On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 6:32 PM, André Prata <bugflux@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 10:52 PM, Gaetan Bisson <bisson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > >wrote: > > > [2012-10-29 21:58:01 -0500] Juan Diego Tascón: > > > I just got a new laptop with a 25Gb ssd and I was wondering which would > > be > > > best if putting my home directory (minus music and videos) there or and > > > arch install (minus pacman pkg cache). I read the ssd related article > in > > > the wiki and even though it mentions some optimizations and > > considerations > > > it doesn't mention anything regarding this issue. > > > > With a high-quality SSD you do not really need to do anything. > > > > With a generic SSD, you should reduce the number of writes or spread > > them out evenly on all sectors. The latter can be achieved by using file > > systems such as nilfs2. The former can be achieved by disabling system > > logging or making /var/log a tmpfs, and more generally by controlling > > write-hogs (think of XDG_CACHE_HOME, ~/.mozilla, etc.). > > > > But of course I cannot tell you as much as all the information many > > people have put on the Internet over time on that topic. > > > > -- > > Gaetan > > > > I think the question is not as how to prolong the life of the disk, but > rather how to take advantage of such a small space with high throughput. > > Well, I guess that it's really hard to tell if you would benefit more from > having your system or your user files in the SSD, if there is no space for > both. In case of lodging the system there, you would benefit from faster > boot times, and some program calls. However, if you have a large memory > system, it will account less and less towards greater uptimes. If that is > the case, your personal files would be a better fit. > > One third option, although I'm not sure of the reliability or of the raw > efficiency increase, would be to use the 25GB as a cache for everything > else, with gimmicks such as flashcache [1] or bcache [2]. > > Or just google something like "SSD as a cache". > > [1] https://github.com/facebook/flashcache > [2] http://lwn.net/Articles/458417/ > > > André Prata > http://about.me/andreprata Yes my question was more oriented towards the kind of answer you just gave me. To conclude I think I'll relocate my home directory to the ssd. One more question regarding the first answer: how can I tell if my ssd is high quality? are there any tests? or maybe a references-features list? or maybe some utility to fetch ssd info? Thanks to both of you
