SSD upgrade #207

New issue

Closed

opened 2023-09-20 01:04:26 +00:00 by a · 2 comments

a commented

2023-09-20 01:04:26 +00:00

Owner

You may have noticed lately that exozyme keeps running out of disk space. I added a 500GB HDD last month at /data, but that only staved off ~~the apocalypse~~ running out of disk space for a few weeks. We're now back to less than 60GB available and this number just keeps on shrinking.

As the amount of time that I waste on trying to free up disk space goes to infinity, wouldn't it be way better if we just didn't have to fight this problem? What if we just magically had 4TB? Well, since SSDs are cheap now, that's not just a dream, but actually possible! Specifically, I have in mind this one, which is definitely on the pricey side but its speeds are insane. If anyone has suggestions for other SSDs, I'd love to hear it.

But of course, life isn't all sunshine and rainbows and there are a few obstacles towards realizing free space utopia.

Buy the SSD, obviously. ~~It was a lot cheaper 2 months ago, but that seems like it was a short sale, so I might just buy it for $300.~~ ~~I bought a different one for $250 with slightly worse speeds.~~ The WD SN850X that I originally was going to buy was suddenly $30 cheaper today, so I switched to buying that one instead. Maybe it's a sign from the universe?
I don't have physical access to the exozyme server currently, and the next opportunity I'll have is at the end of November. I can probably ask someone with access to install the SSD, but the process is a bit complicated since the GPU is blocking one of the M.2 slots. I'll try to get that figured out.
I also have to move the stuff on the current drives to the new SSD. To prevent data loss, there'll be a several hour long outage while this copying is happening. To complicate things, I've decided to go with btrfs for the new SSD (yay snapshots, dedup, and send/receive! Especially that last one, since the current rsync backup script is kinda janky), so I can't just dd the current ext4 SSD onto the new one but I'll have to manually copy all the files over. This could potentially run into problems.
In then after the copying is done, I'll need to have someone with physical access turn off the server, remove the old drives, and move the new SSD into the fast PCIe slot.

And then everything will be sunshine and rainbows! No more /data! Hopefully!

You may have noticed lately that exozyme keeps running out of disk space. I added a 500GB HDD last month at `/data`, but that only staved off ~~the apocalypse~~ running out of disk space for a few weeks. We're now back to less than 60GB available and this number just keeps on shrinking. As the amount of time that I waste on trying to free up disk space goes to infinity, wouldn't it be way better if we just didn't have to fight this problem? What if we just magically had 4TB? Well, since SSDs are cheap now, that's not just a dream, but actually possible! Specifically, I have in mind [this one](https://www.amazon.com/WD_BLACK-SN850X-Internal-Gaming-Solid/dp/B0B7CQ2CHH), which is definitely on the pricey side but its speeds are insane. If anyone has suggestions for other SSDs, I'd love to hear it. But of course, life isn't all sunshine and rainbows and there are a few obstacles towards realizing free space utopia. - [x] Buy the SSD, obviously. ~~It was [a lot cheaper 2 months ago](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/yBC48d/western-digital-black-sn850x-4-tb-m2-2280-pcie-40-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-wds400t2x0e?history_days=730), but that seems like it was a short sale, so I might just buy it for $300.~~ ~~I bought a [different one](https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Predator-GM7000-NVMe-Gaming/dp/B0BNTFVVGD) for $250 with slightly worse speeds.~~ The WD SN850X that I originally was going to buy was suddenly $30 cheaper today, so I switched to buying that one instead. Maybe it's a sign from the universe? - [x] I don't have physical access to the exozyme server currently, and the next opportunity I'll have is at the end of November. I can probably ask someone with access to install the SSD, but the process is a bit complicated since the GPU is blocking one of the M.2 slots. I'll try to get that figured out. - [x] I also have to move the stuff on the current drives to the new SSD. To prevent data loss, there'll be a several hour long outage while this copying is happening. To complicate things, I've decided to go with btrfs for the new SSD (yay snapshots, dedup, and send/receive! Especially that last one, since the current rsync backup script is kinda janky), so I can't just `dd` the current ext4 SSD onto the new one but I'll have to manually copy all the files over. This could potentially run into problems. - [x] In then after the copying is done, I'll need to have someone with physical access turn off the server, remove the old drives, and move the new SSD into the fast PCIe slot. And then everything will be sunshine and rainbows! No more `/data`! Hopefully!

👍 2 🎉 2