Hey everyone! I've recently made the switch to Linux on my main PC, and I'm loving it so far. However, I'm encountering a frustrating issue. Whenever I copy larger files from my external hard drive to my internal SSD, my computer starts freezing for a few seconds. This seems to get progressively worse as the copying continues. I always ensure that I have at least 100 GB of free space on the SSD. I've heard some people mention that this might indicate a failing SSD, but I didn't have any issues like this while using Windows. Are there any steps I can take to diagnose what's going on? Is this kind of behavior typical on Linux? Thanks for any insights!
3 Answers
It sounds like it could be related to the SSD itself. Sometimes cheaper models don’t have dedicated RAM for caching writes, which Windows might handle differently than Linux. Can you tell me what model your SSD is?
First, you might want to check which filesystem your SSD is using. That can sometimes cause issues, you know? What does your SSD use?
Have you checked the SMART data on your SSD? You can use smartctl command from the smartmontools package on Linux. While it may not give you a full picture, it's worth checking. At least you can rule out some issues.
I ran the SMART test, and it passed. I'm not sure which other stats I should be looking at to get a clearer picture of the SSD's health.
The SSD is formatted with ext4, dedicated for my Linux setup. The external drive is using exfat for compatibility.