[SWLUG] SSD dual boot

[Dave Cridland]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Marcus Davage <marcus.davage at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'm considering installing my Oss (Linux Mint+Swap partition and a WinXP
> or Win7 partition) on an SSD, for faster booting, and keeping my /home on
> my 1TB HD. I was looking at the Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5 inch SATA
> Solid State Drive (available from Amazon for £75.39).
>
>
SSDs certainly make things faster, but not only boot - I'd humbly suggest
you considered /home on the SSD too, but used spinning disk for bulk
storage (video, music, Steam, etc).


> What SSDs have you use/would you recommend? Do you know of a better deal?
> Any gotchas installing dual boot on an SSD?
>
>
My laptop dualboots off a 512M Crucial M4, no problems at all. My
workstation has two, and I was recommended them (and bought them) by a
sysadmin at work, who's found the Crucial SSDs to be the most reliable.

The Samsungs came second, as I recall, but are a bit faster (though slower
for write - you want the Pro for real performance). For reference, on
aria.co.uk (who are, generally, reliable - and the returns work from what
I've been told) a 128G M4 is £87.59, and the Samsung 840 120G is £77.94.
Both are of course SATA-3 - you probably want to check your motherboard
capability, and possibly consider a PCIe SATA-3 card - one on Aria for
£40.79. You can of course get PCIe SSD cards, and eliminate the controller
entirely - performance is astonishing, but they're quite a bit more
expensive too.

Another distinction is that SSDs suffer total failure, in general, whereas
spinning disks often give you plenty of warning, and even one really on its
way out will still let you get most of the data off - this is an argument
for careful backup, ideally continuous if you can manage it.

HTH,

Dave.
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