An SSD has the best performance return per dollar than most any other investment you can make (for a typical workload). It's actually rather unlikely you'll get a bad one if you stick to relatively known brands. ADATA has some cheap options that, while pretty low on the totem poll, will give you a decent amount of storage and speed. If you don't mind spending more you can look at Crucial, PNY, Intel, etc. But keep in mind you'll receive diminishing returns w.r.t. higher read and write speeds - you actually get most of the speed increase due to an SSD's better random read response, which can be had with even the cheapest ones.
Any disk you pick will be compatible with your motherboard, though if it is older you may not reach the SSD's peak throughput. I use a 256gb SSD drive with two 1TB platter drives. It will hold your OS, swap, and some media. I use LVM. Wear levelling will work properly even if you partition the whole disk On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 1:14 PM, <cov...@ccs.covici.com> wrote: > Joseph <syscon...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > The Crucial 512GB SSD is not that expensive and I found some notes on > partitioning SSD on Gentoo: > > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SSD > > > > It seems to me I'll only have boot, swap and root partition; home I > think will be mounted on root partition. > > > > -- > > Joseph > > > > > > On 08/29/14 07:49, Daniel Frey wrote: > > >On 08/28/2014 09:54 PM, Joseph 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? > > > > > >I have several SSDs. I currently use Kingston, Crucial, and Intel. > > > > > >A bit of background - I use a mythtv setup with multiple frontends. I > > >had a SSD in the backend but it failed after about two years with no > > >warning -- one day I noticed the frontends behaving strangely and found > > >out I couldn't log into the backend (via ssh or directly.) The server > > >sustained a lot of writes to the database daily, however, the actual > > >recordings were on rust disks. > > > > > >It was a Kingston that failed, a 32GB model. > > > > > >The Crucial and Intel I have are still relatively new, the Crucial being > > >a year and a bit old, and the Intel only a few days old. :-) > > > > > >Speedwise, there's no comparison. Especially running emerge/compiling - > > >my frontend (equipped with an E8400 and 2GB RAM) with the Kingston SSD > > >beats my main workstation equipped with a rust raid10 (a QX9650 with 8 > > >GB RAM) every time. > > > > > >I have two recommendations for a new SSD user - 1) Flash the firmware to > > >a new version right away if available, and 2) Don't partition the entire > > >SSD if you can avoid it. Apparently SSDs will use unused space for wear > > >leveling - as an example I believe I only partitioned 20GB (out of a > > >64GB SSD) on my frontends. That's a bit excessive and you may not be > > >able to do that, but you get the idea. > > > > > >Also make sure to use parted to partition so the partitions themselves > > >are aligned properly. > > > > > >(Regarding the firmware update - my Crucial had one and I ignored it. > > >About 3 months later my laptop was acting weird and complaining about > > >the disk. I was lucky - I flashed the firmware and it was fine with no > > >data loss. Others are not so lucky...) > How is the partitioning advise effected by lvm? I use that all the > time and just do a normal boot partition and the rest given over to > lvm. But this may be not good with an ssd. > > > > -- > Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: > How do > you spend it? > > John Covici > cov...@ccs.covici.com > >
