Advice about SSD on Arch

Xi0N · 2011-06-24 10:01:11

Im seriously considering to buy a SSD drive for my system.....
I currently have a config like this:

320 Gb SATAII ->> Arch root + windows 7 (for gaming)
2 Tb SATAII ->> /home + Movies
2 Tb SATAII ->> Series and stuff

Im thinking about replacing the 320 one for a single 16Gb SSD just for the system.....

Which are your experiences with this kind of disks?
Are 16Gb enough? (I dont want to spend much money)
Do you recommend me any shop? (That ships worldwide, to spain for being more specific)
When I buy a disk, which things do i have to keep in mind?

Thanks!!!

Mr.Elendig · 2011-06-24 10:05:49

Stay the heck away from cheap ssd's, specially cheap ones without TRIM. Also, if you want to have 7 on the ssd, 7 alone requires 20gb of space.

Personally, my opinion is that any device slower than vertex3/agility3 is just a waste of money. (aka, they are the first one to be really worth the price)

Last edited by Mr.Elendig (2011-06-24 10:06:07)

Xi0N · 2011-06-24 10:07:47

I will not install Windows 7 on the SSD.... i dont game that much.....
The 16 Gb one i saw is kingston....

http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digital- … 070&sr=1-3

karol · 2011-06-24 10:12:41

Xi0N wrote:

I will not install Windows 7 on the SSD.... i dont game that much.....
The 16 Gb one i saw is kingston....
http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digital- … 070&sr=1-3

75MB/sec write speeds is not that much but if you can't spend any more money it will be tough to get something better.

Xi0N · 2011-06-24 10:23:51

karol wrote:

Xi0N wrote:
I will not install Windows 7 on the SSD.... i dont game that much.....
The 16 Gb one i saw is kingston....
http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digital- … 070&sr=1-3
75MB/sec write speeds is not that much but if you can't spend any more money it will be tough to get something better.

Which model do you recommend me?

karol · 2011-06-24 10:41:38

I'm not sure if it's worth to spend $50 on a SSD drive. If you really want to spend the money on computer equipment, maybe buy some more RAM or something.
Small capacity (below, say, 60 GB) SSDs suck.

@Mr.Elendig
Do you happen to have one of them vertex3/agility3 ones?

Teho · 2011-06-24 11:33:43

karol wrote:

Small capacity (below, say, 60 GB) SSDs suck.

Why is that? I can't imagine anything which would increase the old computer performance more than replacing HDD with SSD if you have limited budget. I personally bought 32GB Corsain Nova-series SSD half year ago (60€), the result: 3x faster boot (13s from grub to full blown KDE desktop), near instant application launching and better performance overall. What more can you want from personal computer? My hardware is otherwise total crap so I would assme that the HDD is the biggest bottleneck in "normal computing" in many ways.

Mr.Elendig · 2011-06-24 11:37:02

Teho: read up in wear leveling, trim, reserved blocks etc

karol · 2011-06-24 11:40:07

If you want a faster boot, try e4rat (if your use ext4) or similar software - it doesn't work with SSDs, but people report nice results while still using their good ol' HDDs.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/E4rat

Teho · 2011-06-24 11:57:12

Mr.Elendig wrote:

Teho: read up in wear leveling, trim, reserved blocks etc

Is there are really need for that? Even cheap and small SSDs have TRIM-support (like mine) and it's virtually impossible to run out of write-cycles (or what ever is used for mesuring the endurance of the drive) in less than five-ten years (with modern SSDs that is). One shouldn't keep the drive full in any case (were it SSD or HDD, I personally probably haven't ever even went over 50% in usage with SSD) so that really isn't a problem. I haven't noticed any performance degration either. I bet that there aren't many expecting the SSD you buy for 40-50€ to be "everlasting", in the same way that probably no knowledgeable persons excpect HDDs to last more than 4 years safely. If there really is a problem, what's it precisely? Of course the more expensive and bigger drivers are better but is it worth it to pay more for something you probably never benefirt from, added performance isn't exactly useful if the bottleneck is somewhere else.

Mr.Elendig · 2011-06-24 12:03:07

More about the horrible performance drop you get when it starts to get full, even with trim, and bad space efficiency of small devices.

Teho · 2011-06-24 12:28:50

Mr.Elendig wrote:

bad space efficiency of small devices.

It doesn't matter if you don't need the space. PC SSDs are standard size 2,5" and because of the lack of the moving parts I guess one could tape it to the wall of the computer case, so it really doesn't require much (we are replacing an 3,5" HDD with 2,5" SSD) and more gigabytes doesn't really make a difference if you don't use them. If we the talk about the _openers_ situation, I don't see any problem for him to get an 16GB SSD. It's almost hard to get Arch installation to take more than 4GB of space and then one can excpect the temporary files to take another 4GBs. Even if there's some huge performance drop when it gets full, it doesn't matter if you keep your drive clean (if one assumes that 16GB will be engough, he probably isn't planning to install anything big on it anyway). 60GB+ SSDs are expensive (good ones even more so), so if the opener doesn't want to spend alot of money but is interested in performance boost of an SSD, 16-32GB SSD with TRIM support should be "perfect".

lilsirecho · 2011-06-24 16:31:46

Perhaps you will be satisfied with a 16GB a data CF card with UDMA capability.

This card can be connected with an adapter from sataII port and provide at least 45MB/sec read speed in hdparm and the boot time is about 13 secs.

It is an improvement probably not as fast as an ssd(assuming they have raid-type of architecture).

I have two systems with CF cards one is CTKArchLive and the other is Archlinux both with 16GB CF ...

CTK is read-only for the system with rw provided for persistent addons.

Brcher · 2011-06-24 16:58:17

I've had good luck with a ~40Gb intel ssd. Used it as the only drive on my netbook.

The boot is really fast (especially with the recent module blacklisting changes) and I think it helps with battery life (never tried out the spinny drive).

Only cost ~$100. I don't know if I'd go much cheaper. Apparently they've solved the issues that were making them go bad after a few weeks, but with the cheap offbrand guys, who knows?

Last edited by Brcher (2011-06-24 16:58:53)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-24 10:01:11

Advice about SSD on Arch

#2 2011-06-24 10:05:49

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#3 2011-06-24 10:07:47

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#4 2011-06-24 10:12:41

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#5 2011-06-24 10:23:51

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#6 2011-06-24 10:41:38

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#7 2011-06-24 11:33:43

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#8 2011-06-24 11:37:02

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#9 2011-06-24 11:40:07

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#10 2011-06-24 11:57:12

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#11 2011-06-24 12:03:07

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#12 2011-06-24 12:28:50

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#13 2011-06-24 16:31:46

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

#14 2011-06-24 16:58:17

Re: Advice about SSD on Arch

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