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Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Date: 9 Apr 2003 14:38:40 GMT
> > Probably you can mount ext3 with some options enhancing performance, > > like "noatime". 'man mount' > > On a side note, what is the ramification of noatime? I've been told > that will stop the disk accessing every few seconds, which I'd like to > do on my home computer to reduce wear.
Modern disks are built to run 24/7. Including "noatime" won't increase the lifespan of your disks, it'll just make seeks and writes less frequent, speeding up disk access in most cases. If you want to make your disks last longer, leave them on all the time. Most disk failures occur at spinup (just as most light-bulb failures occur at initial power-on.)
> But I don't really understand what the ramification of stopping inode > access time means?
It doesn't mean much to the normal user. If you do "ls /bin", every file in /bin gets its inode accessed. Typically, the files you're interested in will have been accessed constantly, so the atime doesn't really convey much useful information. If you mount a filesystem with "noatime", then neither the -atime option to find nor the -u option to ls will give you valid data. Typically, you want the last modification time (-mtime) anyway.
Matt G
> On a side note, what is the ramification of noatime?
My laptop has had everything set to "noatime" for several years and I haven't noticed any problems. It is possible for programs that care about atime to fail if it isn't updated, but that seems fairly rare in practice.
> I've been told that will stop the disk accessing every few seconds,
Atime updates cause inode updates whenever you read a file. This causes writes to disk even if you haven't explicitly written anything. I turn off atime on my laptop because if I don't the disk won't spin down.
Bob Hauck