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Blocklist-Update.sh

Blocklist-Update.sh is a script that I wrote to manage blocklists from bluetack etc to be used in conjunction with Transmission torrent downloader in Linux/MacOS. The script can be taylored to work with Qbittorrent as well, but the placement of the blocklists means you'd have to redirect the blocklist to go somewhere locally manageable as Transmission uses its own blocklist directory in .config. I believe there are about 10 lists there now. It works well for my needs. It can be ran weekly using crontab in standard user profile.  To download:  blocklist-update.sh To download the others:  Github
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SSD USAGE AND MAINTENANCE

WORKING WITH THE NEW WESTERN DIGITAL BLUE 3D NAND 250GB SSD
I can say without a doubt that the overall speed and snappiness makes this a worthwhile buy. When working with SSDs it is recommended that you do not store personal media on the device as these add needless writes to infrequently accessed data. This also takes up space that the OS uses for speed and reliability. When working with the SSD, there is little to no worry of jarring or failing due to small drops as the drive has no moving parts. SSDs are similar to memory in that they store data in cells; the cells are read and handled in similar fashion to the way memory handles the data. This allows for faster booting and smoother loading of applications. SSDs do not produce extreme amounts of heat, nor do they constantly have to write back like with standard hard disk drives.

GARBAGE COLLECTION AND TRIM
SSDs have a limited amount of read/write cycles and GC or Garbage Collection is a must for these drives. I’d suggest running Trim on the drive at least once a week. I would suggest letting the system run occasionally though, especially on days when trim is set to run on your system. Trim and wear leveling helps from a maintenance standpoint. It also gives back system space. If you can’t make the automatic schedule set by the system, running fstrim -v / from time to time is another good option. Trim can be set to run daily by adding discard flag to the fstab file, but this much trim is probably more detrimental than good for your drive, it’s all about finding balance. Hard disk drives are still the preferred medium for storing media and other personal files. Most SSDs in modern days do not wear out as easily as people seem to think they do, this is a common misconception.

SWAP USAGE
Ubuntu comes pretty much SSD ready out of the box. The one thing that you might really need to change is the way that the drive swaps. Most users will swear that having a swap partition is terrible now with RAM in the double-digits of GB, but that is just not the case. Swap is integral to the system for many reasons, but limiting the swap usage is essential as the default 60 means that Linux will use swap whenever 40 percent or higher of memory usage has been reached. Setting the swap value to 10 is often recommended, however, this can also lead to premature use of swap. I’ve found that setting swap to 5 is a good balance on SSDs.

POWER MANAGEMENT AND DATA CORRUPTION
Sleep mode is not detrimental to all brands in all machines, to find out which fit is best for you is a bit tricky though. Reading the user manual online at the manufacturer’s website will be vital. Search for power management in the manual. My drive happens to work with S3 sleep, but I would never use hibernation. Disabling hibernation by be necessary for you depending on if you want that little tad bit of extra space that the OS caches for that purpose. From reading the different sources, I gather that SSD memory works by storing information neatly in blocks, when a bad block is located, another block is freshly occupied with data in place of the older one. SSDs these days have a higher fault tolerance than they used to have. Data corruption used to be a bigger problem following the inception of these marvels.

OUTLASTING THE COMPETITION
SSDs now have a more robust, multi-terabyte data write lifespan on them, this allows many to potentially outlast the machines they are placed in. No two drives will last the same amount of time though. Lifespans are a suggested estimate, your mileage may vary. Western Digital is not well known for their groundbreaking SSD technology, however, they make really good mechanical drives. While the SSD market is rather new ground for them, I expect no less than excellence to come from such a trustworthy company. The company color codes their drives and uses these colors as ratings for speed, write speeds and storage capacity. Green is expected to work fine for most consumers on a budget. The blue drives are more geared towards gaming and storage, however, as a standard user with a 250GB capacity, I’m not going for storage space on here.

INSTALLATION, PERSONAL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS
From a user who is new to SSDs in general, I am amazed by the boost that this has given my old inspiron. Installing wasn’t easy, I had to use velcro tape for this. This is still a fairly straight forward process. Placing the drive in the bottom of the case was optimal as this allows for me to make use of two other drive racks. There are many good brands and models to choose from, but Western Digital is one of the finest for computer components. Don’t take my word for it, though many people would agree. It was either this or a SanDisk, but I think I made the right decision. Another factor you may want to take into consideration is the power consumption. Power consumption is touted as being 30 percent less on this drive than on a previous model from the same vendor. Note: This was not a pcie slot version of the device. The specs on those may be different, search amazon descriptions and read the product information on the manufacturer’s website for more details.


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