Improve slow cold start of HDD with some sort of cache?
Hi together,
My problem: I've got an HDD (two in a mdadm-RAID1 in fact) that goes to "deep sleep" after not being accessed for a while which I find wonderful. It does not make any sounds anymore and certainly saves energy.
BUT: An access to this HDD is followed by a freezing/loading of the file explorers of about 8 seconds in which the HDD starts up. Of course while the HDD is started up the access speed is fine.
Now what I would love is to have a portion of my RAM or SSD (about 1GB) act as a write cache and as a read cache only for the index. I only want to have to wait for the startup time if I actually read file data or write more than the cache can fit.
Priority one is to have the full file index cached; priority two is to have that write cache. A read cache is not necessary because to me being able to quickly find and select data to copy is the important part. After initiating the copy / read access I can just do something else.
I could not find anything that specific but I have to admit I don't know what exactly to search for. I tried "cold start hdd cache" and similar queries but to no avail. I do not really have much experience with caching. But after many years with these HDDs it still does grind my gears a bit each time I have to wait for the startup...
Note: I have noted that many times the most recent accessed directory listings seem to be cached in that the HDD keeps being turned off while I re-list some directories. Only when accessing previously unlisted directories the HDD begins to start up. I assume this is some sort of default linux cache? Or even a cache inside my HDDs?
I am using Arch linux and the HDD-RAID is connected via USB 3.0 if that matters.
Answers
-
I just thought that having the SSD as the "persistent" cache would be better since I would not need to build up the cache after every system boot. But restarts are quite rare (the host is a home server) so it would not be a no-go to use the RAM.
0 -
Have you asked Arch Linux Forums? https://bbs.archlinux.org/
0 -
No I did not. I thought that this is more of a general linux problem.
Do you think this question would be more fitting there?
0
Categories
- All Categories
- 167 LFX Mentorship
- 219 LFX Mentorship: Linux Kernel
- 795 Linux Foundation IT Professional Programs
- 355 Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 179 Advanced Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 82 DevOps Engineer IT Professional Program
- 127 Cloud Native Developer IT Professional Program
- 112 Express Training Courses
- 112 Express Courses - Discussion Forum
- 6.2K Training Courses
- 48 LFC110 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 17 LFC131 Class Forum
- 35 LFD102 Class Forum
- 227 LFD103 Class Forum
- 14 LFD110 Class Forum
- 39 LFD121 Class Forum
- 15 LFD133 Class Forum
- 7 LFD134 Class Forum
- 17 LFD137 Class Forum
- 63 LFD201 Class Forum
- 3 LFD210 Class Forum
- 5 LFD210-CN Class Forum
- 2 LFD213 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 128 LFD232 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 1 LFD233 Class Forum
- 2 LFD237 Class Forum
- 23 LFD254 Class Forum
- 697 LFD259 Class Forum
- 109 LFD272 Class Forum
- 3 LFD272-JP クラス フォーラム
- 10 LFD273 Class Forum
- 152 LFS101 Class Forum
- 1 LFS111 Class Forum
- 1 LFS112 Class Forum
- 1 LFS116 Class Forum
- 1 LFS118 Class Forum
- LFS120 Class Forum
- 7 LFS142 Class Forum
- 7 LFS144 Class Forum
- 3 LFS145 Class Forum
- 1 LFS146 Class Forum
- 3 LFS147 Class Forum
- 1 LFS148 Class Forum
- 15 LFS151 Class Forum
- 1 LFS157 Class Forum
- 33 LFS158 Class Forum
- 8 LFS162 Class Forum
- 1 LFS166 Class Forum
- 1 LFS167 Class Forum
- 3 LFS170 Class Forum
- 2 LFS171 Class Forum
- 1 LFS178 Class Forum
- 1 LFS180 Class Forum
- 1 LFS182 Class Forum
- 1 LFS183 Class Forum
- 29 LFS200 Class Forum
- 736 LFS201 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 2 LFS201-JP クラス フォーラム
- 14 LFS203 Class Forum
- 102 LFS207 Class Forum
- 1 LFS207-DE-Klassenforum
- 1 LFS207-JP クラス フォーラム
- 301 LFS211 Class Forum
- 55 LFS216 Class Forum
- 48 LFS241 Class Forum
- 42 LFS242 Class Forum
- 37 LFS243 Class Forum
- 15 LFS244 Class Forum
- LFS245 Class Forum
- LFS246 Class Forum
- 50 LFS250 Class Forum
- 1 LFS250-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS251 Class Forum
- 154 LFS253 Class Forum
- LFS254 Class Forum
- LFS255 Class Forum
- 5 LFS256 Class Forum
- 1 LFS257 Class Forum
- 1.3K LFS258 Class Forum
- 10 LFS258-JP クラス フォーラム
- 111 LFS260 Class Forum
- 159 LFS261 Class Forum
- 41 LFS262 Class Forum
- 82 LFS263 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 15 LFS264 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 11 LFS266 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 20 LFS267 Class Forum
- 24 LFS268 Class Forum
- 29 LFS269 Class Forum
- 1 LFS270 Class Forum
- 199 LFS272 Class Forum
- 1 LFS272-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS274 Class Forum
- 3 LFS281 Class Forum
- 9 LFW111 Class Forum
- 260 LFW211 Class Forum
- 182 LFW212 Class Forum
- 13 SKF100 Class Forum
- 1 SKF200 Class Forum
- 1 SKF201 Class Forum
- 782 Hardware
- 198 Drivers
- 68 I/O Devices
- 37 Monitors
- 96 Multimedia
- 174 Networking
- 91 Printers & Scanners
- 83 Storage
- 743 Linux Distributions
- 80 Debian
- 67 Fedora
- 15 Linux Mint
- 13 Mageia
- 23 openSUSE
- 143 Red Hat Enterprise
- 31 Slackware
- 13 SUSE Enterprise
- 348 Ubuntu
- 461 Linux System Administration
- 39 Cloud Computing
- 70 Command Line/Scripting
- Github systems admin projects
- 90 Linux Security
- 77 Network Management
- 101 System Management
- 46 Web Management
- 64 Mobile Computing
- 17 Android
- 34 Development
- 1.2K New to Linux
- 1K Getting Started with Linux
- 371 Off Topic
- 114 Introductions
- 174 Small Talk
- 19 Study Material
- 507 Programming and Development
- 285 Kernel Development
- 204 Software Development
- 1.8K Software
- 211 Applications
- 180 Command Line
- 3 Compiling/Installing
- 405 Games
- 309 Installation
- 97 All In Program
- 97 All In Forum
Upcoming Training
-
August 20, 2018
Kubernetes Administration (LFS458)
-
August 20, 2018
Linux System Administration (LFS301)
-
August 27, 2018
Open Source Virtualization (LFS462)
-
August 27, 2018
Linux Kernel Debugging and Security (LFD440)