SSD Prices Start To Plunge

[GreyGeek]

Amazon is advertising a 256Gb USB 2.0 drive for $25.
https://www.amazon.com/Metal-Flash-D...56gb+usb&psc=1

I had some spare points so it will cost me half that. I plan to make it a Btrfs pool with compression, so it "appears" to be somewhere around 500GB in size, as an experiment.

[dibl]

Do you mount your Btrfs data drive using an entry in fstab?

Yes.

UUID=2bbc4079-e05d-43a3-865b-5b3d3f4af0f5     /mnt/DATA            btrfs   noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache,inode_cache        0   2

That UUID was assigned to the pair of drives when I made the filesystem, following this guidance.

[Bings]

Good, I want to buy a new one pretty soon

My 17.10 install broke after the latest update. Can't be bothered to fix it as it's EOL later this month and I can't install anything new because apparently everything needs a GPT not the MBR partition it has(dual boot with windows) so that forced my hand and I ordered a 500GB SSD for under £90. So I'll be using 18.04 on BTRFS in a few days hopefully

[oshunluvr]

That SPEEEEED is the tempting part. The tendency to suddenly fail without notice is the part I don't like. Any one I buy will come with a 3 year warranty as a minimum. Some already are.

The failure rate discussion is OLD news IMO. Just don't waste money on off-brand devices. Don's total failure was quite a while ago if I remember correctly. I've had one SSD fail - that was in 2011 or 12 when consumer devices were just becoming available at reasonable prices. It failed in a week or two and was immediately replaced by Adata.

BTW, Samsung EVO drives of 850 series or higher and 840 PRO series drives have a 5 year warranty. 850 PRO series and higher have a 10 year warranty. I always buy the PRO series because they are much faster than the EVO. If you want an SSD for speed, why not make the full leap? SSDs have obviated the need for RAID and file system tuning. The exponential increase in baseline speeds make tuning and RAID unnecessary.

I only buy HDs for server use. As they age out I move them to my desktop to use as "playgrounds" and backup devices. IME, if a hard drive makes it past six months, they tend to last for 6-8 years. I had one batch of WD "Blue" 500GB drives that all died within 3 months of each other at the age of 9. My last two HD failures were 8 and 10 years old.

I suspect I'll live long enough to see rotating storage move to museums while consumers will be using all solid-state.

[oshunluvr]

My 17.10 install broke after the latest update. Can't be bothered to fix it as it's EOL later this month and I can't install anything new because apparently everything needs a GPT not the MBR partition it has(dual boot with windows) so that forced my hand and I ordered a 500GB SSD for under £90. So I'll be using 18.04 on BTRFS in a few days hopefully

Bings, if you don't want to or can't move to EFI, see my post about preparing your drive to use GRUB with GPT. If you are using EFI (I guess you are because "microsoft") look for QQMikes' excellent posts on EFI preparation.

Also, seriously, stop using that 30 year-old EXT file system and come into this century. Your "My 17.10 install broke after the latest update" story never happens again if you start using BTRFS and taking snapshots before updating. A five-second procedure and a reboot would have brought you back to pre-update state. Not to mention the end to endless partitioning and the ease of making backups.

[GreyGeek]

Oshunluver, you've convinced me. As soon as my budget allows I'll be getting a 500GB Samsung Pro as my primary drive. I suspect that I'll also get an external caddy and move my current 750GB drive to it, and use it as a USB drive for archival purposes.

[SpecialEd]

I bought one a month or two back and have not installed it yet. (got the caddy too). I did install Kubuntu 18.04 (and BTRFS) but I have not played with it much. I keep telling myself I'm waiting for Neon to release the update but I really like some things about Kubuntu that Neon doesn't have. (Or I don't know that Neon has?) Part of my delay is also this laptop is a bear to take apart. Getting to the HDD isn't TOO bad but I'm going to have to leave the memory upgrade to a professional. (After RAM comes down in price a bit).

[oshunluvr]

I really like some things about Kubuntu that Neon doesn't have. (Or I don't know that Neon has?)

Like?

Neon is bare bones by default, but AFAIK, anything you can install on Kubuntu you can install on Neon. I suspect if what you're looking for isn't there on day one, you'd have it with a quick install. On the plus side, you won't have to remove a bunch of stuff you don't want.

[SpecialEd]

Like?

Neon is bare bones by default, but AFAIK, anything you can install on Kubuntu you can install on Neon. I suspect if what you're looking for isn't there on day one, you'd have it with a quick install. On the plus side, you won't have to remove a bunch of stuff you don't want.

Driver Manager?

[oshunluvr]

Sorry, I don't know what that is. Do you mean "kubuntu-driver-manager"? If so, here's from my Neon install:

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#54FF54][B]stuart@office[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]:[/COLOR][COLOR=#5454FF][B]/[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]$ sudo apt install kubuntu-driver-manager[/COLOR]
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  python3-dbus.mainloop.pyqt5
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  kubuntu-driver-manager python3-dbus.mainloop.pyqt5
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 76.1 kB of archives.
After this operation, 399 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

[/FONT]

Looks like it's available to me. As I said, AFAIK anything you can install in Kubuntu you can install in Neon, just not as much is installed by default.

[oshunluvr]

My Kubuntu 18.04 install shows:

[SpecialEd]

Sorry, I don't know what that is. Do you mean "kubuntu-driver-manager"? If so, here's from my Neon install:

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#54FF54][B]stuart@office[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]:[/COLOR][COLOR=#5454FF][B]/[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]$ sudo apt install kubuntu-driver-manager[/COLOR]
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
 python3-dbus.mainloop.pyqt5
The following NEW packages will be installed:
 kubuntu-driver-manager python3-dbus.mainloop.pyqt5
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 76.1 kB of archives.
After this operation, 399 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

[/FONT]

Looks like it's available to me. As I said, AFAIK anything you can install in Kubuntu you can install in Neon, just not as much is installed by default.

Yep, that's it.

[GreyGeek]

And, KDE Neon User Edition also contains "ubuntu-drivers". (But I never use it).

[SpecialEd]

And, KDE Neon User Edition also contains "ubuntu-drivers". (But I never use it).

Does that show up under System Settings.

[GreyGeek]

Does that show up under System Settings.

No. It's one of several tools that do not appear in the System Settings app. Even the systemd gui has to be added manually.