can linux run fine off a hard drive

[Linus No Beard]

i only have a 465GiB SSD for windows so i cant fit linux on there but i have a 10TB HDD that i got from friend who is a sys admin because he was updating servers to 20TB drives and he took one for me so i was wondering if linux could run fine on a 512GB partition on my HDD or if it would be unusably slow like on windows

[Needfuldoer]

Any mechanical drive is going to be slower than an SSD for the kind of random workload an OS will put on it. Try it out, and if you're not happy with how fast it is you can always get an inexpensive or used SATA SSD to install and play with.

[Linus No Beard]

2 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Any mechanical drive is going to be slower than an SSD for the kind of random workload an OS will put on it. Try it out, and if you're not happy with how fast it is you can always get an inexpensive or used SATA SSD to install and play with.

okay i mainly just wanted to know if linux being less bloated than windows would be similar to using an older version of windows like og windows 7 on a HDD witch was not that bad when compared to waiting 20 minutes for the os to fully load in windows 10 what side of the spectrum is linux similar to

[JohnReese]

Hi,

 

The short answer: Linux will definitely run on 10TB HDD, or any HDD bigger than a mere 10GB which is...any hdd these days.

 

Linux itself can fit into a very small space. For example for ubuntu 30 GB for example might be ok. 10GB is minimum. However, it depends on what you want to do with your Linux. I have dualboot (windows + linux) and my Linux partition is 100GB of space and never full. My whole disk is 512GB. Also i am able to use the windows partition in Linux, for downloads/pictures/etc.

 

While you could install linux to your 10TB HDD, why not install it on the SSD for the improved speeds? 100GB is more than enough. You can use the 10TB HDD for storing downloads/games/pictures/etc. 

 

Man there are so many other things to say but maybe if you explain more what you want to do, and why you need lots of storage space, we can come with real help

 

 

[JohnReese]

1 minute ago, Linus No Beard said:

okay i mainly just wanted to know if linux being less bloated than windows would be similar to using an older version of windows like og windows 7 on a HDD witch was not that bad when compared to waiting 20 minutes for the os to fully load in windows 10 what side of the spectrum is linux similar to

In my experience Linux is much faster than windows to boot up or even when starting programs. Just try it, it doesn't cost you anything and it's fun to play with

 

[Linus No Beard]

Just now, JohnReese said:

Hi,

 

The short answer: Linux will definitely run on 10TB HDD, or any HDD bigger than a mere 10GB which is...any hdd these days.

 

Linux itself can fit into a very small space. For example for ubuntu 30 GB for example might be ok. 10GB is minimum. However, it depends on what you want to do with your Linux. I have dualboot (windows + linux) and my Linux partition is 100GB of space and never full. My whole disk is 512GB. Also i am able to use the windows partition in Linux, for downloads/pictures/etc.

 

While you could install linux to your 10TB HDD, why not install it on the SSD for the improved speeds? 100GB is more than enough. You can use the 10TB HDD for storing downloads/games/pictures/etc. 

 

Man there are so many other things to say but maybe if you explain more what you want to do, and why you need lots of storage space, we can come with real help

 

 

i mainly was asking speed wise because on windows 10 it can take 20+ minutes for the os to load fully but on og windows 7 it was much faster and was usable i wanted to know what side of the spectrum Linux is 

[Linus No Beard]

1 minute ago, JohnReese said:

In my experience Linux is much faster than windows to boot up or even when starting programs. Just try it, it doesn't cost you anything and it's fun to play with

 

okay will do

[HeroRareheart]

Linux will run fine, just some tasks will be slower than if it was on an SSD such as booting up.

[JohnReese]

Also maybe if you don't know what linux to install, why not try it first in a virtual machine? try different distros like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Pop OS, etc and see which one you like best

 

you can find tutorials on youtube to install linux in a VM. Or even to the HDD

[Linus No Beard]

Just now, JohnReese said:

Also maybe if you don't know what linux to install, why not try it first in a virtual machine? try different distros like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Pop OS, etc

 

you can find tutorials on youtube to install linux in a VM. Or even to the HDD

i want to use arch + KDE plasma i have set it up before in a vm

[BondiBlue]

From my experience Linux usually does a bit better on mechanical hard drives than modern versions of Windows. I'm running Linux Mint 20.3 (the latest version) on a 2012 21.5" iMac, and I have Mint installed on the internal 1TB 2.5" HDD. It's definitely slow to start up (just over a minute from pressing the power button to hitting the desktop), but once it's running it's perfectly usable. 

[LloydLynx]

9 hours ago, Linus No Beard said:

i want to use arch + KDE plasma i have set it up before in a vm

That 100% will be usable on a hard drive. If you're used to an SSD, it'll be slow, but fully usable and no excessive disk usage. Windows, on the other hand, chokes so badly on hard drives, that's why everyone thinks hard drives are completely unusable. No Linux distro is gonna pin your hard drive at 100% for 5 minutes or more after boot up while not doing anything. And the fact that you're planning to use Arch and install only what you need is even better. 

[Linus No Beard]

1 hour ago, LloydLynx said:

That 100% will be usable on a hard drive. If you're used to an SSD, it'll be slow, but fully usable and no excessive disk usage. Windows, on the other hand, chokes so badly on hard drives, that's why everyone thinks hard drives are completely unusable. No Linux distro is gonna pin your hard drive at 100% for 5 minutes or more after boot up while not doing anything. And the fact that you're planning to use Arch and install only what you need is even better. 

the results have cam in i have basically the same boot time on windows and linux even though linux is on an HDD and has full disk encryption computers are so much faster when you have a team of competent programmers

[10leej]

13 hours ago, Linus No Beard said:

i only have a 465GiB SSD for windows so i cant fit linux on there but i have a 10TB HDD that i got from friend who is a sys admin because he was updating servers to 20TB drives and he took one for me so i was wondering if linux could run fine on a 512GB partition on my HDD or if it would be unusably slow like on windows

It'll be slow but it'll work, one thing many linux desktop's do is load a lot of the basic services into memory unlike windows, so stuff like you file manager will load pretty quick.

[RollyShed]

14 hours ago, Linus No Beard said:

i mainly just wanted to know if linux being less bloated than windows would be similar to using an older version of windows like og windows 7 on a HDD witch was not that bad when compared to waiting 20 minutes for the os to fully load in windows 10

20 minutes!!! You're joking, surely. !!!!!

I can do a full installation of Linux Mint, do updates and add extra apps and ship the computer in that time. On a reasonable computer Mint boot time with an SSD is 20 - 30 seconds. With a hard disk, probably about 1-1/2 minutes.

 

Get an SSD, about 250GB or less for the Linux and use the hard disk for data storage.

 

I have a laptop with 30GB of storage, a travelling machine, my "screwdriver" for fixing people's problems. Under 10GB for Linux and a lot of files in the other bit and possibly about 5GB spare.

 

This desktop, 240GB SSD with a lot of "things" on it and a 1TB hard disk for lots of files.

[18358414]

It depends on your desktop environment and hardware, but I have Arch Linux with XFCE installed on an external IDE hard drive (Hitachi travelstar HTS421212H9AT00) and my time required to get to a working firefox browser from boot (i.e. from the second I touch the power button to the second I can complete a google search) is roughly 2m15s (that's on a I3 350m processor)

 

A worst-case would be if you were doing something crazy like 'ramroot', which can take upwards of 10 minutes, but loads the root filesystem to ram.

[Linus No Beard]

6 hours ago, RollyShed said:

20 minutes!!! You're joking, surely. !!!!!

I can do a full installation of Linux Mint, do updates and add extra apps and ship the computer in that time. On a reasonable computer Mint boot time with an SSD is 20 - 30 seconds. With a hard disk, probably about 1-1/2 minutes.

 

Get an SSD, about 250GB or less for the Linux and use the hard disk for data storage.

 

I have a laptop with 30GB of storage, a travelling machine, my "screwdriver" for fixing people's problems. Under 10GB for Linux and a lot of files in the other bit and possibly about 5GB spare.

 

This desktop, 240GB SSD with a lot of "things" on it and a 1TB hard disk for lots of files.

i was talking about the time it takes windows to go from power button to not using 100% disk

[RollyShed]

On 2/28/2022 at 5:42 AM, Linus No Beard said:

i was talking about the time it takes windows to go from power button to not using 100% disk

Exactly, a ridiculous amount of time. One of the many reasons I wouldn't touch Windows.

As I said, I could do a total installation, updates and do a few emails and have dinner in that time by not using Windows.