Solid State Drive (SSD): optimize it for Ubuntu

[WoodPeckr]

A Solid State Drive (SSD) is the best upgrade you can make to your PC. They are FAST!
Put a SSD into my i7 PC to replace a failing HDD and will never go back to a mechanical HDD. New SSDs coming out today are better than ever and prices continue to fall. Got a 128GB SSD for 80 bucks and use it as a boot drive for Ubuntu. A second regular HDD has W7 on it and is partitioned for mass storage.

That said there are things you can do to optimize a SSD so it will perform better and last longer. They do wear out over time and sadly DO NOT PLAY well with Windows! Things Windows does causes extreme wear that will greatly shorten the life of a SSD.
OTOH a SSD is very well suited for Linux.....

Here is an excellent tutorial that explains all this and tells you how to optimize your SSD:

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/ssd

 

[Rockslinger]

Things Windows does causes extreme wear that will greatly shorten the life of a SSD.

Would the extreme wear also affect regular HD's and shorten their life as well?

 

[WoodPeckr]

Would the extreme wear also affect regular HD's and shorten their life as well?

Some but no as much as with a SSD.
Defragging always causes excessive strain on a HDD but will kill a SSD in a short amount of time. Windows users are complaining their SSDs are 'burning out' too fast because of the excessive 'writes' Windows has to do.

 

[Anynym]

Making general statements about "Windows" doing things which cause wear on an SSD are useless and likely ill-informed.

I'm no fan of Windows, but unless you have specific and current facts to cite, you should not make such claims.

Most SSDs today will "load-balance" writes across the device, so that re-writing a part of a file will not re-use the same locations within the SSD, all done with knowledge of how OSs actually use HDDs and SSDs, with the result that SSDs are not likely prone to failure caused by excessive writes to OS files.

 

[wileyc]

Modern SSD's are designed to write to a new memory cell that has never been used before and mark the previously used memory cell as being previously used. This process continues until all the unused cells have eventually been used. This process then repeats again. The Firmware in the SSD is designed to do this so that the memory cells are evenly worn. An SSD should last for years (more reliable) than a standard hard disk.

Note: You should never use any defrag tool on an SSD drive. Only ever use the SSD optimization tool that came from the vendor of the SSD drive.

As for the data on the SSD drives, because of the firmware, it's no longer safe to do a MIL-SPEC wipe of the data (Overwriting all cells with 0's at least 7 times), since you can't guarantee that the memory cells can be completely wiped. It's now a standard practice to shred a defective SSD to prevent the data from possibly being recovered by a third party. The other option is to use full disk encryption to ensure that any recoverable data is still encrypted.

 

[WoodPeckr]

Making general statements about "Windows" doing things which cause wear on an SSD are useless and likely ill-informed.

I'm no fan of Windows, but unless you have specific and current facts to cite, you should not make such claims.

Most SSDs today will "load-balance" writes across the device, so that re-writing a part of a file will not re-use the same locations within the SSD, all done with knowledge of how OSs actually use HDDs and SSDs, with the result that SSDs are not likely prone to failure caused by excessive writes to OS files.

Had you bothered to read the link provided in the OP you would not have made the above ill-informed post you made!....:eyebrows:
Point 15 explained that all nicely but since you missed it here it is for you:

Dual boot? Don't let Windows kill your SSD
15. Do you have a dual boot with Windows? Then don't let Windows kill your SSD by defragmenting it.

Defragmentation will kill your SSD in a very short time, because of the multitude of write actions that it causes.

Within Linux you don't have this problem, because Linux doesn't fragment in the first place and so doesn't need to be defragmented at all.

Further the salesman who sold the SSD to me stated some Windows users were complaining of their SSDs wearing out after only 2 years due to defragging and excessive writes! Further he said Linux users did not have this problem.....

To avoid this issue only Linux was installed on the SSD.
W7 was installed on a conventional mechanical HDD.

 

[onthebottom]

I would agree, SSD on my MacBook Air is blazing fast......

 

[islandman4567]

woody,

if you're not dual booting it , how do you set it up so you select windows, if you want to start windows?

when you boot into ubuntu , you still can use the regular hdd for video, music , etc., is this how you have it set up?

 

[Don]

Switched to SSD about two years ago and never looked back. Great speed gains even with just a SATA2 system. Running Windows 7, bootup is instantaneous.

Defrag is not necessary on SSD so you can just disable it on Windows.

 

[WoodPeckr]

woody,

if you're not dual booting it , how do you set it up so you select windows, if you want to start windows?

when you boot into ubuntu , you still can use the regular hdd for video, music , etc., is this how you have it set up?

I have 2 drives installed.
SSD has Ubuntu.
HDD has W7.
There is no need for a boot loader in this case.
By default Ubuntu is set to boot up.
However when W7 is desired, after hitting the power button or when doing a PC restart, a Dell splash screen comes up saying to hit F12 for boot options. For W7, I select the HDD to boot up and W7 boots.
With this setup Ubuntu has no problems going into the HDD on both the W7 side or the other mass storage partition. For Ubuntu both partitions can be used for storage. However W7 can't go into the Linux side. W7 treats Linux as an 'unknown' partition. I know there are workarounds for this but never had a need for it since W7 is very seldom used anymore.

This is a nice SATA feature. I still have one more SATA port on the motherboard, which would allow another drive to be installed with another OS if I desired. Or another optical drive for that matter.

 

[WoodPeckr]

Ubuntu continues to amaze me

Have to amend my above post# 10.
I now have the usual Linux boot loader Ubuntu uses.

A couple days ago got the usual update notifications and did it without reading what they were giving me. Well Ubuntu must have noted I was no longer using their boot loader and installed it anyways, automatically modifying it for my 2 drive configuration!
Now have the traditional boot loader when booting up.

To tell you the truth I preferred my F12 boot option configuration better, because it booted up directly into Ubuntu, thus avoiding that several second delay where you are given a choice to select either Linux or W7....:eyebrows:

 

[WoodPeckr]

Tech boards and a buddy at work always said regular defrags do number on any HDD but a HDD can hold up to defrags better than a SSD. By default M$ will run a defrag once a week because Windows just runs better after a defrag but M$ doesn't bother telling you of the strain a defrag puts on your HDD. Back when I used Windows more, I did a defrag once a month and all seemed well.
This is another reason Linux is better since no defragging is ever needed.

 

[Anynym]

Had you bothered to read the link provided in the OP you would not have made the above ill-informed post you made!....:eyebrows:

I read the link provided. They don't know what they're talking about.

 

[WoodPeckr]

That team of PC experts in the OP are pretty darned credible.....

Unless you have specific and current facts to cite, you should not make such ill-informed claims.....:eyebrows:

 

[jackflerj]

Another SSD tutorial for linux (mint): http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&p=628177&sid=9cf9bbb81ddcad36ad8722e74db43f2d#p628177

 

[TheDr]

Best way to use an SSD for Windows is to install Windows on a regular HDD but configure your pagefile on the SSD. Gives huge performance gains.

 

[Intrinsic]

Best way to use an SSD for Windows is to install Windows on a regular HDD but configure your pagefile on the SSD. Gives huge performance gains.

How would you go about doing this? I have an SSD installed and I'm considering installing Linux on it for a dual boot.
Thanks.

 

[TheDr]

Install Linux in the standard way to your SSD and allow it to configure dual boot, but when you are partitioning the disk leave an amount of space unpartitioned (1.5 to 2 times the amount of RAM in the system). Then in Windows create a new partition in this free space and give it a drive letter. Configure your pagefile to use this space.