[SOLVED] SSD + HDD: an OPTIMAL partitioning scheme
Linux - HardwareThis forum is for Hardware issues.
Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
The principle is that the SSD has very fast read rates, but slower and limited writes.
So, on the SSD you put things that are unlikely to change often, but are used or read often. On the HDD you put things that you write very often.
Personally I would put all of /home on the HDD, but it may work like you are gonna do as long as you don't put things on the SSD that are written to a lot.
excerpt from Crucial m4 SSD review;
Crucial announced their next generation SSDs at Storage Visions in January of this year. The enthusiast class Crucial m4 SSD offers capacities up to 512GB, a speedy SATA 6Gb/s interface, home-grown 25nm Micron NAND and an exclusive Marvell 9174-BLD2 processor. The combination nets 415MB/s read speeds and 260MB/s writes with support for up to 72TBW.
Read the rest of the review for benchmarks. Not a bad SSD for the price. As to the limited writes:
Quote:
Warranty
Crucial stands behind the 256GB m4 with an industry-standard three year warranty. They also claim that the m4 is good for a total of 72TB of total data written to the drive over its lifespan. This translates out to roughly 40GB of data written to the drive per day over the expected 5-year lifespan.
I think that the "260MB/s writes with support for up to 72TBW' is damn good!
As a SSD user the Crucial m4 SSD unit fits for any of my demands. I would not worry about what 'H' says about 'The principle is that the SSD has very fast read rates, but slower and limited writes.' Sorry 'H' but 5 yrs for 72TBW is a long time for that many writes. Your likely to upgrade or replace long before the drive would show signs of failure. That is as long as your Motherboard and kernel supports the SSD SATAIII properly. SSD drive technology is evolving and will soon replace the mechanical drives as the base drive. Patriot, Crucial, OCZ and Intel are just a few manufactures that are leading technological changes.
Micron Tech has acquired Crucial and is developing new designs for the controller & drive technology. Micron now has this;
Quote:
Crucial recently launched the RealSSD C300; their highest performing SSD. Available in capacities up to 256GB, this SSD is highlighted by the latest SATA 6.0Gbps interface yielding advertised read speeds of up to 355MB/s and writes of 215MB/s, which Crucial calls the, "fastest SSD read and write speeds available to end consumers." With so many high performing drives on the market, including the newest SandForce-equipped models and the tried-and-true Intel X25-M, should buyers pay attention to this new model?
RealSSD has MTBF 1.2 Million Hours.
Look at the benchmarks from Crucial m4 SSD and make your decision. Good bang for the buck!
Thanks again for the link to the phoronix benchmarks. They clearly suggest that JFS would be a great choice for my SSD.
However, only EXT4 supports TRIM.
So, my dilemma would be:
Use JFS and do without TRIM, hoping that it is not relevant for my particular setting.
Use EXT4 in order to have TRIM, hoping that it is relevant enough to justify a somewhat lower performance than JFS in other aspects.
I have 80G SSD and 320G HDD. The first one is split between swap, / and an extra / for upgrades, other OS installs, etc. I strongly recommend to keep at least 10G in reserve for a new install. All my /home is on HDD (and only it). SSD partitions are mounted with 'noatime' and 'discard' options.
You may also move /tmp to ram if you have a lot of that ;-)
Loading some large data would be potentially faster using /home at ssd, but I need it no more than about 1-2 times a day. So this setup perfectly suits my needs.
Thanks for all the help and tips.
Currently usinf jfs for the ssd and ext4 for the hd. Performance (my perception only) is good.
I'm marking this thread solved.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.