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Pawel Debski
Asked: 2020-03-22 05:39:32 +0800 CST

Small internal drive, need far more space in /tmp, shall I put it on external drive or internal one?

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I have a small internal SDD drive with Ubuntu and I often run-out of /tmp space. I am going to add another, large HDD. It is critical for me that /tmp is as fast as possible not to impact performance of my key applications. What is better from the performance point of view: * create a partition on external drive and mount it over internal /tmp, or * move some data to make more space in internal /tmp

performance partitioning mount hard-drive external-hdd

2 Answers

  1. To keep matters clean and tidy, consider using Stacer from the Ubuntu Software Center and use the System Cleaner option to clear down unnecessary files.

    Alternatively, open a terminal and enter the command

    sudo apt install stacer

    enter image description here

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  2. Best Answer

    The best is to first measure the performance of both drives and put /tmp on the faster one. The easiest way is for example to copy a bunch of large files first to the internal /tmp and than to the external volume.

    Be sure first to erase all partitions and create new partition table and a new filesystem in the format you choose (such as ext4). Different filesystem formats tend to have differences in performance.

    Than you choose faster one and mount over /tmp

    To make better assessment you can also first analyse the behaviour of your key apps - whether they create one large file or a bunch of small temporary files. Than for /tmp you can choose filesystem format best suited for your case.

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