[NTLUG:Discuss] SSD on Linux Desktop

[Mike Hart]

>   Put /boot and /usr on the SSD, and everything else on a mechanical drive. 


That config would also eliminate 85% of the system speed improvement from SSD, and necessitates keeping the mechanical drive on, eliminating the sound and power improvements that SSD offers. 


noatime and not having a swap on the SSD is a good idea.  If you want to deal with partitions i'd map / (Root) to SSD  then /tmp and /var/log to mechanical, if not to some virtual RAM space. A / to SSD and { /tmp ; /var/log ; } to RAM would be about as fast as you could get and move most repetitive writes off the SSD.  A linux system is perfectly capable of running without swap space these days. 


This config would also make forensics nearly impossible, but the whole idea of SSD is speed. 


If you want to keep the mechanical around as a vault or long-term storage drive, map it to /media/vault/ or /mnt/junk/ partition. However, as easy and cheap as USB SATA or USB IDE converters are now, I'd recommend going that route, and not keeping a mechanical drive powered on all the time. It will make a huge difference in the temperature inside the case and the sound from the box while running.