Introduction
I have purchased an Intel 730 Series 480GB SSD with the intention of using it in my Fedora desktop machine. There are many articles online that discus how to configure an SSD, what to put on it, which partition structure to use, which mount options etc. I wanted to set the drive up to get the best out of it and my system as a whole. What follows are the results of my research and the decisions I have made based upon it. The writing style is based on my own note taking and primarily for my own reference. It is my hope that it posting it here that it may be of use to others.
What do I put on my SSD?
There are many posts/articles online asking this question and the answers to them vary. What became apparent immediately was the age of some of the discussions. Information from 3-4 years ago based the decisions on drive size (32-128GB).
An SSD with a limited amount of capacity is often set-up along side a traditional HDD.
A typical partition layout for a smaller SSD & HDD:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | SSD: /boot / HDD: swap /var /tmp /home /data |
/boot & / are the main operating system and program partitions/directory structure. SSD's are sometimes referred to as 'boot drives' as by having the OS and applications on it would allow the system to boot and respond faster.
Swap wouldn't be placed on the SSD as if you were frequently using the swap space you would be putting additional wear onto the SSD.
/var contains log files from the syslog daemon. Frequently wrting small amounts of log data increases SSD wear. /tmp in much the same way has small temporary data that increases wear. /home is occasionaly placed on the SSD depending on the space required by the user. The HDD would be used for music, photos, large files and other user generated data.
SSD's have been increasing in size over time and the space limitation isn't such an important factor. What does remain in the considerations of the amount of data being written to an SSD.
Continue reading "The Big SSD Research Post"