I accidentally destroyed my OS again so i need to do another re-install. I recently started splitting my directories into different partitions with my laptop and I figured this would be nice as both just something handy and to have a safety net in place for next time.
I decided while I was at it, I might go ahead and use some of my Christmas money to but a new SSD drive in. And onto it, I would put /, /boot, the swap, and maybe the /usr and /home directory.
I'm also planing on using a flash drive for most of my home files for now on, other than a few configuration files.
Does anyone know of any complications or problems that could result from this? Is partitioning an SSD any different from a HD?
I'm already planning on getting a UPS to protect my computer anyway so power surges shouldn't be a problem.
Also, does anyone know what the effects of a manual shutdown could be for an SSD?

Bad idea...flash drives aren't designed for lots of IO...they corrupt pretty quickly under heavy use, so if you're going to be reading/writing files to a flash drive alot, it will likely start to go bad fairly soon.

The partitioning scheme you mention would be good, but I'd suggest putting the /home on its own partition, and putting the / and swap into their own as well. The / partition contains the /usr, so there's no need to build a separate partition for it. Having /home separately means that you can format the / partition to replace the OS later, without having to move around your home directory/files.
Nope...they look like standard hard drives to the system.
No more or less than that for a standard hard drive, as far as I can tell. You can still have journaling issues, and may need to fsck a partition when you come up, but that's no shock.

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Might I also advise that you read the page below (carefully):

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

I am still looking through it myself as am in the same position of having a new system where an SSD is the only drive option
and hence TB0ne's advice about killing it with lots of read/writes is important.

The good news is that it can of course be done. You just need to make sure a few things are in place.

Thanks for the responses. I wasn't aware that SSD drives had a limited number of writes so I'll probably just stick to HD (it's really decent anyways).

Well, the SSD's DO have a limited number of cycles...but it's up there, and probably in the ballpark of a standard hard drive. Your MTBF will probably be a few years at least....which is about how often you'd upgrade anyway, most likely. And, if you have backups (which you should have, no matter WHAT kind of storage you're using), what's the difference?

And the cycle limit I was warning about was on the flash/USB/thumbdrive type memory. THAT will wear out very quickly, and really shouldn't be used as a reliable method of keeping your files around. Occasional back-ups...sure. Daily use as your documents folder? I wouldn't....

I know, but the link grail sent did warn about that and I did some of my own research as well. In the end, I decided it would be a bit too much of a pain and I'll probably just stick with my HD because it's simpler, more permanent, and presently in my possession.

Also, I tend to use HDs even after I upgrade, like my old HD from my last machine is currently an external which I mostly use for storing backups.

That's your call. However, most drives state they have at least 2 million hours MTBF. Even at a quarter of that (500,000 hours), that's still YEARS of use.

And Wikipedia has a good entry too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive
Nothing stopping you from doing that with an SSD...grab a USB enclosure, and you're ready to go.

The speed is well worth the $$$, in my opinion. I go from clicking the power switch to fully on at the login prompt in about 5-8 seconds. I can't recover from hibernate to disk that quickly with my old drive. And the database speed boost is amazing too.