Side-project / ArchLinuxARM

Feel free to talk about anything and everything in this board...
john3voltas
Expert
Posts: 266
Joined: 19 May 2013, 21:53

Side-project / ArchLinuxARM

Postby john3voltas » 17 Aug 2014, 00:00

I'm currently working on side-project using a full blown installation of ArchLinuxARM to an external USB hard disk.
From the 1st impressions I've noticed that even when the PC is idling without anything to do the hdd will spin up and down every 5 minutes or so.
Then I tested booting up from pendisk with the hdd connected and the hdd never spins up and down.
My question: is it possible to have an OS booting from an hdd and then writing every changes to pendisk? Like a buffer?
And then that buffer would get written to hdd every 2 or 3 hours. It would save on the hdd life even though it would compromise the pendisk life but I don't care.
BTW, doing it to the RAM is not an option since this box only has 128MB.
Thanks in advance :)
Cheers

Scooby
Site Admin
Posts: 826
Joined: 09 Sep 2013, 16:52

Re: Side-project / ArchLinuxARM

Postby Scooby » 10 Nov 2014, 10:31

john3voltas wrote:BTW, doing it to the RAM is not an option since this box only has 128MB.


How about in ram with swapfile on USB?

Isn't it better to try to adress the issue with the hdd not spinning down?

john3voltas
Expert
Posts: 266
Joined: 19 May 2013, 21:53

Re: Side-project / ArchLinuxARM

Postby john3voltas » 08 Jan 2015, 08:57

Hi Scooby,
First of all, thanks for your reply on the matter.
I have tested with swap on a pendisk and it still doesn't solve the problem. Every minute the disk will wake up and go to sleep 10 or 15 seconds later. I mean, it's not mathematical but it does seem to work in that way.
There are dozens of small boxes in the market with these kind of RAM figures which don't spin up external usb disks. That made me think that they may use a buffer for the apps they're running on another external storage that can't be seen, like a pendisk. Hence my question if there is any way to create a buffer on a pendisk :)

Scooby
Site Admin
Posts: 826
Joined: 09 Sep 2013, 16:52

Re: Side-project / ArchLinuxARM

Postby Scooby » 08 Jan 2015, 17:28

john3voltas wrote:My question: is it possible to have an OS booting from an hdd and then writing every changes to pendisk? Like a buffer?
And then that buffer would get written to hdd every 2 or 3 hours. It would save on the hdd life even though it would compromise the pendisk life but I don't care.


Sorry I don't think I get the question that is
exactly what you want to do with the buffer part?

I don't know what memory usage savefile takes?

or

What exactly causes the spin-up?


Return to “Misc. & Off Topic”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 67 guests

cron