Why and how webbrowsers eat up your hard drive

Skybird · 09-30-16, 11:00 AM

https://www.servethehome.com/firefox...how-to-fix-it/

Your move.

Jeff-Groves · 09-30-16, 04:11 PM

Fixed. I don't use Firefox.

STEED · 10-01-16, 06:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

Fixed. I don't use Firefox.

Same here.

aanker · 10-01-16, 10:43 AM

Thanks, I do.

Skybird · 10-01-16, 03:21 PM

You think you non-firefoxers are safe? You seem to have missed the part where it says:

"We are testing other browsers. Currently in the middle of a Chrome Version 52.0.2743.116 m test. We have been able to see a pace of over 24GB/ day of writes on this machine."

Every browser does it, it seems, I read in a German source that linked me to this article that the others do similar things. I did the Easy Fix they mention in that article, and changed the value from 15000 to 1800000, which should be like increasing from 15 seconds to 30 minutes, if I understand that variable'S logic correctly.

Rockin Robbins · 10-02-16, 08:05 AM

Seems to me that the fix is just to turn session restore off entirely. How often do you actually use session restore? Once a month?

But the other thing to keep in mind is that the recent SSDs have an expected life longer than the mechanical hard drives we trust so much. All those writes have minor significance and might reduce your SSD life to only six years or so! Yes, that's a catastrophe, but on the scale of one to ten it rates about a 3.

Your SSD shouldn't be the place Firefox keeps its files anyway! That's what mechanical drives are for. SSDs are for keeping operating systems so they boot fast. EVERYTHING else should be on mechanical hard drives. Then your SSD is very minimally written to and it will live for ten years after it is tossed in the trash because it's obsolete. Think about it. What do you do when you happen across a perfectly working 80GB parallel hard drive from 2003? Do you test it to see how good it is? Do you thank your lucky stars for this precious find? No, you toss it in the trash, same as you will do with a perfectly working SSD of only 120GB that you find five years from now. All these guys will be in the trash long before any browser writes cause any problems.

The research will find all browsers do the same thing, other than maybe Konqueror, which nobody runs (they're missing a real treat!). The worst will be Chrome. Unless the Microsloth browsers are playing Parcheesi with themselves when they're supposed to be doing DNS searches. Parcheesi takes up a lot of disk space.

In the meantime, Firefox is still the best browser out there. It's so customizable and so useful it stays on my Microsloth and Linux machines.

09-30-16, 11:00 AM	#1
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 42,660 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	Why and how webbrowsers eat up your hard drive https://www.servethehome.com/firefox...how-to-fix-it/ Your move. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert.

10-01-16, 03:21 PM	#5
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 42,660 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	You think you non-firefoxers are safe? You seem to have missed the part where it says: "We are testing other browsers. Currently in the middle of a Chrome Version 52.0.2743.116 m test. We have been able to see a pace of over 24GB/ day of writes on this machine." Every browser does it, it seems, I read in a German source that linked me to this article that the others do similar things. I did the Easy Fix they mention in that article, and changed the value from 15000 to 1800000, which should be like increasing from 15 seconds to 30 minutes, if I understand that variable'S logic correctly. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert.

10-02-16, 08:05 AM	#6
Rockin Robbins Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: DeLand, FL Posts: 8,900 Downloads: 135 Uploads: 52	Seems to me that the fix is just to turn session restore off entirely. How often do you actually use session restore? Once a month? But the other thing to keep in mind is that the recent SSDs have an expected life longer than the mechanical hard drives we trust so much. All those writes have minor significance and might reduce your SSD life to only six years or so! Yes, that's a catastrophe, but on the scale of one to ten it rates about a 3. Your SSD shouldn't be the place Firefox keeps its files anyway! That's what mechanical drives are for. SSDs are for keeping operating systems so they boot fast. EVERYTHING else should be on mechanical hard drives. Then your SSD is very minimally written to and it will live for ten years after it is tossed in the trash because it's obsolete. Think about it. What do you do when you happen across a perfectly working 80GB parallel hard drive from 2003? Do you test it to see how good it is? Do you thank your lucky stars for this precious find? No, you toss it in the trash, same as you will do with a perfectly working SSD of only 120GB that you find five years from now. All these guys will be in the trash long before any browser writes cause any problems. The research will find all browsers do the same thing, other than maybe Konqueror, which nobody runs (they're missing a real treat!). The worst will be Chrome. Unless the Microsloth browsers are playing Parcheesi with themselves when they're supposed to be doing DNS searches. Parcheesi takes up a lot of disk space. In the meantime, Firefox is still the best browser out there. It's so customizable and so useful it stays on my Microsloth and Linux machines. __________________ Sub Skipper's Bag of Tricks, Slightly Subnuclear Mk 14 & Cutie, Slightly Subnuclear Deck Gun, EZPlot 2.0, TMOPlot, TMOKeys, SH4CMS

09-30-16, 04:11 PM	#2
Jeff-Groves GLOBAL MODDING TERRORIST Join Date: Sep 2014 Posts: 5,654 Downloads: 137 Uploads: 0	Fixed. I don't use Firefox.

10-01-16, 10:43 AM	#4
aanker Pacific Thunder Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Yellow Sea Posts: 1,896 Downloads: 236 Uploads: 14	Thanks, I do.