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A lot of tutorials says to use noatime on fstab when you have an SSD, but for me seems the relatime will works nicely.

Some quotes:

Add the "noatime" (or "relatime") mount option in /etc/fstab, to disable (or significantly reduce) disk writes whenever a file is read. Please note that since Linux kernel 2.6.30, "relatime" is the default. This improves filesystem read performance for both SSDs and HDDs.

source: Debian SSD Optimization

The other option, noatime, tells the filesystem to not keep track of last accessed times – just last modified times. This can reduce wear and tear on your SSD, because there are many files that you access while you use your computer but there are far fewer files that you’ll end up modifying.

source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/optimize-linux-ssds

Will it work fine? Will it be better? I'll have any problem with this setting?

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2 Answers 2

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noatime will cause even less disk writes than relatime but whether that causes a problem depends on if one of your applications relies on those access times.

See also https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/371812/difference-between-nointegrity-noatime-relatime.

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In most cases the atime will be in the same disk block as the ctime and mtime. So noatime will not save any disk writes compared to relatime.

In Unix-like file systems, inodes (where the various time values are stored) are a fixed size. In any reasonable file system of that type they will be designed so they fit evenly into disk blocks.

But there is no guarantee that ALL file systems are designed that way. NTFS stores the file time as part of a variable length directory entry, so it's possible that an entry can straddle block boundaries and the time values (NTFS stores EIGHT) could be divided.

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  • 1
    (1) I believe that atime will always be in the same disk block as ctime and mtime.  Do you know of any exceptions? (2) I believe that your second statement is wrong.  Can you support it with a detailed argument and/or a reference? … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Please do not respond in comments; edit your answer to make it clearer and more complete.
    – G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'
    Commented Sep 19, 2019 at 18:03
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    The problem with atime is that the update has to happen on each access to the file where es mtime/ctime Updates Happen only when You change file content/metadata. With realtime these updates are only written on first access after mtime/ctime update or after some threshold time passed since last atime update, so it will save a lot of updates/writes.
    – EOhm
    Commented Oct 24, 2019 at 6:13
  • I think people misunderstood and down-voted the answer because they confuse the atime field with the mount option. You make a valid point IMO.
    – Johan Boulé
    Commented Jun 26 at 1:00

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