recommendations for SSD drive as first disk for fedora 18?

[Bill Davidsen]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>
>    after a while living with ubuntu, i'm moving back to fedora as of
> F18, and would like some advice.  i have an ASUS G74S with twin 750G
> drives, but i want to replace the boot drive with an SSD, and install
> F18 in such a way as to maximize the benefit of the SSD for booting
> and (mostly) R/O storage.
>
>    a lot of my time will be spent doing lengthy compiles (kernel,
> openembedded), so in addition to system content on the SSD, i'll want
> to keep all of my source there as well, while the build directories
> will be on the regular drive.
>
>    is there a recommendation for installing F18 in terms of separating
> what's appropriate for the SSD versus what isn't?  most of that is
> fairly obvious, just wondering if anyone wrote up something about
> their experience doing just that and how well it worked for them.
> thanks.
>
First, read the multiple threads regarding the fc18 installer. Go look at the 
links in the messages. After you have a handle on the new installer, go for it.

If you are doing builds, you presumably do multi-threaded make operation, so the 
source files on SSD will buy you little. If you have room, fine, but putting the 
object files, temp space, swap[1] space, any libraries you use, on SSD will buy 
you more. I put a small swap on SSD high priority so it gets used first. Swap 
usage is pretty light if you have memory suited to your task, so it need not be 
huge. If you intend to hibernate leave room for the compressed RAM image there, 
it makes boot a lot faster.

Definitely put root on SSD, that's a gain. I've played with putting the journal 
of filesystem on SSD for my disk based filesystems. Too early to say how well I 
like it or how good it is. I did do crash testing to be sure it work, reading a 
journal from SSD is *fast*.

One issue with the new installer is that it's difficult to pre-create the 
filesystems and then use them, playing with filesystem directory hash, stripe 
and stride extended options to change write behavior, all hard with the new 
install. Frankly, unless you are doing guru level tuning, don't worry about it.

Enjoy your SSD!

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot