Does Your Primary Linux Desktop Have An HDD or SSD?

gwc01 · 10-15-2013, 05:51 AM

I have one of each in my home laptop, boot/OS is SSD, storage HDD.
Work machine, HDD only. Any future machines will always have boot/OS on SSD.

vouty · 10-15-2013, 05:52 AM

Server Ubuntu + Lamp
Latitude E6500 Core 2 Duo 2.80 (T9600)
SSD 120Gb
Working well as a server

Reliance · 10-15-2013, 05:58 AM

johnbond777 · 10-15-2013, 06:18 AM

I don't know what my problem is, I keep getting drives ten times what I need, but cheap ~$60. I should consider SSD.

The server I managed for a while in the software development group at work came to me with an SSD which has the OS and some critical files. I always wondered how the unit was so fast. When the SSD died after 2 years of use and I replaced it with a HDD, I realized that SSD was the reason for speed.

So we rebuilt the server with a new larger SSD, and the whole team is happy.

KenJackson · 10-15-2013, 06:25 AM

My living-room computer is SILENT with no moving parts--no disk wine due to it having an SSD, and no hatefully annoying fan wine due to it having no fan. I love it.

I ran Arch Linux for a couple years before recently switching it to PCLinuxOS.

The only think I dislike about it is that Firefox often has trouble keeping up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suicidaleggroll

Sequential read and write speed with an HDD is about 30% of what you get with a decent SSD, seek time is over an order of magnitude slower (closer to two orders of magnitude...that's 100x).

OK, OK. I've always assumed the sluggishness was because of the SSD, but maybe it's just the 1.66GHz Atom D510 CPU that's causing the bottleneck, even with 4GB RAM.

Phoenix2275 · 10-15-2013, 06:35 AM

My only computer uses an SSD (120GB) and I have an external 2TB HDD.

enine · 10-15-2013, 07:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by suicidaleggroll

And have a MUCH slower computer. Or you could cut back a bit on the processor and graphics driver, use the money you saved to run an SSD without costing anything extra, and have a faster overall computer that's more reliable with better battery life.

I'm talking business/enterprise grade where you might get two cpu choices but only the one graphics choice they include.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suicidaleggroll

Funny, I have the same reaction, but not for the same reason as you. I hate the SSDs used in most off the shelf laptops, they're crappy, incredibly slow, and the laptop manufacturers charge a ridiculous amount of money for them. I usually hunt for a laptop that's available with a HDD, and then swap it out for a good SSD myself while I'm upgrading the RAM. And if you do that, you can stick the stock HDD you pulled out into an external enclosure and use it for free bulk storage.

Its kind of hard to use a laptop as its intended with external enclosures hanging off of it. I do have external enclosures but for backups and unplug and store those in a safe when I'm not making a backup. If your not chaining yourself to a desk where are you could to lay an external enclosure.

How come other enterprise size companies are not replacing hdd's in all their laptops in less than a year, its rare to see one needing replacement other than laptop model specific as I remember one model of HP/Compaq that ran the heat tube right next to the hdd cooking them but that was one known model.

stuman · 10-15-2013, 07:28 AM

I have several machines around my place...all of them older HDD's, including my primary laptop. I've not had too many failures over the years, considering most of my machines run almost continuously. I've not even considered SSD as an option, since the last time I looked at them their price was a bit rediculous. I suppose the next upgrade I will look that direction.

onebuck · 10-15-2013, 07:29 AM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by enine

<snip>
Its kind of hard to use a laptop as its intended with external enclosures hanging off of it. I do have external enclosures but for backups and unplug and store those in a safe when I'm not making a backup. If your not chaining yourself to a desk where are you could to lay an external enclosure.

I am using a Laptop as intended(portability). Laptop has 3 external USB drives in a simple letter desk carrier (sitting on LapDesk), internal SSD in one bay with a HDD in second bay. Laptop is sitting on a LapDesk and is moved to from a portable desk to my lap. Actively use this Laptop for my personal use, LQ and other client needs. Laptop does not mean a user cannot design the user environment. Personally, I could use a Desktop(sometimes I do) but I prefer sitting in my LazyBoy while working and being comfortable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by enine

How come other enterprise size companies are not replacing hdd's in all their laptops in less than a year, its rare to see one needing replacement other than laptop model specific as I remember one model of HP/Compaq that ran the heat tube right next to the hdd cooking them but that was one known model.

Not everyone responds here at LQ that work in enterprise(s). I have repaired several machines that are abused by their users. Anything from coffee or liquid spills to dropping or banging the Laptop around. Sure, newer Laptop designs do provide services to cover some environmental abuse but things do happen to those. You should see some of the case dings that I have come across. No excuse here!

Laptops are not the only machines that get abuse.

iansargent · 10-15-2013, 07:52 AM

My system has boot/OS and apps on the SSD, but most data are stored on HDD, with only current "working" docs stored on the SSD and replicated to the cloud.

stonebit · 10-15-2013, 07:59 AM

Desktop, laptop, MCPC, all of them have SSD. MCPC has old small one (~60 GB), Desktop and laptop are high performance and about 240 GB. The performance boost is significant given that the HD is always the bottle neck. The only thing with mech drives is my NAS.

TobiSGD · 10-15-2013, 08:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Fletcher

I tried an OCZ Petrol 64 GB. It started to fail a few weeks after I had installed it. It became so unreliable that I reinstalled the OS onto the HDD but I left the SDD in the computer with Linux Mint installed. When I went back to boot from the drive the BIOS did not even recognise it.

I have since pulled it out of the machine and on testing it is completely dead. I am actually looking at it while I write this response.

I would have to be convinced of the reliability of these devices. I like the idea of the STD in principle but it would take me a lot of convincing.

Robert…

If failure shortly after having bought a device would be an indicator for quality I shouldn't use HDDs, videocards and RAM modules, since I had that "luck" with those parts already, but never with a SSD.

lfchisholm · 10-15-2013, 08:04 AM

The primary has a one terabyte drive and I have a ssd one terabyte external hard drive usb 3.0 attached. right now I am using VMPlayer 6.0 to use several Linux OS's.
Larry.

colinetsegers · 10-15-2013, 08:06 AM

If my DESKTOPS have indeed classic hard drives (HDD),
my main Linux LAPTOP runs on an internal 32Gb Compact Flash drive.

jkhdshgbsa231241243 · 10-15-2013, 08:35 AM

I use X amount of pen drives for my boot and OS and multiple hdds for backup/general junk storage. I also have an old hdd drive with a cluttered old unecrypted install of debian lenny (that i havent used in years) which will boot by default.

For my OS......(pen drives)
My OS volume consists of X usb3 drives, each one individually encrypted and then the volumes are raided together in a raid 0 after I've opened them (the idea is that the encrypted data doesn't appear similar on each drive but it's still in raid array for faster I/O) and my boot partition is on an old usb2 drive I've had floating around for years. im fairly confident its not obvious without that ancient usb2 boot drive & near useless without all pen drives together.

It's setup that way because have stuff in place to bypass the gfw as well as other things and i dont like the idea of getting jailed...(theres a dedicated cyber police department in shenzhen, multiple tv adverts to remind you and occassionaly cartoon characters JingJing & Chacha (jingcha = police) scripted to walk across your screen on some local websites.

For my personal data.....(mechanical hdds)
My multiple hdds are also individually encrypted, I don't have their volumes raided together though. I don't bother to backup my OS as I have everything important (to me anyway) symlink'ed to/stored on one of these mechanical drives.

i am happy enough to open any of these mechanical drives if im requested/forced to (for them i just dont want anyone getting my data should one of these drives go 'walkies' theft/loss.)

For the lenny drive.....(mechanical)
The old hdd drive with lenny... just a ruse really. after all its my 'real' os, honest (i have a script on a cron job from my other os to randomly update file access times on this)

It's all bit of a pain in the rear end booting i admit but data security is more important to me than speed or capacity, surprisingly though... my OS volume on all the pendrives has a higher read/write speed than my sata3 data hdds individually. Obviously im still vulnerable to cold boot attacks, keylogger on the boot drive and all the 'usual' stuff once the drives are opened.

my apologies for any grammatical errors, english isn't my first language.

FYI..this account was signed up for with a newly created email address and was (along with that new email address) only intended to be used to post this. this account and that email wont be used again.

签署了这个帐户，用一个新创建的电子邮件地址（以及与新的电子邮件地址）拟用于发布。这个账户，电子邮件不会被再次使用。