** Mark Rogers mark@more-solutions.co.uk [2015-03-04 12:54]:
I'm considering SSD upgrades to my desktop and/or laptop, likely starting with my desktop.
I generally need a decent capacity on my desktop so that will be traditional storage, but I want the boot device to be SSD.
I know almost nothing about SSD so I'd like some advice.
I'm looking at (eg) Crucial MX100 SATA 512GB (~£140), but I could go up to Samsung Evo 850 for an extra £40. (Or maybe 256GB would be enough and I'd benefit more from spending my money upgrading multiple machines?)
What I want to achieve is (a) O/S boots and runs from SSH, so loading apps etc is faster, (b) any swap space is on SSD, (c) and temp space (including browser caches etc) is on SSD, and (d) (it would be nice if) anything else on slower storage could be cached on SSD.[1]
Getting fast storage is great if my hardware can make good use of it. So how do I find out whether my Linux boxen will support transfer rates that make SSD worthwhile? If my motherboard can only give me 3Gbps, is it fair to assume that I will still see major improvements over traditional hard disks even if not the full benefit of the SSD?
What other things should I know? Any tips?
[1] My typical usage seems to be Firefox or Chrome open with 100+ tabs, maybe a couple of VirtualBox VMs open, maybe a few LibreOffice docs open.
** end quote [Mark Rogers]
Have you thought about looking at the hybrid drives? There are some drives now that use SSD technology to provide a cache for the most used data from a standard HD within a single form factor. I've not looked into whether this is done at a driver level (in which case check for Linux support) or within the drive itself. I suspect the latter, but I'm not sure.
http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Storage/cat/Hard-Drive---SSD/subcat/Hybrid-&... http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-internal/satahybrid...