24GB SSD [FINISHED]

[yerc]

I have set out to turn the 32Gb msata drive of my Dell Inspiron 15z 5523 (now on Linux Mint 20.1 XFCE exclusively) into a cache storage using Open CAS Linux. Having just installed the software, I'm reading up on how to configure it.

**Update 14 Feb 2021 - The configuration guide says "You cannot accelerate the partition where the operating system resides". With no motivation to re-partition the single hard drive of this laptop, I'll drop the idea for now.

[Spiderspoon]

OK, I have just upgraded to Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.2. This 24 GB drive doesn't always load. Like today I restarted the computer and it wasn't there, in Disks, GParted or lsblk. I left it alone?, went away and did something else and when I returned, it was there. It has 2 partitions, which are detailed earlier in this conversation. If I formatted it, would it be more likely to load every time?

Is a 24GB SSD suitable for a swap partition? I don't think it's big enough for the OS and it's not useful for data. Or I could just leave it there and not use it. If I made it a swap partition, would it be more likely to load reliably. Or if it doesn't always load, would it be safer to ignore it?

[Petermint]

Instead of swap, which is rarely used when you have a good chunk of memory, you could direct the tmp directory there.

The drive is mSATA and you can get mSATA up to 1 TB. You might find a 128 GB mSATA left over when someone upgrades their laptop. The regular mSATA is twice as long, about 50 mm instead of 26 mm. Is there enough space in your machine for a full length card? If not, you are unlikely to find a cheap second hand mSATA SSD.

The half length is available up to 512 GB and there are 128 GB devices dirt cheap but with unknown performance.

With 128 GB, you can put your system and home drive on the fast SSD and direct directories like Documents, Downloads, Videos, and Photos to the spinning rust. The machine would be so fast, everything would finish before you start.

[Grayfox]

This thing is too old to have Intel Optane I think.

Is a 24GB SSD suitable for a swap partition? I don't think it's big enough for the OS and it's not useful for data. Or I could just leave it there and not use it. If I made it a swap partition, would it be more likely to load reliably. Or if it doesn't always load, would it be safer to ignore it?

You should not use an SSD for things like swapfiles as the constant writes will kill the SSD faster.

I'm wondering if the 24GB's is actually a seperate drive, or the SSD chip on a SSHD hybrid drive?

SSHD's NAND chip is not visible to the OS, it is controlled by firmware on the drive itself.
Think of it as a giant cache
Instead of having a HDD with 128MB of cache, it has 24GB and its used for most commonly accessed files as well as write caching.

Edit: Derp didn't see when you posted.

[Spiderspoon]

The drive I have is as the image on page 2 of this thread.
GParted doesn't like it. It throws up errors. See my post 03 Nov 2020. It sometimes shows up on Disks.

Instead of swap, which is rarely used when you have a good chunk of memory, you could direct the tmp directory there.

Would that be a good use of this drive? And how would I do it?

[Grayfox]

Without seeing if their is a 24GB SSD physically installed, I would assume for some reason the the primary drive is showing something it really shouldn't

Be it the NAND from the SSHD or SLC/MLC NAND of the SSD.

[Aztaroth]

Hello,
I have the same kind of Asus laptop with a 24 Gb SSD and a 1 TB HDD. Not intended to be a model, I'm sharing how I use it.
- For 2 years, I installed LMDE4 (but no reason it shouldn't work for other flavors) with / on the 24 Gb disk and /home on the HDD. Worked fine but you need to control things : obviously, Timeshift can't use default settings and store on that disk and you can't use a lot of flatpaks or AppImages. But for a working station, it was fine and the boot was far quicker than a standard install on the HDD (20s vs 40s average).
- Recently bought a 520Gb SSD. Installed my system on it of course and am now using the 24Gb as swap/hibernate disk (Ram is 16 Gb). Works even better, because /home is also on the SSD. Use the 1 Tb to store archives.

[Spiderspoon]

Thanks for that. But now I can't access the drive, as formatting it failed. lsblk can see it most of the time, but not always. Maybe it's faulty, as it never really worked well under Windows 8. I can't figure out how to format it in terminal. fdisk doesn't see the drive.
If someone can advise me on that, I'm up for giving it a go.
Apart from that, I can just ignore it and leave it alone. The computer loads slowly, but that's just a matter of waiting a bit longer.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

... and I would specify grub to that drive as well.

+1 on that piece of advice. It's important to pay attention during the install when working with multiple disks. A lot of people come unstuck here by not watching and reading the available options.

Whenever possible, I always removed all storage before installing an OS. That reduces the chance of something winding up on the wrong drive.