[Colchester] SSDs are cheap but what if you're even cheaper?

[Wayland Sothcott]

Yeah I'm a cheapskate. I bought some SATA III SSDs for £9 each on ebay!
The problem is they are 'only' 60GB. You need to combine with a HDD 
(spinning rust)

Here's how to use them.
1. Install Linux flat with no partitioning onto the SSD (ok yeah it 
makes boot and swap but everything is in /)
2. If building a PC then you move /home onto it and then mount it as /home
3. If building a server then it's the same except you do it with /var

There are tutorials how to do this.

There is a different way to use the SSD to speed up your computer: bcache
This allows you to use a partition or your whole SSD to cache your HDD. 
The problem I found was you must format your HDD partition using the 
bcache file system.
This means it's a total arse if you need to read that hard drive in a 
different computer because your OS has corrupted.

Anyone here interested in Windows may like to know about elitebytes.com 
MaxVeloSSD.
You can stuff a small cheap SSD into an existing Windows machine that 
boots from an HDD and add MaxVeloCache and instantly get SSD boot and 
program loading speeds. I've experimented with this and took a PC that 
reports 70 second boot time and 7 second MS Word loading and getting 17 
second boot time and 1.5 second MS word loading.

The Linux software is free but the Windows version costs £7. However the 
Windows version gives you instant results but the Linux version requires 
a new build.