On 06.04.2019 22:39, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote: > Background: I am considering buying a new disk (and will write an email later > with some other questions or observations about the process), but I know > that, > at least often for SSD drives, they now specify what I will call the > longevity > in terms of TB TBW (iiuc, that is terabytes total bytes written). > > Anyway, I edit large files many times a day and try to save it at each edit > or > partial edit (at a guess, one particular file is around 100 MB, and I may > save > it 200 or more times a day). > > There are two things I'd like to measure, and I'm wondering what tools (or > approaches) are available: > > 1. I'd like to count how many times a day I actually save the file. (One > approach (at least I think I could do this) could be to write a sort of shell > script wrapper and always initiate saves using the shell script, but I was > hoping there was more of pre-built solution.) > > 2. A lot of my editing involves editing near (but not at) the end of a file. > I > assume (I know) that the software that saves the file is smart enough not to > rewrite the entire file but instead to preserve the beginning of the file and > just rewrite the changed part of the file (or from there to the end of the > file). > > Can anyone confirm that, and, if so, suggest any way of measuring how much is > written to a given file in a given time period (e.g., per day)? > > I guess at a very deep level (I mean like at the level of the disk firmware > or > driver level), this may differ between an SSD and an HDD -- if you have any > insight into that, I'd appreciate that. > > Thanks! > As far as I understand, your final goal is to know how much data was written per day. One way to find out is to use 'smartctl' utility and collect values daily from attribute #241 called "Lifetime_Writes_GiB". Some SSD vendors could have it under different ID number or different name.
$ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sdb smartctl 6.6 2016-05-31 r4324 [x86_64-linux-4.15.0-0.bpo.2-amd64] (local build) ... 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 13244 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1350 ... 241 Lifetime_Writes_GiB 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 3526 242 Lifetime_Reads_GiB 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 4581 ... Of course, if you are not familiar with programming, or not interested in writing a text parser, to setup a cronjob and possibly to install monitoring software with fancy graphs, then my advice is not so good, but that is how I'd done it. Now, I'm kinda interested to know too if there is a less hacky methods to determine a volume of written data per device per day. -- With kindest regards, Alexander. ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀
