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hard drive problem in (k)ubuntu

ch flag

I have a Asus computer with 256 GB SSD, 1 TB HHD and 16GB RAM. I have been using it with windows almost 5 years and did not experience a problem; however, before a 1.5 weeks ago I installed kubuntu and my hard drive usage constantly increased in each day at the end I recieved an error about overusing and could not reach the system once more. Then, I have installed ubuntu thinking that problem may be caused by kubuntu but the same problem occurred once more. Is there any suggestion here ?

Irsu85 avatar
cn flag
Based on a quick google seach, a hard drive typically lasts 5 jears, so maybe its time to replace it.
David avatar
cn flag
This article is a bit older but still a good read. Your question raises 2 different issues. 1. hard drive usage constantly increased in each day from your question is not usually a sign of hard drive failure but of some other issue. 2. I have no idea what error you got that says overusing never heard of that but that might be a sign of failure and now of course it appears to be dead.
David avatar
cn flag
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/170748-how-long-do-hard-drives-actually-live-for
Soren A avatar
mx flag
What do yiu men by "overuse" ? Can you update the question with the exact message, please.
safa yılmaz avatar
ch flag
What I mean is that, although I do not install any application hard drive usage is getting larger and at the end it reaches the limit of 256GB.
James S. avatar
de flag
see [this answer](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/16705/find-out-what-processes-are-writing-to-hard-drive/16712#16712) for how to use iotop and figure out what is writing to your disk
Score:0
ro flag

Your have installed Linux on your 256GByte SSD, this is okay, but your home-folder is on this SSD too. Your 1TByte HDD is propably not used.

You should mount the 1TByte HDD as folder (I call the folder "Data") and there you can put all your videos, pictures, software, documents.

Then you save the place on the 256GByte SSD for all Operating-System related things and all your stuff is on the 1TByte HDD.

If you reinstall Linux, then you can erase the SSD completely and only have to mount the HDD in your home folder.

I do it in this way:

  • Install Linux on the SSD (you did it already)
  • Create a folder "Data" in your home-folder
  • find out which harddrives are existing (with the command "sudo blkid")
  • open with root rights the file "/etc/fstab" (with "sudo mousepad /etc/fstab" on the terminal)
  • copy the output, put it into your fstab file and add a "#" in front of each line to make a comment out of this text
  • find the HDD and mount it as folder in your home-folder

It would be look like this:

# <file system>              <mount point>      <type>  <options>                                   <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=11111111-2c22-333f-b44e-5cd555555e55 /                 ext4    errors=remount-ro,noatime,nodiratime,discard,nobh,data=ordered,commit=120      0       1
UUID=66666b66-b777-88fc-ab99-0ff00000000f0 /home/mikropower/Data    ext4    defaults,noatime,nodiratime,discard,nobh,data=ordered,commit=120           0       2

First your root-filesystem mount ("/"), this does already exist ant then the mountpoint for your Data-folder ("/home/yourusername/Data").

For me, this works very well.

Score:0
cw flag
  1. Try using a disk use monitoring utility, such as iotop (You can install it via sudo apt install iotop), to see which program is constantly writing to your disk.

  2. If you find something strange, search that strange program on the web to see whether it is a bug.

  3. If you can locate the directory that is getting larger, try running du to check which files are taking up space.

  4. If everything on your system seems normal, formatting your disk and doing a re-installation may work.

Also, sharing some logs relating to your issue will definitely help the community to pinpoint the problem. This is only a general suggestion on "how to troubleshoot hard disk"

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