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I actually recently switched from my laptop to my desktop as my main work machine, and due to some weird partition choices previously (long story), I temporaril

I actually recently switched from my laptop to my desktop as my main work machine, and due to some weird partition choices previously (long story), I temporarily ended up with my /home/<work_user> directory on a btrfs filesystem that's sitting on top of 3 Seagate Exos 20TB drives (instead of my main NVMe). Hearing the drives has been really nice actually, and got me noticing all kinds of interesting and sometimes unexpected behavior going on with my system, and actually helped find a bug with my terminal multiplexer. With 64GB of RAM my entire home directory fits, so only writes go to the drives, and it's been surprisingly performant for my workloads.

EvanAnderson 3y ago
On old PCs drive activity indicator LEDs (good) or drive mechanism sounds (better) were always a great way to build an intuitive feeling for what your computer was doing. People who got into PCs in the post-SSD world have no idea how the sounds act as a window into the computer's operation. This kind of intuition goes back a long time, too. Levy's "Hackers" describes the MIT TX-0 having a CPU register connected a speaker and the hackers who programmed the machine being able to suss out how their program was doing by the sounds the machine was making. Indeed, that's closer to the "metal" of the machine than disk activity sounds. The closest thing we have today are the fans throttling-up like jet engines, but by the time that happens things have usually gone well and truly off the rails and it's just an indication of "all hell is breaking loose w/ your CPU".
- noufalibrahim 3y ago
  Large quiet rooms with only platter disk sounds to interrupt the silence were experiences that I quite cherish too.
- atoav 3y ago
  I am all for building sonification tools. It is a long standing idea of our IT department and me to build some sort of university wide network traffic sonification tool. But today given the amounts of data and the speed involved you can only abstract it down. So the major task will be drinking from the waterhose and having something useful fall out on the other side.
- NoPicklez 3y ago
  Growing up with those beige deeping beasts I always remember the activity indicators going wild. They also seemed to make more noise during HDD activity. The drive mechanism sounds were they just louder back then or? You can put a HDD in a PC and it won't make the same grinding noises the old ones used to
  - EvanAnderson 3y ago
    Older hard disk drives had a more melodic sound to their seeking, to my ear. My first PC with a hard disk drive had an ST-251. That had a very distinctive, almost musical sound.
- pests 3y ago
  Yep, fan speed up is the only time I now think "wtf is my computer doing right now?" when I feel it was a common feeling before.
brirec 3y ago
As lovely as 3x20TB RAID sounds, RAID on btrfs is never a particularly good idea. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/btrfs#Multi-device_file_system https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/btrfs#Multi-device_file_sys...
- rovr138 3y ago
  While BTRFS' RAID has issue, BTRFS on RAID can be done. I do something like this, https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/What_was_the_RAID_implementation_for_Btrfs_File_System_on_SynologyNAS https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/What_was_the_RAID... Basically, mdadm, then on top, format with BTRFS
- persnickety 3y ago
  Don't overdramatize, the link doesn't suppport "never". RAID 5 or 6 is not a good idea. RAID 1 or 0 is just as a good idea as ever.
  - antongribok 3y ago
    Not sure if I agree with you on RAID 0, but RAID 1 certainly is, and that's indeed what I'm running. The 3x20TB btrfs setup I mentioned is configured with RAID1C3 for metadata, and RAID1 for data, and works just fine with even or odd number of drives. It's funny how people assumed RAID5 when they saw 3 drives. I switched to this after years of running on ZFS, and for my workloads btrfs is faster on Linux (not to mention the licensing/packaging mess).
    - persnickety 3y ago
      I never said RAID0 was a good idea, just that it's as good as it ever was :P
      - antongribok 3y ago
        Makes sense. I should have read your comment more carefully! :)

EvanAnderson 3y ago

On old PCs drive activity indicator LEDs (good) or drive mechanism sounds (better) were always a great way to build an intuitive feeling for what your computer was doing. People who got into PCs in the post-SSD world have no idea how the sounds act as a window into the computer's operation. This kind of intuition goes back a long time, too. Levy's "Hackers" describes the MIT TX-0 having a CPU register connected a speaker and the hackers who programmed the machine being able to suss out how their program was doing by the sounds the machine was making. Indeed, that's closer to the "metal" of the machine than disk activity sounds. The closest thing we have today are the fans throttling-up like jet engines, but by the time that happens things have usually gone well and truly off the rails and it's just an indication of "all hell is breaking loose w/ your CPU".

noufalibrahim 3y ago
Large quiet rooms with only platter disk sounds to interrupt the silence were experiences that I quite cherish too.
atoav 3y ago
I am all for building sonification tools. It is a long standing idea of our IT department and me to build some sort of university wide network traffic sonification tool. But today given the amounts of data and the speed involved you can only abstract it down. So the major task will be drinking from the waterhose and having something useful fall out on the other side.
NoPicklez 3y ago
Growing up with those beige deeping beasts I always remember the activity indicators going wild. They also seemed to make more noise during HDD activity. The drive mechanism sounds were they just louder back then or? You can put a HDD in a PC and it won't make the same grinding noises the old ones used to
- EvanAnderson 3y ago
  Older hard disk drives had a more melodic sound to their seeking, to my ear. My first PC with a hard disk drive had an ST-251. That had a very distinctive, almost musical sound.
pests 3y ago
Yep, fan speed up is the only time I now think "wtf is my computer doing right now?" when I feel it was a common feeling before.

brirec 3y ago

As lovely as 3x20TB RAID sounds, RAID on btrfs is never a particularly good idea. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/btrfs#Multi-device_file_system https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/btrfs#Multi-device_file_sys...

rovr138 3y ago
While BTRFS' RAID has issue, BTRFS on RAID can be done. I do something like this, https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/What_was_the_RAID_implementation_for_Btrfs_File_System_on_SynologyNAS https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/What_was_the_RAID... Basically, mdadm, then on top, format with BTRFS
persnickety 3y ago
Don't overdramatize, the link doesn't suppport "never". RAID 5 or 6 is not a good idea. RAID 1 or 0 is just as a good idea as ever.
- antongribok 3y ago
  Not sure if I agree with you on RAID 0, but RAID 1 certainly is, and that's indeed what I'm running. The 3x20TB btrfs setup I mentioned is configured with RAID1C3 for metadata, and RAID1 for data, and works just fine with even or odd number of drives. It's funny how people assumed RAID5 when they saw 3 drives. I switched to this after years of running on ZFS, and for my workloads btrfs is faster on Linux (not to mention the licensing/packaging mess).
  - persnickety 3y ago
    I never said RAID0 was a good idea, just that it's as good as it ever was :P
    - antongribok 3y ago
      Makes sense. I should have read your comment more carefully! :)