Questions Regarding LMDE, SSDs, and the NILFS File System
Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 12:21 am
I've been pondering over support for Solid State Drives in Linux recently. Eventually I'm going to have a system with LMDE running on a SSD, and I feel I have some important questions dealing with it.
I think advice targeted towards the newest Samsung SSDs would be the most useful since from what I've heard they are very reliable and fast. Take for instance this one (which I will likely be purchasing for my setup), although I still want these questions to apply to all SSDs.
1: I've heard that if the partitions aren't aligned at a certain interval (maybe 512k or 1024k?) performance dramatically decreases. Is it true for modern SSDs? Does this apply to setting up a LMDE installation? If so, how would one create this "alignment"?
2: For the Samsung SSD I mentioned in particular, does performance degrade once every part of the drive has been written to at least once? I've heard that writes are slower to parts of an SSD that aren't blank (and thus the need for TRIM support to make the areas of deleted files all zeroes). If so, is there a way to counter it?
3: What about the NILFS file system? Does it actually improve SSD write performance as well as I've heard? Take a look at this (starting at page 8 ). If so, how would one set up LMDE on this file system with an SSD? It seems like this could improve performance with an SSD a lot.
4: Any SSD "tweaking guides" that are very likely to / designed to work with LMDE? I'm not sure how compatible with LMDE the instructions from the results of just a Google search would be.
5: How about working with a system where LMDE is running off an SSD but there is another standard HDD installed? Would the SSD "tweaks" interfere with performance from the HDD?
6: Is a swap space partition on a SSD a bad idea?
I know, it's a lot of questions, but I think answers for at least some of them would be really helpful for anybody (including me! ) who is trying to set up LMDE on a system with a SSD.
I think advice targeted towards the newest Samsung SSDs would be the most useful since from what I've heard they are very reliable and fast. Take for instance this one (which I will likely be purchasing for my setup), although I still want these questions to apply to all SSDs.
1: I've heard that if the partitions aren't aligned at a certain interval (maybe 512k or 1024k?) performance dramatically decreases. Is it true for modern SSDs? Does this apply to setting up a LMDE installation? If so, how would one create this "alignment"?
2: For the Samsung SSD I mentioned in particular, does performance degrade once every part of the drive has been written to at least once? I've heard that writes are slower to parts of an SSD that aren't blank (and thus the need for TRIM support to make the areas of deleted files all zeroes). If so, is there a way to counter it?
3: What about the NILFS file system? Does it actually improve SSD write performance as well as I've heard? Take a look at this (starting at page 8 ). If so, how would one set up LMDE on this file system with an SSD? It seems like this could improve performance with an SSD a lot.
4: Any SSD "tweaking guides" that are very likely to / designed to work with LMDE? I'm not sure how compatible with LMDE the instructions from the results of just a Google search would be.
5: How about working with a system where LMDE is running off an SSD but there is another standard HDD installed? Would the SSD "tweaks" interfere with performance from the HDD?
6: Is a swap space partition on a SSD a bad idea?
I know, it's a lot of questions, but I think answers for at least some of them would be really helpful for anybody (including me! ) who is trying to set up LMDE on a system with a SSD.