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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Community
Forum: Hardware Chat Room
Thread: Best drive for cruncher - USB Flash Drive, HDD or SSD? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 39
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
1 Do you have the partition on the usb drives set persistent and how did you accomplish that? I have looked for this on the internet and seems the info is incomplete or just wrong. Not sure I got this right. But as i understand it, persistence is something you can have with a live linux, which allows you to install some programs which will still be there after rebooting. Without persistence no changes will be kept after reboot. I see no advantage of using a live linux. I boot a live linux from one usb stick, then install it on a second one. 2 Do you have a swap partition set up or are you running without swap? I have no swap partition. My thinking was, that this only increases writes on the drive and lets it fail faster. And as the amount of RAM you need is relatively predictable for a pure cruncher, you can make sure you have enough. Not sure if this is 100% correct, but at least I had no problems with the missing swap partition for now. And that was on a 16 thread machine running Lubuntu with only 4 GB RAM |
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dondee
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jan 16, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Persistence is the keeping of data or apps on a "live" linux drive. The advantage to this is to install apps or put data on this drive and shut the computer down. Then the drive is booted by the same computer or the drive is connected to a different computer, booted with all of the data and apps is still on the drive.
Take a usb drive with persistence and install boinc. With this drive you can run boinc on any computer that the live drive can boot up on. I agree with your thinking on this subject. I didn't think this one through before asking. I don't use a swap on my ssd for the same reason. But I wonder for the person that is running a machine with only 2gb ram, how long would a drive last? An old machine and no hhd to minimize cost. Anyone used this? |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7851 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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1 Do you have the partition on the usb drives set persistent and how did you accomplish that? I have looked for this on the internet and seems the info is incomplete or just wrong. 2 Do you have a swap partition set up or are you running without swap? 1. I use this with the "Universal USB Installer easy as 1 2 3" option. It will ask you if you want to create a persistent partition and I do with 4gb on a 16gb drive. 2. As far as I know it is running without a swap file. This is for a dedicated cruncher running only BOINC. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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4CXF9Kqy6GDwbxCsWJvfgnwSxBiG
Cruncher Joined: Jan 25, 2015 Post Count: 4 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I started to wonder about the wisdom about using USB sticks this week when my second one crashed. I've been using them on 4 machines now for 8 months and this is my second failure, so I guess a mean time between failure of 16 months, not so bad I guess.
As for an OS, I've recently been using BOINCOS installed on USB drives using UUI to get the OS on the drive, although BOINCOS has its own program to do that. The advantage of BOINCOS is that it can run GPU projects with my machines without having to flounder around with video card problems. It works right out if the box on all my nVidia and AMD cards without additional steps. And yes, I do use persistent partitions. |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Copied the Ubuntu to USB drive, but could not get it to operate. Even though I run installer of Ubuntu to fix boot loader with GRUB. No luck. :(
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KerSamson
Master Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Post Count: 1684 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Maybe for limiting the number of write access to the disk - USB drive, SSD, ... - you should consider to adjust fstab in /etc by disabling the "last access update":
----------------------------------------UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx / ext4 noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro 0 1 However be very careful , inappropriate entries in fstab can jeopardize the system. Cheers, Yves |
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dondee
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jan 16, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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KLiK
When you say copied do you literately mean copied? Because "live" images are .iso files and they have to be "burned as an image" and not copied. |
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dondee
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jan 16, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Sgt.Joe
Thanks for the info. I will check it out when I have time. |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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KLiK When you say copied do you literately mean copied? Because "live" images are .iso files and they have to be "burned as an image" and not copied. Used Partition tool to copy partition - no go. Booted into Ubuntu CD, made grub-install & update-grub on USB, no luck. |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7851 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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KLiK When you say copied do you literately mean copied? Because "live" images are .iso files and they have to be "burned as an image" and not copied. Used Partition tool to copy partition - no go. Booted into Ubuntu CD, made grub-install & update-grub on USB, no luck. If you use Pendrive , and follow the directions the software will create a bootable Linux USB. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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