Re: [gentoo-user] SSD recmmendation / input

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 12:54 AM, Joseph <syscon780@gmail.com> wrote:
> No, I wouldn't get 1TB SSD too expensive but something like 300GB I might
> consider it.
> Are they worth the investment? What brand do you have and how long?
>

SSDs improve performance significantly, but as you point out they are
quite expensive.  If you use one you should consider using a
filesystem optimized for flash.

If you're talking about a laptop then your options are going to be
limited, since they're typically not overflowing with drive bays.

However, for a desktop/server I would recommend a small SSD for the OS
and selected other files, and spinning disks for general storage.  I
have a 64GB SSD which is fairly inexpensive and use it for my root,
but home and selected directories out of var are on spinning disk.
So, I can have 7TB of disk space and keep the cost reasonably low, and
get almost the same benefit out of having the most-frequently-accessed
files on SSD.  I use RAID for the spinning disks, and do daily backups
of the SSD - little of importance on the SSD changes all that often
anyway and since it is only 64GB a restore will go quickly.

I actually mount my browser cache, /var/tmp, and /usr/portage on
tmpfs.  Distfiles and pkgdir are on the spinning disks.

If the /usr move ever becomes an option on Gentoo then it would get
even simpler - stick /usr on the SSD.

Rich