Should I partition SSD for best speed?

[piergen]

When I have installed Linux before I have used a partition scheme I found in a book once. That was supposed to give a better performing system.

/
/boot
/home
/tmp
/usr
/var

Should I drop that with SSD and just make one large partition or what will give best performance?

At the moment I only have 8GB of ram. Will i prolong the speed and performance of SSD and avoid degradation by using say 4GB of the ram for Ram Drive? The idea is that as much as possible of temp files and writing will be done in Ram Drive rather then on the SSD will make Garbage Collection smoother as SSD will be run in raid0.

[oz]

Should I partition SSD for best speed?

Just from actual use, I personally don't think you will notice any difference in speed using an SSD whether you have multiple partitions on it, or a single partition. Again, just my opinion.

[piergen]

Ok as excpected.

Can anyone tell me if runnin Ram Disk will make SSD cut back on random write and therby sustain performance better?

[sgosnell]

For better performance, edit /etc/fstab and add 'noatime' to the line for your SSD. That eliminates writing the access time to a file every time a file is accessed. Putting tmpfs in RAM will also help to some extent. As for partitioning, I prefer having /home on a separate partition, but for safety, not performance. I can change my OS completely without touching my data. If /home is on the same partition as the rest of the OS, it's gone if you reinstall. You can, and certainly should, keep /home backed up for restoration, but it's painful no matter what, and I prefer not to have to restore it.

[piergen]

Got a good offer on more ram, so could upgrade up to 24GB but would prefer to stop at 16 GB. How big part of the ram should I allocate to tmpfs?

Some years ago I think there was a program or software or something that was actually called ram-disk-something. I think that the software would take care of making the ram disk for you and you could even change the size of the ram-disk on the fly. Cant remember the name and cant find it anymore. Does people know what sort of software/application I am thinking of? Does it excist anythink like that for the linux world?

Who would one go ahead to make ram-disk without third party software?

[oz]

Here's a pretty good article on setting up solid state drives that might be of some help to you:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSD

While it's in the Arch wiki, most of what is written would apply to other distros as well.

[piergen]

Thx ozar.
Tried to fiind back the old Linux book to remember why I partionoed the drive like I did but cant seem to find back to it.

/
/boot
/home
/tmp
/usr
/var

Boot and home are ok. Rest I am not so sure about. Temp seems to be twice the size of ram.

/var is partioned to 180 GB or about 10% of total space of them all combined. In which I at the moment have used only 0.5GB.

/usr 92GB total and I have used 3GB.

What does /var and /usr do? (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard)

Even though I read the wiki I am not clear on this part. Laymans terms would be better for me.

.

I mean of course i could always put /usr and /var also at the HDD along with /home but if I do so will I get less performance compered to having /var+/usr on the SSD?

My main goal here is to get as hi performing SSD as possible without too much writing done to SSD.

[sgosnell]

Usr holds packages installed by users. Var has logs, etc. Putting either on a separate partition does nothing to improve performance, and may cause problems later on if you don't size them correctly initially. I would recommend just having three partitions, /, /home, and swap. That gives you the maximum flexibility and safety, and the least amount of trouble.

[piergen]

Ok, if I have only three partitions the /var and /usr would be placed like this /home/var?

From wikipedia:

/var - Variable files—files whose content is expected to continually change during normal operation of the system—such as logs, spool files, and temporary e-mail files. Sometimes a separate partition.
/var/cache - Application cache data. Such data is locally generated as a result of time-consuming I/O or calculation. The application must be able to regenerate or restore the data. The cached files can be deleted without data loss
/var/lib - State information. Persistent data modified by programs as they run, e.g., databases, packaging system metadata, etc.
/var/tmp - Temporary files to be preserved between reboots.

If one look at /var/lib one would assume that this needs to be on the fastest storage, the SSD. Cause if put on /home/var/lib on a traditional HDD there will be issues with access time, slower read/write etc.

So I guess for /var it will not only contain static data, hence it should be on SSD.

So how can I determine what size to make /var?

As one said earlier in this thread /home can be on HDD. I guess /usr also can be on HDD as well. But it seems to me /var should be on the SSD - Am I overthinking this or does it make sense?

[sgosnell]

You don't want files that change often on the SSD. It wears the SSD more quickly, and writes aren't as fast. Better to have files that don't change often, but are accessed often, on the SSD. Boot files, program files, etc, are better on the SSD, if you want performance. Files that get changed very often are better on a HDD or in RAM. At least that's my opinion.