New computer possibly required

Hello everyone,

I think I’ve reached the end of the line for my main laptop and am therefore looking for confirmation of what I think is wrong and comments about my preferred manufacturer.

The laptop in question is a Toshiba Satellite Pro A200 bought new in Jan 2008, original 80GB H/D replaced by a 160GB H/D in 2012 (purely for more capacity) and the memory upgraded from 500Mb to 2Gb in 2014 to coincide with the demise of Windows XP and my changeover to Linux Mint.

The problem that I have is that on occasion, the hard disk light comes on and remains on and steady, meanwhile the computer appears to have locked up. Eventually, the light starts flickering and slowly the computer starts responding again. The first few times this happened was when I was using Google Street View which made me suspect that Street View was causing Firefox to fail to release memory. Using System Monitor showed that when this problem occurred, the CPU history was 100% whilst the Memory & Swap History was usually quite high.

Recently, the same problem has occurred when I have a number of windows open, and doing nothing, whilst I am working on the topmost wondow so it would seem that it is nothing to do with Street View.

My suspicion is that the H/D is showing signs of failure, and hence thinking of the age of the machine, rather than change the H/D. I think a replacement machine is perhaps in order.

Now, this particular laptop is designated as my main computer and as such gets used almost every day – except when we are are away on holiday. I have other laptops for backup purposes and to avoid having to disconnect the main one, all networked together. My usage is occasional letters, very simple spreadsheets (actually more database than spreadsheet), database for home use, internet browsing, emails, occasional usage of Gimp, occasional usage of a CAD program. And really that’s about it. I do occasionally use Skype, but Skype doesn’t seem too clever on Linux and requires setting up each time I try it so it doesn’t get used that much. And the replacement must be able to be setup to use Linux.

So, as I have had good service from 3 Toshiba’s in the past, Toshiba would be my first choice, but what do people think?

Peter G. Shaw

ten0rman

A seven yr old disc has got to be a risk. Although 160G is not much now at the time it was high capacity especially for small laptop ones and therefore less robust. If I was computer savvy enough to do it I would move everything archiveable to an external drive and put all the operating system and day to day stuff on an SSD for speed.

As above,

back up all you want to keep external drive

get a cheap but branded SSD for between £25 -35 and either clone disk, or better still reinstall your Mint (because your performance issue may be due to something more sinister). And just for fun see if you can up the memory to 4Gb if the board will take it (assume it is 32 bit device)

I did this with an old Dell laptop of the same vintage and performance was perfectly satisfactory even on win 10 (using dual boot with Linux). Easy to do - I am not computer minded and managed OK. Will probably get another 5 years out of the device, maybe more on Linux, which is WTG for the future IMO.

You could have a look at the hard drive in your laptop to see if it is the old ATA, or the current SATA connections. The old ATA connections consist of a double row of pins about 45mm long, the SATA ones are much shorter. If the connection is SATA, then it is worth buying a 240Gb 2 1/2" SSD drive for the pc. Since that drive is a common current type, it will still be useful when the laptop is finally retired. An SSD will give the pc a new lease of life.

you can use the free SeaTools to test the disk. this seems to work on non Seagate drives as well.

I would endorse Martin and Old's idea - to get a cheap (ish) SSD and clone. No only will your hard drive work again, but it will feel like you have just bought a new modern PC - everything will seem much faster!

Iain

I'll second change to SSD put a crucial SSD in mine very please with it

H

I like Toshibas - for the last 20 years I have had a series of them for work and at home. It is the end of the day and I am at work typing this on my work Toshiba Laptop. At home I have 4 Toshiba laptops working and a couple that are superannuated but not yet thrown out.

I would replace the computer as it has had one set of upgrades already with the larger hard disk, more memory and switching to Linux Mint with its smaller hardware footprint. An SSD (if it will fit - check as someone has already suggested) will make a difference, however as you seem to be at the limit if processor performance according to your figures I suspect that is not the main issue and it is the end of the road for this laptop as a main machine.

As I said I like Toshibas, and though I have and use other brands (Asus, Acer, HP, Samsung) this is entirely prejudice on my part - I cannot justify the decision in any way at all! - Is that honesty or bias?? - but I still like them!

It could well be that you are running out of space on the root partition of your hard disk. Have you had a look at your disk with the built in Disk Usage Analyser program? It is easy for old files to build up.

There is an old thread on disk testing on the Linux Mint forum:

**LINK**

I am running Linux Mint 19.3 on my laptop and have only 17 GiB used in the 40 GiB root partition. I have a separate partition for the /home directory which does need clearing out occasionally but is currently up to 75 GiB. Linux does need very little disk space compared to Windows unless you are going to do things like run virtual machines in Virtualbox.

Russell

My Satellite Pro £350 (2006) packed up in 2017. Bought similar 2nd hand one off ebay £60 from some

outfit near Gatwick , absolutely perfect.

Not convinced advice to swap the Hard Drive for an SSD is helpful on a machine of this specification. Would you supercharge a Morris Marina?

Two reasons agin it:

• The whole machine is time-expired, not just the hard-drive. Whilst failure of the physical disc is a likely cause of Peter's symptoms, it could be memory, or motherboard, or CPU overheating, or...
• The laptop is low-specification by modern standards. For example, the disc interface is SATA 1.5Gb/s, meaning it runs at quarter speed compared with a new one. Similar objections to the graphics and memory - all slow-mo technology. Worse, 2Gb of RAM isn't really enough - it may be causing the system to thrash, that is continually swap memory between RAM and hard drive in order to make space for other tasks.  I'd recommend 4Gb for Mint, and 8Gb would be better. (All my Linux machines have 16Gb, but only rarely do they need more than 8Gb.)

I wouldn't hesitate to replace a tired 12 year old computer - it's done its duty and more. Main problem I think is finding a new laptop guaranteed to run Linux. Of the main brands only Dell support that. The risk is that a very new computer might contain hardware currently only supported by Windows. It can take a year or two for Linux to catch up, so it pays to buy last years model. This website has some suggestions.

I'm using a new Linux laptop at the moment. It's a Dell XPS 13, i7-10510U CPU, 16Gb RAM with a 500Gb SSD, running Ubuntu 18.04 (Mint is based on Ubuntu). Blazing fast, lightweight, super graphics, power efficient and everything works. Negatives: small screen for old eyes, limited sockets (has Thunderbolt which is super-USB, ordinary USB compatible but uses a different plug - a hub might be needed. No DVD drive.) Ordering from Dell with Ubuntu installed rather than Windows saves £50.

Nothing wrong with Toshiba (I like them), but check Linux compatibility on the web before ordering. Whatever is bought, SSD highly recommended - my Dell boots Ubuntu in a couple of seconds...

Beware though, new toys can get expensive. Once you have a fast computer, it's hard to put up with slow ones.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 31/01/2020 17:23:51

SOD (Dave)

+1 all the way (except for my acknowledged prejudice for a Tosh!)

Nick

Well it is horses for courses. As I understand it, the OP needs a machine running a relatively secure OS to browse, e-mail, write letters, do banking, run the odd spreadsheet or 2d cad.

You don't need the latest and greatest machine for that sort of work.

Yep, there may be other issues with the device to be aware of so need to balance risks, although a replacement SSD is relatively low risk upgrade as it can always be used in another machine.

A good spec brand x recon small screen laptop 3-4 years old will cost about £200-250 (or less if lucky). So not worth committing too much on refurbing old machines unless it has special features like large screen-

2Gb ram is a tight even for Lin-mint, my 14 year old Dell did much better on 4 Gb (max for 32 bit machines), but was acceptable on 2Gb ram although did exhibit lock ups with multiple browser windows open sometimes.

I use my old Dell for all domestics and it is just fine, Linux and its attendant software is adequate for most of my purposes and I can boot back to w10 for stuff like devcad-cam cura and other oddities as needed.

So if OP can't get 4Gb ram into his spec machine, perhaps right to suggest a newer model although if tied to Toshiba it may cost rather more than a refurb Lenovo or HP

Now there's a mental image it will take years of therapy to get rid of !

………. Would you supercharge a Morris Marina?

or possibly an Austin Allegro - especially the purple ones with the square steering wheel.

Awesome!

It seem like there are lots of Toshiba laptops available, but the company has vacillated on producing laptops for several years, and seem to have sold the business to Sharp, at least in the US. I recently replaced the hard disc and memory in my Asus with new components (SSD) and full amount of memory, and hope to get a few more years from it. A 'traditional' laptop with reasonable performance and memory looked too expensive for a not-huge improvement. Time will tell whether that was a mistake.

Bill

The recommended minimum requirements for Linux Mint are 2 GB memory and 20 GB disk space so Peter should have no problem running it on his laptop. However if he wishes to buy a new one it would be a good idea to check on the Mint forum to see if anyone has problems with his chosen model. It's worth buying from a supplier who will take returns without question if it's not suitable. My present laptop was bought from CDiscount in France. The first one came with Windows and I set it up to dual boot with Linux but unfortunately the graphics chip was not supported in the Linux kernel at that time and it would only run slowly with software rendering. So returned it (carriage paid by the supplier) for a full refund and bought a slightly different model with a different graphics chip. I believe Amazon will also accept returns of unsuitable product very readily.

Russell

Bazyle,
I already have two external H/d’s on this machine. The internal 160Gb H/d is used for the OS, swop file and user data plus some storage. There is approx 90 Gb spare.

Martin of Wick,
See above. Yes, with Mint 18.1 running out either this year or next year, I was waiting to see if I could get the latest (20.1?) version, but maybe I should consider an upgrade to 19.3.

OldMart,
SATA. Maybe an SSD is the way to go.

Iain,
I’ll look up the SeaTools.

Russell,
According to the Preferences screen, I have 12.3 GB spare out of 20.3Gb

Dave/SOD, Martin etc
I don’t need a superdooper, screaming speed machine. A bogstandard machine will be satisfactory. I must admit to being torn between screen size as the old Advent has a 17” hi res screen which is very nice to use, and if I had one of these, then the new machine might suddenly become the one to take away with me and revert the L300 Toshiba to purely backup status. (Currently I use it to take away if necessary.)

Ah well, much to ponder now.

One thing I can say is that from the discussion it looks as if the machine might not (yet) be past its use by date, merely suffering from an overdose of overloading by yours truly.

Peter G. Shaw

Hi Peter,

Look at HP's own website.

I bought an excellent laptop for work with an SSD direct from them, cost was reasonable (£30 more than an the previous model which was being sold off cheap at Currys) and it came without the 'bloatware' you get on most computers, It had USB3 and 3.1 and is very fast. Screen is good too.

Only bad thing was having to uninstall Macafee before it could ruin everything, and activate Windows Defender instead.

Neil

Downside is I now want a desktop that runs as fast!

I have had two PCs and a laptop over recent years from pcspecialist.co.uk. It might be worth looking at their web site where you can 'customize' your own machine. They will also supply without an operating system installed. The only drawback is that, being built to order, you might have to wait a week or so for delivery.

No connection except as a customer.

Mike.

Not difficult to overload older computers with new software. If Mint is being kept up-to-date, then demand for memory and resources will tend to bloat, however gentle the user. You said (my bold):

"... I was using Google Street View which made me suspect that Street View was causing Firefox to fail to release memory. Using System Monitor showed that when this problem occurred, the CPU history was 100% whilst the Memory & Swap History was usually quite high."

That suggests overload because Street View is memory, CPU and graphics intensive. Easy to prove one way or the other. Open a terminal window, and type the command top.

When top is running (refreshes every few seconds until stopped with ctrl-C), it shows statistics that may expose the problem. This is my Workstation computer, little me running Firefox with 3 tabs, everything else is system housekeeping. Despite 291 tasks running, this computer is lightly loaded.

First three numbers to note are in the red box. They show the average number of tasks queuing for a resource to become available. The resource could be cpu, disc, network, display, memory, keyboard, printer, whatever. First number is the size of the queue now, second the queue size 5 minutes ago, third queue size 15 minutes ago. Rule of thumb for a UNIX Server, queue now shouldn't be more than 3.0. Workstations run with shorter queues because humans are sensitive to delays. If the queue is too big, it's due to the system is bottlenecking due because 1 or more resources are busy.

RAM is often the most critical resource in a computer. If it's big enough for all queuing tasks to stay in memory, response will be quick. Response is much slower when the task is swapped to disc and has to be retrieved: hard drives are sluggish.

Computer memory usage is summarised in the blue rectangle. Although I have 16Gb RAM installed, only 15.87Gb is actually available. 1.946Gb is actually in use, which is perilously close to Peter's maximum 2Gb available, and Russells' minimum needed for Mint. But, modern operating systems will use spare RAM. My system has another 3.55Gb of RAM for cache/buffer. Most buffering is of open files: if the operating system has space it will read the contents of open files into memory and leave it there because it's likely the contents will be used again. On a system short of memory, only small portions of each file can be read at a time, and physical discs will be kept busy, each transaction wasting a few milliseconds. On a system with plenty of memory, most transactions take microseconds. Then, because discs have much less to do in a memory rich system, other tasks are less likely to have to queue for disc. So, it's important to have enough memory. Although Mint can run in 2Gb, 4Gb is more sensible, 8Gb comfortable, and 16Gb generous.

Blue box shows I have 8Gb of swap available and none of it is being used. Ideally, computers should never need swap memory because it's slow. Swap can degrade into 'thrashing', ie the computer is so overloaded that everything has to be swapped before it can run. The computer runs extraordinarily slowly, perhaps taking several minutes to complete work normally taking less than a second. Symptoms are high CPU and high disk activity. Fitting an SSD helps in this situation because they respond faster than a hard drive, but the main cause is insufficient RAM.

Lastly the box in yellow highlights the most expensive CPU tasks. Of note is Firefox, which is not only big, but is 4 separate tasks. There's a core Firefox plus a 'Web Content' for each tab, and another process called 'Web Extensions', which I guess runs ad-blocker, security and privacy plug-ins. Browsers are heavy on a system, for example consuming a lot of memory and disc space by cacheing web-pages.

When a system misbehaves 'top' is a good place to start. Other tools like nethog and iotop can be used to focus on network and input-output hogs if necessary. But most poor performance is caused by insufficient RAM and slow hard drives. Be aware that older computers are slow throughout and unlikely to benefit fully from bolting on new components. If it works at all, the new part will throttle back into compatibility mode and chug along in the slow lane. (Which may be good enough!)

Dave