# help with SSD for Gentoo/Win7 dual boot...

## adramalech707

Okay so I have been looking into SSDs for my new m11x r3 laptop and for my desktop.  Pretty much what I want to do is just convert my raid 0 on my desktop to just regular drives that have all my videos etc. on them.  Then just have an SSD dual boot with windows 7 and gentoo.  On the laptop I am going to use the native HDD for storage and then throw it into an external enclosure with usb 3.0.  The SSD on my laptop will be gentoo and windows 7.

Now I was wondering first off which SSD to get?  I need something around 100 - 180GB.  SATA 2 is okay SATA 3 is overkill since I don't have any SATA3 support.  Price range $200 - $300 for laptop and then desktop can deal with a 60 - 80 gb one around $100 - $150.

Also, how is the best way to go about dealing with compiling and storing all of the portage stuff??   It would seem to me that if I go in and clean out all the old distfiles that over time the SSD would die faster?  One other question is it possible to align the SSD in fstab and then also have windows do its own trim support without any conflicts??? 

Last thing, does anybody have any experience with getting the full functionality of the Alienware software under linux for like changing out the led colors etc.?

The SSDs I was looking at was the Vertex 3, only because of the hopeful saturation at the high-end of my price range $300; the Corsair F120, which I have heard is horrible with stability; the Patriot Inferno, with bad burst speed to the others in its price range; the Intel 510 or 320 because of stability and optimization support however heard the trim support for Intel sucks compared to OCZ's.  The Mushkin select Callisto Deluxe seems to be good but haven't really had an experience with them...  Last but not least the Crucial C300 because of the price drop is a good bang for the buck..

As you can see I have done I think a little too much research and am now doubting which would be the best for rock solid stability, and best performance for the buck.  It just seems that I will be having to compromise which ever way I go with either having buggy/capped firmware, or lifespan of the SSD being shorter than expected because of unreliable hardware.

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## whiteghost

the ocz vertex 3 is sata III, very expensive. there is a review of it at anandtech. review says 240 GB will be faster 

because there are more chips to write to.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4256/the-ocz-vertex-3-review-120gb

i have an agility II 60 gb and from anandtech i just learned the difference between vertex and agility

is vertex will have the same type chip while agility uses whatever supply is cheapest at the moment.

my setup: fstab - sda is ssd.

/dev/sda1		/boot		ext2		noauto,noatime	1 2

/dev/sda2		/		ext4		noatime,discard		0 1

/dev/sda3		/home		ext4		noatime,discard		0 0

/dev/sdb3		/distfiles	xfs		noatime 	0 0 

/dev/sdd3               /mnt/store      xfs             noatime         0 0

/dev/sdd4               /mnt/store1     xfs             noatime         0 0

none                    /dev/shm        tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec 0 0

none                    /tmp            tmpfs           nodev                0 0

none            /var/tmp/portage        tmpfs           nodev           0 0 (this can use half of your memory. when compiling. if yo have 4 gb you are ok for

everything except openoffice)

like you my video is on  /mnt/store, a spinny drive

distfiles is on spinny drive. just tell make.conf where it is. [DISTDIR="/distfiles"]

 i did have portage on a spinny drive, i moved it back on ssd, anantech says ssd's are not that fragile  :Wink: 

i use funtoo so i think there are less writes to portage because of 'portage-mini' feature.

and when configuring kernel i use i/o scheduler = noop 

i would go with vertex II or crucial

only go for sata III if your hardware has controllers for it. 

i set up my partitions with gparted, align to MiB not MB. well...

with dual boot windows was so finicky to install. probably best to let windows install dvd make partitions and install first. then install gentoo.

i thought i would get a vertex 3 but was shocked at the price. if i were to update today it would be a revodrive x2 pci, express, about the same price and faster.

i really have no need for that speed

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## adramalech707

Thanks for the Help really appreciate that.  I do have 8gb of ram in my laptop and I am getting another dual channel 2x2gb kit for my desktop.

Now would it be bad to have /distfiles on the ssd?  Since, I won't want to cart around an external hdd for that, because the m11x r3 only has room for one 2.5"

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## whiteghost

 *adramalech707 wrote:*   

> Thanks for the Help really appreciate that.  I do have 8gb of ram in my laptop and I am getting another dual channel 2x2gb kit for my desktop.
> 
> Now would it be bad to have /distfiles on the ssd?  Since, I won't want to cart around an external hdd for that, because the m11x r3 only has room for one 2.5"

 

no, its fine

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## adramalech707

So I stumbled upon the Gentoo SSD wiki page.  I am glad I got 8GB of DDR3 RAM because I will have a good partition size of RAM for /tmpfs.

I was wondering if SSD and Gentoo would be even worth it.   The wiki page did have alot of stuff like non essential stuff should be on a HDD along with making a symlink of rapidly changing files.  However, doesn't this just totally get rid of most of the benefit of actually getting an SSD??  (This is for my laptop.)

I was also wondering about my desktop which I run a Raid 0 caviar black 500GB drives.  I was thinking about getting a SSD for it but I still don't know a great configuration of HDDs and incorporate a SSD to make a good setup.  I could get Raid 1+0 setup and then don't have to worry about losing data but then I have to have either a raid controller for it, or not have my Gentoo partition any access to it at all, since I would be still needing to have Win7 support which throws software raid out the window.

Right now I am looking at investing into:  One Intel 510 128GB SSD for m11x, using External Enclosure to have storage and non-essential directories of Linux.  Two more HDD for desktop and then reconfiguring the old Raid 0 into Raid 1+0 with Win7.  I then maybe could have an SSD solely running Gentoo but I would need another HDD to offset the crap ton of writing needed into maintaining the install.

Does anybody have any experience with what I am trying to do?  And, does someone have any insight on dual booting on a SSD?

**EDIT:**

One of my friends told me that a good idea is to just not run Gentoo on a SSD and run Arch or something binary rolling-release.  However I find Gentoo > Arch so that becomes easy to decide that Gentoo to me is better overall.  I just think maybe wait a couple more years until SSD customers can ignore read/write amounts.

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## pigeon768

 *adramalech707 wrote:*   

> I just think maybe wait a couple more years until SSD customers can ignore read/write amounts.

  All the crap about write amounts is just that: crap. The reality is that an SSD with decent firmware will last for years, even if you write random data to the disk 24/7. You can freely ignore write limits on a drive. (there are no theoretical read limits)

Three years ago, I bought my first SSD. I paid ~$800 for a 60GB drive, and it was a bargain at the time. It was before TRIM was even imagined. I formatted it with one partition for boot, one partition for swap, and one partition for /, and beat the hell out of it. I stuck reiserfs on it, decided to live on the wild side and put reiser4 on it, it got corrupted, I threw ext3 on it, updated to ext4, now I have btrfs on it. It's still a great drive. Still fast, still works, and I never really thought about 'oh noes I have to preserve write cycles'. /tmp is on the SSD, /var/log is on the SSD, /var/tmp/portage is on the SSD, /usr/portage is on the SSD. Never bothered with journal-less filesystems besides ext2 for /boot.

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