Switching drive from NTFS to ext4 (or something else)

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#11 Post by **entropyfoe** » Wed Oct 23, 2024 1:37 pm

You said it brother ! For linux ext4 is true and tested.
Agree with all your comments. MX just takes care of that fstrim, there is a log. [hmmm, haven't checked mine lately?]
Even with unexpected power failures, the fs seems to recover with no errors.

kc1di
Re: Switching drive from NTFS to ext4 (or something else)
#4 Post by kc1di » Wed Oct 23, 2024 6:08 am
Not too often hardly ever find an error. As I said ext4 is very stable. Of course drives can wear out. Especially spinners.(0ld ones) All my drives are now SSD's .They give me very little trouble. They also all have auto trim enabled also so that keeps them somewhat in line also.

#12 Post by **tobyo** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 3:48 am

Thank you DukeComposed; I wondered why the drive was only accessible via root access, that is very interesting.

I am still in the process of moving the files to ext4, I have several terabytes to go!
I will try connecting an ext4 drive to another computer once the backup transfers are complete and see how it works.

Also, kc1di, I ran 'sudo fstrim -av' - my internal NVME reported 250MB and a 2TB USB-connected SSD reported 390GB trimmed! I think this was long overdue!

#13 Post by **tobyo** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 3:55 am

entropyfoe wrote: Wed Oct 23, 2024 1:37 pm You said it brother ! For linux ext4 is true and tested.
Agree with all your comments. MX just takes care of that fstrim, there is a log. [hmmm, haven't checked mine lately?]
Even with unexpected power failures, the fs seems to recover with no errors.

Hi entropyfoe, do you know where that log would be, or how I could view it?

I found this article https://mxlinux.org/wiki/hardware/trim/
and ran the command:

Code: Select all

$ tail /var/log/trim.log

But I received: command not found

Edit: I answered my own question, I just opened the .log file in a text editor: /var/log/trim.log

#14 Post by **artytux** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 4:01 am

try
sudo tail /var/log/trim.log
or goto
Root then var > log >trim.log

#15 Post by **tobyo** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 4:27 am

Thank you artytux; I realised how simple it was

I recently had an SSD fail on a Windows machine.

I have used CrystalDiskInfo in Windows and gsmartcontrol in Linux to view the SMART info details in the past, which is useful.

But I would also check Event Viewer in Windows for any hard drive errors in the admin log; this would often log a bad block or read error etc.
I don't know if that was an NTFS specific log, but does anyone know if there is something similar for ext4 (or in general), for Linux? Something that might log a disk read error or hardware failure?

#16 Post by **artytux** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 4:38 am

If you are booting into systemd it has enough tools for what you want
on systemV Ive not had to go down that road yet,
Seems it's time for you and DDG quality time, unless some-one here can chip in with an answer.

#17 Post by **Dearth** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 5:10 am

Regarding ext4:

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... ernel_611/

#18 Post by **entropyfoe** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 10:05 pm

artytux,

Yes, that is the log.
/var/log/trim.log

And mine is working wonderfully. The last trim was yesterday.

Code: Select all

*** Wed, 09 Oct 2024 07:59:08 -0500 ***
/home: 81.8 GiB (87858819072 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p3
/media/Data: 307.4 GiB (330021101568 bytes) trimmed on /dev/sda1
/: 3.2 GiB (3432132608 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p1
*** Wed, 16 Oct 2024 13:57:45 -0500 ***
/home: 0 B (0 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p3
/media/Data: 0 B (0 bytes) trimmed on /dev/sda1
/: 0 B (0 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p1
*** Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:20:14 -0500 ***
/home: 0 B (0 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p3
/media/Data: 27.5 MiB (28880896 bytes) trimmed on /dev/sda1
/: 0 B (0 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p1

#19 Post by **tobyo** » Fri Oct 25, 2024 4:36 am

Hi all, I am still moving various drives from NTFS to ext4; since I have switched some of the drives to ext4 I have noticed they no longer have the eject icon in the Devices menu of Thunar (on the side).

All the drives are connected via USB.

I can right-click to Unmount a drive and this greys the icon out; if I then right-click the unmounted drive I have two options: Mount or Safely Remove.
Safely remove is greyed out, but as the drive is unmounted I would assume it is ok to unplug the USB cable?

#20 Post by **davidy** » Fri Oct 25, 2024 5:06 am

Yes. Just like when you create a bootable flash drive with the built-in tool, when it's done it leaves it unmounted and ready to unplug. But if an external usb nvme is exfat will the fstrim cmds work? I tried the ones suggested (sudo fstrim -v /media/lapiz/65FC-5999/) and it just gives me "the discard command is not supported". I'm assuming this is an exfat thing and trim cmds only apply to journaled file systems?
F2FS sounds great but unfortunately most devices such as phones and tv's require fat32.
I used exfat on my ext nvme only because of my single windows pc or I would have used ext4.