SSD For Dell Mini 1012

[xenopeek]

I would like to know if anyone can recommend a brand & gb size ssd for a Dell Mini 1012 ...currently it is a 1.6 processor ..2gb ram & 250 hdd ,have Mint 13 XFCE & it works well with no problems. Would like to replace the hdd with a ssd to help with speed & hopefully run a little cooler....now I've read where if you bring down the voltage that might help with the heat ....it's not cutting off & movies ,web surfing ,ect. runs fine .have booted other distro's from usb flash drives & for the most part this version of mint does as good as any of them ...still a knoob ....but got rid of windows 7 starter first thing ...not bashing ...but don't miss having to mess with defragging & antvirus updates & so on.I would like to keep the cost for a ssd between $100.00-$150.00 ...do realise some come with a five year & three year warrenty & this can affect the price ,& are you better off getting all the drivers ,ect. installed on a new ssd & start from scratch or transfer everything over off the other hdd....don't have any documents,photos ,ect. to worry about losing or replacing if something would go wrong .

Thank You

[xenopeek]

As this isn't about Linux Mint so much as it is about hardware, moving it here. You may get more advice asking such questions on hardware fora, such as AnandTech or Hardware.Info.

[AlbertP]

I am using a Samsung SSD 830 Series 64GB in my main machine. That works quite well and is certainly large enough for a Mint system without much data on it. I'm actually even dual-booting Mint 13 and 14 on one SSD.

If you have bought an SSD, I'd suggest doing a clean installation on it, if you use the Btrfs filesystem instead of ext4 then it's automatically enabling TRIM and such. Also, I'd create no swap partition unless you really need one. You can simply create one Btrfs partition on the SSD with GParted, then choose "something else" in the installer: double-click your partition, set / as mount point and bootloader on /dev/sda (your SSD's name should appear here).

Alternatively you can use this how-to for setting up Mint on SSD: viewtopic.php?f=90&t=79503#p461796

[penzoiders]

I'm going to install Mint with Btrfs on my DELL Latitude.
I've powered it with a SanDisk Extreme 480 Gb, and to get the most out of it I used Btrfs.. here a tutorial I wrote in order to install on btrfs having separate subvolumes for home and root:

http://penzoditutto.blogspot.it/2013/02 ... ebian.html

there're a few tricks to copy your system with rsync you can use.
hope it helps.

[AlbertP]

Of course it's possible to create subvolumes, but on SSDs they will not improve performance much (unlike harddisks where it's certainly worth having /home and / separated). If you're new to Linux then it's fine to install the whole system on one Btrfs partition which can be directly done from the Mint installer.

[penzoiders]

if you use the Btrfs filesystem instead of ext4 then it's automatically enabling TRIM and such

that's not true, you've to set a mount option in /etc/fstab

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discard

if you want better performance you can force zlib compression that's really cool.

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compress-force=zlib

An example of fstab line to enable compression and TRIM:

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/dev/sda1    /    btrfs    defaults,discard,compress-force=zlib    0    0

[penzoiders]

Of course it's possible to create subvolumes, but on SSDs they will not improve performance much (unlike harddisks where it's certainly worth having /home and / separated). If you're new to Linux then it's fine to install the whole system on one Btrfs partition which can be directly done from the Mint installer.

it's because you may want to snapshot root more frequently than home and manage snapshots separately, is not for performance.

for performance see my previous post.

bye

[AlbertP]

that's not true, you've to set a mount option in /etc/fstab

That's necessary for ext4 but Btrfs detects SSDs automatically.

[penzoiders]

Please check this:

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Mount_options

Ssd is automatically detected but.... Read last sentence.

"...
ssd
Turn on some of the SSD optimized behaviour within btrfs. This is enabled automatically by checking /sys/block/sdX/queue/rotational to be zero. This does not enable discard/TRIM!
... "

[AlbertP]

OK, probably you are right. I was under the impression that not only "SSD mode" optimizations but also TRIM was enabled automatically. (The text you quote, however, doesn't say this literally. It's about the ssd mount option, not about the default behaviour - the ssd mount option just has no influence on TRIM).