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[Question] Should I switch to a Raspberry Pi or just buy a new HDD? (lemmy.kde.social)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hi, I'm running the Nextcloud snap on my dad's 12 year old laptop (hp elitebook 8470w) but it has some performance issues. It fails to load for half a minute pretty often.

I'm considering buying a rPi 5 instead to run a few things:

  • umami.is or similar simple web analytics
  • Nextcloud with memories.gallery to store all my family photos
  • maybe HUGO to build websites
  • possibly listmonk to send emails later

Another positive could be the lower power draw, but I'm not sure one pi5 is strong enough to run these.

What I'd need help with is the SMART results of the laptops HDD:

Getting these kinds of errors:

[451080.136193] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED 451080.136235] ata1.00: cmd 61/08:08:80:07:4a/00:00:10:00:00/40 tag 23 ncq dma 4096 out [ [451080.136235] res 40/00:ff: 00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout) 451080.136352] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ [451080.136385] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED 451080.136427] ata1.00: cmd 61/08:00:90:07:4a/00:00:10:00:00/40 tag 24 ncq dma 4096 out [ [451080.136427] res 40/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [451080.136543] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [451080.136577] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED [451080.136619] ata1.00: cmd 61/08:c8:28:08:4a/00:00:10:00:00/40 tag 25 ncq dma 4096 out [451080.136619] res 40/00:01:c8:7f:d5/00:00:10:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [451080.139084] ata1.00: status: { DRDY 3 }

And I couldn't make sense of the smartmontools long test results for the HDD:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 6799 (249 70 0)
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 4753
170 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
171 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
172 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
174 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 76
183 Runtime_Bad_Block 0x0032 100 100 010 Old_age Always - 8
184 End-to-End_Error 0x0033 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 76
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
225 Unknown_SSD_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always -5 59312
226 Unknown_SSD_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 65535
227 Unknown_SSD_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 48
228 Power-off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 65535
232 Available_Reservd_Space 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 559312
242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 523233
249 Unknown_Attribute 0x0013 100 100 000 Pre-fail Always - 160
```98
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

The CPU in that laptop is very likely still faster than a Rasberry PI 5 (and for sure faster than a RPI4).

I would replace the HDD with a SATA SSD drive.

Maybe also see if the DVD drive can be pulled out and replaced with an adapter for another SATA connector.

Edit: the error is a bit cryptic, but the SMART result of the drive actually looks not so bad. But running especially the Nextcloud Postgres database on a SSD will help a lot (I hope you are not using the SQLite option).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the answer. HDD Sentinel also says the disk is in good shape, but it hangs for a minute very often and is very cumbersome to use this way. I'm using the snap, so MySql

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It might be the SATA controller that has an issue, hard to figure out. In that case you will probably have no choice but to replace the hardware. But IMHO in nearly all cases an old laptop is more convenient for beginner self-hosting than a RPi.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

In my opinion, if you're buying something to use as a server, you might as well invest in a PC dedicated for the purpose, as it's a lot more flexible and extendable. You should be able to get away with using relatively low-end hardware and still see a lot more performance than that of a pi.

If your budget is almost nonexistent, replace the harddrive, as that seems to be what's wrong with your current setup.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I agree with this. You can get a lot of hardware for not a lot, especially if you build your own.

If money's not that tight, another option is a modern NAS that can run services and Docker. Depends on what you want to do with it in the long term: file server vs All The Services.

A few years ago it was time to replace my ancient NAS and I was tossing up between building a dedicated server with something like TrueNAS and Nextcloud, or opting for a QNAP or Synology that could do it all for me. Opted for a Synology DS920+ and haven't looked back. It can't do anything processor-intensive, but it nails it for everything else. I have ~30 Docker stacks running on it, including Wireguard, and SWAG for SSL+MFA external services. Synology Drive (GDrive) and Photos (GPhotos/Picasa) on Linux, Windows, Mac, Android and iOS let me ditch the last of my cloud services. It's also running Plex Media Server, tying into an Nvidia ShieldTV as the client.