Switch To SSD?

Carlwill · 2010-08-22 00:34:45

Has anyone used new SSD rather than traditional platter drives on Arch Linux? I am building a new i7 Intel system and would like to try something new like SSD. I hear the performance and reliability is good on new solid state drives but honestly don't know if Arch Linux can handle such bleeding edge hardware or if it can take advantage of using the SSD over traditional SATA.

Any comments and or suggestions?

samiam · 2010-08-22 00:48:09

It's not specific to Arch, but Linus seems to like them.

SSDs interface like any other SATA disk, so they should work fine in any system.

Last edited by samiam (2010-08-22 00:48:35)

jasonwryan · 2010-08-22 00:58:11

There are a number of threads covering this. SSDs work fine with Arch (my EeePC has two of them in it)...

ozar · 2010-08-22 01:33:06

All three of my SSDs work fine under Arch, and they are much faster than mechanical hard drives. The only thing that I don't like about them is the price/GB ratio, and the fact that they are still more fragile than mechanical hard drives when it comes to disk writes, although that aspect of them is improving very quickly. I don't do lots of special tweaks just for SSDs, but do a few things that help to limit disk writes.

skodabenz · 2010-08-22 06:40:37

You should also take care of partition alignment issues for Best performance http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux … tor-disks/ .

karol · 2010-08-22 06:57:14

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSD

KimTjik · 2010-08-22 10:10:56

Has anyone here good experience of GPT + GRUB2? Wouldn't that solve most of the obstacles (even though making the install process a bit more complicated at the moment)?

Otherwise a SSD gives more daily use boost than a faster CPU.

graysky · 2010-08-22 10:15:38

@op - I'm running Arch on an Intel X25-M (G2) and it is blazingly fast. Also see the wiki article that karol posted which I started because I wanted a one-stop location for 95 % of the info newbies need to maximize their SSD experience

Noble · 2010-08-22 11:09:14

SSD is a great choice rather than a quicker CPU for day-to-day tasks (except for compiling ofc), I second the choice of an Intel SSD, which at the moment seems like the more reliable choice. I have two of them, a X25-M (G2) for my server/desktop, and a X25-V for my laptop.

Fackamato · 2010-08-22 11:33:17

<- 160GB Intel SSD G2

I "upgraded" from a 60GB Vertex. More IOPS, less write speed. I made the right choice! It's blazing fast, best upgrade I've ever done. Nothing speeds up your whole PC like the HDD > SSD upgrade.

It's a no-brainer (unless you need massive amounts of storage) if you have the money!

skodabenz · 2010-08-22 16:40:18

KimTjik wrote:

Has anyone here good experience of GPT + GRUB2? Wouldn't that solve most of the obstacles (even though making the install process a bit more complicated at the moment)?
Otherwise a SSD gives more daily use boost than a faster CPU.

I am using GRUB2+BIOS+GPT and GRUB2+UEFI+GPT. You can use my script at http://gist.github.com/418438 .

Last edited by skodabenz (2010-08-22 16:40:50)

something · 2010-08-29 13:36:44

Hey I just installed arch on my OCZ Vertex 2,

and was just wanting to check if my performance is in line with what others are getting..

i went about aligning my drive as per the wiki. and hdparm -tT and palimpsest show expected results but simply doing a copy/paste of a 1GB file seems slow. and when checking with 'dd' i only get around 55-60MB/s and it seems to go fast. then slow, then fast, then slow.

[root@block ~]# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   21614 MB in  2.00 seconds = 10821.12 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  596 MB in  3.00 seconds = 198.49 MB/sec

palimpsest results in expected results(although a strange dip in performance at the start.)

min: 205.0MB/s
max: 283.5MB/s
avg: 274.6MB/s
avg-access: 0.1ms

[root@block ~]# dd if=./Morfiy.2008.O.DVDRip_INTERFILM.avi of=./out
2866848+0 records in
2866848+0 records out
1467826176 bytes (1.5 GB) copied, 26.6206 s, 55.1 MB/s

ozar · 2010-08-29 14:47:07

something wrote:

palimpsest results in expected results(although a strange dip in performance at the start.)
min: 205.0MB/s
max: 283.5MB/s
avg: 274.6MB/s
avg-access: 0.1ms

Yeah, that looks really close to one of my Vertex2 disks:

OCZ Vertex2 50GB SSD (tested using Gnome Disk Utility) in AHCI mode:

Min Read Rate: 210.7 MB/s
Max Read Rate: 287.3 MB/s
Avg Read Rate: 284.1 MB/s
Avg Access Time: 0.1 ms

something · 2010-08-29 15:01:27

what about straight copying. i find that just copying files is pretty slow... 'dd' is reporting only 55MB/s

Fackamato · 2010-08-29 15:11:00

something wrote:

what about straight copying. i find that just copying files is pretty slow... 'dd' is reporting only 55MB/s

Use cp, compare speed.

Also, the speed difference is 4k stuff mainly.

Labello · 2010-08-29 15:49:44

oldfashoined hdds are some kind of the last bottleneck in modern computers. so a 30gig ssd for the system and a normal hdd for media and stuff rocks as hell :3. i got 30gb + 1tb for media.

btrfs seems to have some ssd mount option that might apply some certain options to the file-system. but this ssd-mode still seems to be under massive development and is to be improved any time soon. :-)

something · 2010-08-30 01:02:14

ozar wrote:

Yeah, that looks really close to one of my Vertex2 disks:
OCZ Vertex2 50GB SSD (tested using Gnome Disk Utility) in AHCI mode:
Min Read Rate: 210.7 MB/s
Max Read Rate: 287.3 MB/s
Avg Read Rate: 284.1 MB/s
Avg Access Time: 0.1 ms

hello, ozar,

could you please perform a 'dd if=$something of=./$something_2'

and let me know the performance figures.

i just feel kind of let down by the performance of my Vertex2 when it comes to straight copying.
boot is very fast, and everything seems very quick and snappy when compared to my previous conventional hard drive setup. but a simple copy seems to be pretty sluggish.

when copying a that is say 1gb it will start and burst to about 25% of the progress bar saying 3seconds. then it will stop and go slow. and then burst, about another 5-10% then stop then goes again. etc.

all up a straight copy takes around 50seconds.,

when i would assume. it should take about ~5-7 seconds..

a hdparm test shows an aggreeable ~200MB/s aswell as palimpsest getting around 285MB/s max.

this is on a fresh install and aligned as per wiki.

i used 'fdisk -H 32 -S 32'

mounted with 'defaults,noatime,discard'

@labello - yeh i have just the 60GB Vertex2 as local data and everything else over network.

@fackamato - 'cp' gives in line with 'dd'

i understand that the main benefits of SSD's is small writes, seek times etc.
i would expect at least transfers as good as my rotational drives. for a simple copy. but i get less than my WD 1TB and 2TB Greens(when directly connected)

Last edited by something (2010-08-30 01:03:30)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-08-22 00:34:45

Switch To SSD?

#2 2010-08-22 00:48:09

Re: Switch To SSD?

#3 2010-08-22 00:58:11

Re: Switch To SSD?

#4 2010-08-22 01:33:06

Re: Switch To SSD?

#5 2010-08-22 06:40:37

Re: Switch To SSD?

#6 2010-08-22 06:57:14

Re: Switch To SSD?

#7 2010-08-22 10:10:56

Re: Switch To SSD?

#8 2010-08-22 10:15:38

Re: Switch To SSD?

#9 2010-08-22 11:09:14

Re: Switch To SSD?

#10 2010-08-22 11:33:17

Re: Switch To SSD?

#11 2010-08-22 16:40:18

Re: Switch To SSD?

#12 2010-08-29 13:36:44

Re: Switch To SSD?

#13 2010-08-29 14:47:07

Re: Switch To SSD?

#14 2010-08-29 15:01:27

Re: Switch To SSD?

#15 2010-08-29 15:11:00

Re: Switch To SSD?

#16 2010-08-29 15:49:44

Re: Switch To SSD?

#17 2010-08-30 01:02:14

Re: Switch To SSD?

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