You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
I recently purchased a Thinkpad x40, and I plan to put a dual compact flash adapter in it. Specifically, with one fast 8gb master and one slower 4 or 8gb as the slave (just for safe measures).
My question is pretty simple: which directories should absolutely be on the faster card and which could comfortably sit on the slower? For example, I'd be a fool to have /usr/* on the slower!
I know I am being a bit cautious as on a minimal system, you don't really even need 8gb, but I'd like to at least have this information available if the issue ever comes up.
Thanks,
Ryan
Offline
You would want /usr and /var on the faster device, for sure.
Last edited by Wintervenom (2010-04-08 17:22:17)
Offline
/dev, /proc and /sys should be on the faster one too, right? I mean, they're dynamic and (partly) automatically populated, after all…
Offline
Now, depending on the actual specs of the cards you get this will vary, but a lot of medium/slow compact flash has much faster read speeds than its write speeds, so it might make sense to put directories that are mostly read only on the slower device; /usr is mostly read, while /var and /tmp have way more writes; home also probably will have a lot more writes then /usr. /usr should mostly change only when you're installing/uninstalling/upgrading packages.
On the other hand, you'll still read faster from the "fast" device than the slow device; it's just that the slowness of the "slow" CF card will not be as noticeable on reads as with writes.
Offline
/dev, /proc and /sys should be on the faster one too, right? I mean, they're dynamic and (partly) automatically populated, after all…
/proc is a virtual filesystem and /dev is in tmpfs (ram)
/sys is the same as /proc afaik
/tmp is used for things like compiling and /var has all the various databases and caches so those should be on the faster device for sure
/usr would mostly affect application load time (binaries/libraries/etc.) so I don't think it's a big deal b/c it won't actually do much to performance (/usr is pretty much read only when you aren't doing system maintenance)
I think the big choice you'll have to make is between having /home or /usr on the faster device (since those would be the two biggest dirs)
you could put the browser cache, etc in /tmp if /home is on the slow drive
CONCLUSION:
/ on the fast drive
/var on the fast drive
/tmp on the fast drive
choice between /usr or /home on the fast drive
Last edited by thestinger (2010-04-08 21:41:12)
Offline
Pages: 1