about it.

Doesn't it have a limitation on the number of Writes to each Byte?? I'm
guessing, if it does have a limitation, it will be some reasonably big
number .... but, still, something to remember.

>> In my limited experience, HPs don't play very well with Linux. Had
>> difficulty getting WiFi to work, installing Mageia caused
>> cancellation of the warranty....
>
> Crap. Installing Mageia will not cancel the warrenty. It will mean
> that HP cannot help you when you have problems with Mageia, which is
> fair enough, but just go to windows and show tha tthe problem is
> also there, and they have to help you. But if the problem does not
> show up in Windoes but does in Mageia then you are on your own. (or
> rather then you come here to ask for help)

Of course. ;-)

>> My HP laptop is just single boot Mageia 8 now. Good luck - hope it
>> all works out for you.
--
Daniel

David W. Hodgins wrote on 9/3/24 1:33 am:
> On Fri, 08 Mar 2024 05:40:24 -0500, Daniel65
> <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>> David W. Hodgins wrote on 8/3/24 3:07 am:
>>> On Thu, 07 Mar 2024 04:36:40 -0500, Daniel65
>>> <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I've just brought myself a new 'puter ....
>>>>
>>>> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-24-cr0002a-24-all-in-one-n100-8gb-256gb-hpcr0002a
>>>>
>>>> So, I intend to spend this weekend (hopefully not too much of
>>>> it!) reducing the Win11 area on the SSD, and installing
>>>> MageiaLinux 9 .... and disabling MSIE or whatever
>>>> Browser/Mail/News system is installed. If I disable MSIE will I
>>>> also lose MS Office??
>>>>
>>>> Internet connection is via Wi-Fi, so, hopefully, that will not
>>>> be too difficult (Umm! Where did I put my Wi-Fi password when I
>>>> last used it?? ;-P )
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone here have any suggestions that might help me out??
>>>> (By-the-by, First time SSD user, so that could be
>>>> interesting!!)
>>>
>>> When you first boot the windows system to remove stuff and reduce
>>> the partition size, don't connect to the internet, assuming win11
>>> can run without internet access, like prior versions of windows.
>>>
>>> Regards, Dave Hodgins
>>
>> Thanks, Dave, I had thought about that .... maybe I can turn off
>> the Wi-Fi Internet access whilst the computer is booting.
>
> Don't forget to disable restricted boot (aka secure boot), and to
> turn off fast boot in windows.
> https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_in_dual_boot_with_Windows8_and_over#Troubleshooting
>
> As the new system will be uefi, I strongly recommend using refind as
> the boot loader instead of grub2.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins

Thanks again, Dave.

On that wiki.mageia page that you link to, in the instructions for ....

"If you are using Microsoft powershell or Windows 10 and higher you need
to use following command:"

It shows ....
bcdedit /set "{bootmgr}" path \EFI\mageia\grubx64.efi

but in the screen grab it shows ....
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\mageia\grubx64.efi

without the double inverted commas around '{bootmgr}' .... so I should
be using ...........??

And will 'refind' be on/with in the MGA9 iso as an option??
--
Daniel

On Sat, 09 Mar 2024 04:33:17 -0500, Daniel65 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
> On that wiki.mageia page that you link to, in the instructions for ....
>
> "If you are using Microsoft powershell or Windows 10 and higher you need
> to use following command:"
>
> It shows ....
> bcdedit /set "{bootmgr}" path \EFI\mageia\grubx64.efi
>
> but in the screen grab it shows ....
> bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\mageia\grubx64.efi
>
> without the double inverted commas around '{bootmgr}' .... so I should
> be using ...........??

I haven't used windows in a long time, so don't know for sure. I suspect
the double quotes have no effect, so it doesn't matter, but don't know
for sure.

> And will 'refind' be on/with in the MGA9 iso as an option??

With the classic iso images you have to choose to install the refind package
for it to be shown as an option when it gets to the point of setting up the
bootloader. With the live iso images you have to install refind and switch to
it after booting into the installed system, as it is not on those iso images.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

On Sat, 09 Mar 2024 04:19:34 -0500, Daniel65 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
> William Unruh wrote on 9/3/24 6:36 am:
<snip>
>> SSD is just a hard drive technology. There should be nothing
>> interesting about it.
>
> Doesn't it have a limitation on the number of Writes to each Byte?? I'm
> guessing, if it does have a limitation, it will be some reasonably big
> number .... but, still, something to remember.
<snip>

In my desktop system, my oldest ssd drive is an OCZ-AGILITY4 that I've been
using since 2012. That's longer than some of the hard drives I've had lasted.

From "smartctl -a /dev/sdb" ...

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x0000 005 000 000 Old_age Offline - 5
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 1
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 94053
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 517
232 Lifetime_Writes 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 96637212637
233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0000 091 000 000 Old_age Offline - 91

The reallocated sector count went from zero to one shortly after I started
using the drive. The lifetime writes works out to just over 46,000 GB.
The Media_Wearout_Indicator has been holding at 91 for several years now.

I've been using the drive as my primary boot drive since I got it, and it's
still where my primary install and most data goes. I have three other ssd
drives that I added over the years, for testing and backup of data

A full Mageia install from a local mirror takes about 10 minutes, while an
install on the spinning rust drive I have (that is now only used for
additional backup) took around 40 minutes.

The difference in speed is incredible. Not only is each read faster, but
with no head movement, multiple file reads happen much faster too.
I would not bother buying anymore spinning rust drives, unless I had a need
for a very large volume of data.

If I disable networking, boot to a login prompt (I prefer to use run level 3)
is under 10 seconds. The networking, especially chronyd, adds another 5
to 20 seconds.

In my laptop, I have two pcie nvme ssd drives. They make the sata ssd drives
seem slow. :-)

I've had multiple hard drives fail on me over time. I have yet to have an ssd
drive fail. The only real drawback is that when they do fail, I don't expect
to be able to recover anything from it, while with a spinning rust drive you
usually (not always!) have some chance to recover things.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

On 2024-03-09, Daniel65 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
> William Unruh wrote on 9/3/24 6:36 am:
>> On 2024-03-07, Grimble <grimble@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>>> On 07/03/2024 09:36, Daniel65 wrote:
>>
>> SSD is just a hard drive technology. There should be nothing
>> interesting about it.
>
> Doesn't it have a limitation on the number of Writes to each Byte?? I'm
> guessing, if it does have a limitation, it will be some reasonably big
> number .... but, still, something to remember.

Manufacturers have heard about this, and speifically have write
radomizatin--ie, transfering writes to different locations on the disk
to average things out. But also, hard drives ( iron rust drive) also
have limited lifetimes which are shorter than SSD drives these days.

So if you are worried about it, make backups. Or don't use the computer,
because everything will fail after a while.

>

David W. Hodgins wrote on 10/3/24 2:46 am:
> On Sat, 09 Mar 2024 04:19:34 -0500, Daniel65
> <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>> William Unruh wrote on 9/3/24 6:36 am:
> <snip>
>>> SSD is just a hard drive technology. There should be nothing
>>> interesting about it.
>>
>> Doesn't it have a limitation on the number of Writes to each Byte??
>> I'm guessing, if it does have a limitation, it will be some
>> reasonably big number .... but, still, something to remember.
> <snip>

> The reallocated sector count went from zero to one shortly after I
> started using the drive. The lifetime writes works out to just over
> 46,000 GB. The Media_Wearout_Indicator has been holding at 91 for
> several years now.
>
> I've been using the drive as my primary boot drive since I got it,
> and it's still where my primary install and most data goes. I have
> three other ssd drives that I added over the years, for testing and
> backup of data
>
> A full Mageia install from a local mirror takes about 10 minutes,
> while an install on the spinning rust drive I have (that is now only
> used for additional backup) took around 40 minutes.
>
> The difference in speed is incredible. Not only is each read faster,
> but with no head movement, multiple file reads happen much faster
> too. I would not bother buying anymore spinning rust drives, unless I
> had a need for a very large volume of data.
>
> If I disable networking, boot to a login prompt (I prefer to use run
> level 3) is under 10 seconds. The networking, especially chronyd,
> adds another 5 to 20 seconds.
>
> In my laptop, I have two pcie nvme ssd drives. They make the sata ssd
> drives seem slow. :-)

Sorry! Are you suggesting you had two SSDs installed and functioning AT
THE SAME TIME??

If so, was the second one installed on a plug-in board or something??

> I've had multiple hard drives fail on me over time. I have yet to
> have an ssd drive fail. The only real drawback is that when they do
> fail, I don't expect to be able to recover anything from it, while
> with a spinning rust drive you usually (not always!) have some chance
> to recover things.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins
--
Daniel

William Unruh wrote on 10/3/24 5:09 am:
> On 2024-03-09, Daniel65 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>> William Unruh wrote on 9/3/24 6:36 am:
>>> On 2024-03-07, Grimble <grimble@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>>>> On 07/03/2024 09:36, Daniel65 wrote:
>>>
>>> SSD is just a hard drive technology. There should be nothing
>>> interesting about it.
>>
>> Doesn't it have a limitation on the number of Writes to each Byte?? I'm
>> guessing, if it does have a limitation, it will be some reasonably big
>> number .... but, still, something to remember.
>
> Manufacturers have heard about this, and speifically have write
> radomizatin--ie, transfering writes to different locations on the disk
> to average things out. But also, hard drives ( iron rust drive) also
> have limited lifetimes which are shorter than SSD drives these days.

Yes, I hadn't considered this for spinning rust drives ..... maybe
someone just made a bigger thing about it for the new tech!!

> So if you are worried about it, make backups. Or don't use the computer,
> because everything will fail after a while.

The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning towards your option Two.
I mean, a new keyboard and mouse costs about $50 ..... if only I hadn't
already spent the $650!! ;-(
--
Daniel

David W. Hodgins wrote on 10/3/24 2:54 am:
> On Sat, 09 Mar 2024 04:33:17 -0500, Daniel65
> <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>> On that wiki.mageia page that you link to, in the instructions for
>> ....
>>
>> "If you are using Microsoft powershell or Windows 10 and higher you
>> need to use following command:"
>>
>> It shows .... bcdedit /set "{bootmgr}" path
>> \EFI\mageia\grubx64.efi
>>
>> but in the screen grab it shows .... bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path
>> \EFI\mageia\grubx64.efi
>>
>> without the double inverted commas around '{bootmgr}' .... so I
>> should be using ...........??
>
> I haven't used windows in a long time, so don't know for sure. I
> suspect the double quotes have no effect, so it doesn't matter, but
> don't know for sure.
>
>> And will 'refind' be on/with in the MGA9 iso as an option??
>
> With the classic iso images you have to choose to install the refind
> package for it to be shown as an option when it gets to the point of
> setting up the bootloader. With the live iso images you have to
> install refind and switch to it after booting into the installed
> system, as it is not on those iso images.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins

Thanks.
--
Daniel

On Sun, 10 Mar 2024 04:35:45 -0400, Daniel65 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:

> David W. Hodgins wrote on 10/3/24 2:46 am:
<snip>
>> In my laptop, I have two pcie nvme ssd drives. They make the sata ssd
>> drives seem slow. :-)

> Sorry! Are you suggesting you had two SSDs installed and functioning AT
> THE SAME TIME??

Correct. A pcie ssd drive is just an m.2 card that plugs into a pcie slot on
the motherboard.

For examples of some m.2 pcie ssd drives, see
https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-m2-solid-state-drives

> If so, was the second one installed on a plug-in board or something??

The laptop came with one 512GB m.2 pcie card plugged into it's motherboard. I
opened the case and plugged in a 1TB card in another m.2 pcie slot. This laptop
has two m.2 pcie slots.

<snip>

On the laptop ...
# lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
nvme0n1 259:0 0 447.1G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:2 0 511M 0 part /boot/EFI
├─nvme0n1p2 259:3 0 32G 0 part [SWAP]
└─nvme0n1p3 259:4 0 64G 0 part
nvme1n1 259:1 0 953.9G 0 disk
├─nvme1n1p1 259:5 0 260M 0 part
├─nvme1n1p2 259:6 0 16M 0 part
├─nvme1n1p3 259:7 0 37.9G 0 part
├─nvme1n1p4 259:8 0 1.2G 0 part
├─nvme1n1p5 259:9 0 17.5G 0 part
├─nvme1n1p6 259:10 0 32G 0 part [SWAP]
├─nvme1n1p7 259:11 0 231G 0 part
└─nvme1n1p8 259:12 0 64G 0 part /

I have one linux install on each drive, with lots of room for virtual machines.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

On Sun, 10 Mar 2024 04:42:14 -0400, Daniel65 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
> Yes, I hadn't considered this for spinning rust drives ..... maybe
> someone just made a bigger thing about it for the new tech!!

It isn't just that an ssd drive can fail, just like hard drives, and even tape
drives do. It's that when an ssd drive does fail do not expect any warning.

With a hard drive, there's usually some noise or other symptom to indicate it's
starting to fail, giving you a chance to recover most of the data. With an ssd
drive, when it does fail, it's sudden. No chance of recovery software reading it.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

David W. Hodgins wrote on 10/3/24 11:27 pm:
> On Sun, 10 Mar 2024 04:42:14 -0400, Daniel65
> <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>> Yes, I hadn't considered this for spinning rust drives ..... maybe
>> someone just made a bigger thing about it for the new tech!!
>
> It isn't just that an ssd drive can fail, just like hard drives, and
> even tape drives do. It's that when an ssd drive does fail do not
> expect any warning.
>
> With a hard drive, there's usually some noise or other symptom to
> indicate it's starting to fail, giving you a chance to recover most
> of the data. With an ssd drive, when it does fail, it's sudden. No
> chance of recovery software reading it.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins

But, in either case, of course we would have previously done a back-up!!

OF COURSE WE WOULD HAVE!! :-)
--
Daniel

On 2024-03-10 04:35, Daniel65 wrote:
> David W. Hodgins wrote on 10/3/24 2:46 am:
>> On Sat, 09 Mar 2024 04:19:34 -0500, Daniel65
>> <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>>> William Unruh wrote on 9/3/24 6:36 am:
>> <snip>
>>>> SSD is just a hard drive technology. There should be nothing
>>>> interesting about it.
>>>
>>> Doesn't it have a limitation on the number of Writes to each Byte??
>>> I'm guessing, if it does have a limitation, it will be some
>>> reasonably big number .... but, still, something to remember.
>> <snip>
>
Individual cells do wear out over time, but modern drives have extra
cells included so they can switch to those when one stops working. In
addition, there is something called "wear leveling" where writes don't
always use the same cells each time. All of this is automatic with the
firmware of the drive.

In addition, there is something called "trim" that should help extend
the life of your drive. Once you have Mageia installed, come back here
and one of us will explain how to activate that for your Mageia partition(s)
>
(snip)
>>
>> In my laptop, I have two pcie nvme ssd drives. They make the sata ssd
>>  drives seem slow. :-)
>
> Sorry! Are you suggesting you had two SSDs installed and functioning AT
> THE SAME TIME??
>
> If so, was the second one installed on a plug-in board or something??
>
My latest desktop build has two M.2 NVME slots on the motherboard, and I
put a 1TB ssd in each. I don't have any rust drives on the system at
all, but I do have a hotswap bay I use with a lightly-used rust drive
for backing things up.

As Dave says, the speed difference is incredible. I still have a couple
of my old desktops that I use for testing purposes, but using them after
this new build is almost painful - and as things go this isn't a
particularly fast system by modern standards.

>> I've had multiple hard drives fail on me over time. I have yet to
>> have an ssd drive fail. The only real drawback is that when they do
>> fail, I don't expect to be able to recover anything from it, while
>> with a spinning rust drive you usually (not always!) have some chance
>> to recover things.
>>
I haven't had any fail yet, either - and my first ssd was purchased used
from ebay years ago, more as an experiment than anything else. I have no
idea how much use it saw before I bought it, but it was an "old" drive
even then. I replaced it because it was way too small, not because it
failed. But, there was also the fact that because it was an older ssd,
it didn't have some of the life-extending features more modern drives
have. I put it into a usb case and use it as an external hard drive.

TJ

On Mon, 11 Mar 2024 09:37:33 -0400, TJ <TJ@noneofyour.business> wrote:
<snip>
> In addition, there is something called "trim" that should help extend
> the life of your drive. Once you have Mageia installed, come back here
> and one of us will explain how to activate that for your Mageia partition(s)
<snip>

While trim is absolutely needed on some drives, there have been some rare
reports that it can cause problems, which is why it's not enabled by default.

Best to experiment with the drive before putting it into regular use, to see
if trim causes problems or not or check with the manufacturer's data sheets,
and search for reports of problems with that make/model.

An ssd drive connected using usb can not be trimmed as the usb interface does
not support the trim command. Trying to run trim will report the feature is
not supported.

Some newer ssd drives have firmware that automatically runs trim, as needed.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

On 2024-03-11 11:48, David W. Hodgins wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Mar 2024 09:37:33 -0400, TJ <TJ@noneofyour.business> wrote:
> <snip>
>> In addition, there is something called "trim" that should help extend
>> the life of your drive. Once you have Mageia installed, come back here
>> and one of us will explain how to activate that for your Mageia
>> partition(s)
> <snip>
>
> While trim is absolutely needed on some drives, there have been some rare
> reports that it can cause problems, which is why it's not enabled by
> default.
>
> Best to experiment with the drive before putting it into regular use, to
> see
> if trim causes problems or not or check with the manufacturer's data
> sheets,
> and search for reports of problems with that make/model.
>
I hadn't read/heard about that. But I'm in luck. The two M.2 drives I
bought (One Crucial, one TeamGroup) both claim to support trim.

The Crucial drive uses Micron chips. I found that interesting, as Micron
is about to build a $1 billion chip fab less than 20 miles from here.
Construction of the first phase is scheduled to start later this year.

TJ

TJ wrote on 12/3/24 12:37 am:
> On 2024-03-10 04:35, Daniel65 wrote:
>> David W. Hodgins wrote on 10/3/24 2:46 am:
>>> On Sat, 09 Mar 2024 04:19:34 -0500, Daniel65
>>> <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
>>>> William Unruh wrote on 9/3/24 6:36 am:
>>> <snip>
>>>>> SSD is just a hard drive technology. There should be nothing
>>>>> interesting about it.
>>>>
>>>> Doesn't it have a limitation on the number of Writes to each Byte??
>>>> I'm guessing, if it does have a limitation, it will be some
>>>> reasonably big number .... but, still, something to remember.
>>> <snip>
>>
> Individual cells do wear out over time, but modern drives have extra
> cells included so they can switch to those when one stops working. In
> addition, there is something called "wear leveling" where writes don't
> always use the same cells each time. All of this is automatic with the
> firmware of the drive.
>
> In addition, there is something called "trim" that should help extend
> the life of your drive. Once you have Mageia installed, come back here
> and one of us will explain how to activate that for your Mageia
> partition(s)

Don't hold your breath, TJ, but Yes, I know where to come.

Buying the new Computer was a bit of a "Spur of the Moment" thing! As I
may have mentioned elsewhere, I ended up buying a Desktop Computer (for
$674) when I am used to using a Laptop Computer ..... so now I've
ordered myself (as well) a new USB Keyboard and Mouse (for $25) which
can plug into this Laptop and I'll see how I go!!

Old Habits Die Hard!!
--
Daniel