blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html

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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</title>
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  14  <h1>
  15      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  16
  17  </h1>
  18
  19 </div>
  20
  21
  22     <div class="entry">
  23       <div class="title">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</div>
  24       <div class="date">17th July 2013</div>
  25       <div class="body"><p>Today I switched to
  26 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
  27 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
  28 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
  29 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
  30 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
  31 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
  32 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
  33 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
  34 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
  35 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
  36 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
  37 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
  38 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
  39 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
  40 station from now on.</p>
  41
  42 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
  43 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
  44 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
  45 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
  46 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
  47 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
  48 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
  49 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
  50 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
  51 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
  52 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
  53 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
  54
  55 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
  56 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
  57 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
  58 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
  59 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
  60 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
  61 parameters are tuned:</p>
  62
  63 <ul>
  64
  65 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
  66     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
  67
  68 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
  69     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
  70     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
  71
  72 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
  73     systems.</li>
  74
  75 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
  76     /etc/fstab.</li>
  77
  78 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
  79
  80 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
  81     cron.daily).</li>
  82
  83 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
  84     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
  85
  86 </ul>
  87
  88 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
  89 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
  90 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
  91 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
  92 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
  93 from getting the data on the disk (see
  94 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
  95 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
  96 right thing to do.</p>
  97
  98 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
  99 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
 100 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
 101
 102 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
 103 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
 104 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
 105 instead of during my work.</p>
 106
 107 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
 108 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
 109
 110 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
 111 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
 112 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
 113
 114 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
 115 there.</p>
 116
 117 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
 118 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
 119 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
 120 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
 121 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
 122 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
 123 back.</p>
 124 </div>
 125
 126       <div class="tags">Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.</div>
 127
 128
 129     </div>
 130
 131
 132
 133
 134     <div id="sidebar">
 135
 136
 137
 138 <h2>Archive</h2>
 139 <ul>
 140
 141 <li>2013
 142 <ul>
 143
 144 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
 145
 146 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
 147
 148 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
 149
 150 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
 151
 152 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 153
 154 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
 155
 156 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
 157
 158 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
 159
 160 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
 161
 162 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
 163
 164 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (7)</a></li>
 165
 166 </ul></li>
 167
 168 <li>2012
 169 <ul>
 170
 171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
 172
 173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
 174
 175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
 176
 177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
 178
 179 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
 180
 181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
 182
 183 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
 184
 185 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
 186
 187 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
 188
 189 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
 190
 191 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
 192
 193 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
 194
 195 </ul></li>
 196
 197 <li>2011
 198 <ul>
 199
 200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
 201
 202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
 203
 204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
 205
 206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
 207
 208 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
 209
 210 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
 211
 212 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
 213
 214 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
 215
 216 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
 217
 218 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
 219
 220 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
 221
 222 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
 223
 224 </ul></li>
 225
 226 <li>2010
 227 <ul>
 228
 229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
 230
 231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
 232
 233 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
 234
 235 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
 236
 237 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 238
 239 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
 240
 241 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
 242
 243 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
 244
 245 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
 246
 247 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
 248
 249 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
 250
 251 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
 252
 253 </ul></li>
 254
 255 <li>2009
 256 <ul>
 257
 258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
 259
 260 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
 261
 262 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
 263
 264 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
 265
 266 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 267
 268 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
 269
 270 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
 271
 272 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
 273
 274 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
 275
 276 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
 277
 278 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
 279
 280 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
 281
 282 </ul></li>
 283
 284 <li>2008
 285 <ul>
 286
 287 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
 288
 289 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
 290
 291 </ul></li>
 292
 293 </ul>
 294
 295
 296
 297 <h2>Tags</h2>
 298 <ul>
 299
 300  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
 301
 302  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
 303
 304  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
 305
 306  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
 307
 308  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
 309
 310  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (13)</a></li>
 311
 312  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
 313
 314  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (91)</a></li>
 315
 316  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (142)</a></li>
 317
 318  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
 319
 320  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
 321
 322  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
 323
 324  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (229)</a></li>
 325
 326  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
 327
 328  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
 329
 330  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
 331
 332  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (5)</a></li>
 333
 334  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
 335
 336  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (37)</a></li>
 337
 338  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
 339
 340  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
 341
 342  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
 343
 344  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
 345
 346  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
 347
 348  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (5)</a></li>
 349
 350  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
 351
 352  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (237)</a></li>
 353
 354  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (159)</a></li>
 355
 356  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (9)</a></li>
 357
 358  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
 359
 360  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
 361
 362  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (67)</a></li>
 363
 364  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
 365
 366  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
 367
 368  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
 369
 370  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
 371
 372  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
 373
 374  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
 375
 376  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
 377
 378  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (33)</a></li>
 379
 380  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
 381
 382  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
 383
 384  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (43)</a></li>
 385
 386  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
 387
 388  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
 389
 390  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (21)</a></li>
 391
 392  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
 393
 394  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
 395
 396  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
 397
 398  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
 399
 400  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (28)</a></li>
 401
 402 </ul>
 403
 404
 405     </div>
 406     <p style="text-align: right">
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