Gentoo on Intel's SSD anyone?

ernov · n00b Joined: 28 May 2010 Posts: 55

I'm going to purchase X25-V SSD disk from Intel for my laptop. I've read quite enough about pros and contras of such disk. I know it's a "v-like-value" line, but I'm not that freak of "omg-make-it-faster-faster-faster!!!". I just want my laptop to be shake-proof, silent as possible and consume little bit less energy.
Now I am using WDC WD2500BEVS-08VAT2 and quite happy with its performance, but I'm sick of noise when laptop is left on in the night and I don't want to be concerned about my data security if I shake a laptop to much.
I do not want to write gigs of data on that disk. It will be only system disk and I'll store data on another device.

What I want to ask is how Gentoo behaves on such SSD disk? Are write transfers realy as bad as some benchmark show? How about syncing (I sync quite frequently). How about updating? Will write speed of SSD choke emerges?
And what about filesystem for such disk? I'm now using ext4 and I don't want a roulette with jfs of reiser4 which I heard/read to be non-stable.

What is your opinion about Gentoo on cheap SSD?

kingfame_147 · Apprentice Joined: 11 Oct 2008 Posts: 171

Hi,

I am running my gentoo on a Intel SSD, but a X25-M G2.

The speed is great, absolutly amazing, e.g. eix-sync takes less then 30secs even if there a lot of other programs running.
To your questions:

1) Like I said: great :)
2) I only know that with the X25-M G2 the write transfers are >100mb/s, a nice value.
3) What should be the problem with syncing? Like I said: its damn fast.
4) Same: FAST.
5) I can't speak for the X25-V :/
6) I am using btrfs. I'm using it now for some month and had no problem yet. It's still under developing but seems to be really stable. I would give it a try. It also has some mount options for SSD, my fstab looks like this:

ernov · n00b Joined: 28 May 2010 Posts: 55

Unfortunately 80GB X25-M is twice as much expensive as X25-V 40GB. I don't know if it's worthy.

P.Kosunen · Guru Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 309 Location: Finland

ernov · n00b Joined: 28 May 2010 Posts: 55

Wow, excellent alternative for slow-write X25-V, thx for suggestion. Now I wonder where can I buy F40 in my country ;-)

andrewwalker27 · l33t Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 660

I've just bought an Intel 80GB X25-M drive and was looking at how to achieve best performance without degrading the drive. Is ext4 ok to use as a file system? I thought it was a bad idea for a journalized FS to be installed on a SSD due to the excessive number of read/writes?
I see that btrfs has a ssd flag in the fstab example, is this btrfs specific or can you specify it for ext4 as well? From what I can tell, the Intel drives are somewhat different in their characteristics compared to older SSD's, what precisely does the trim support do?
Also an explanation of partition alignment would be nice, the page you linked to went way over my head!

ssteinberg · Apprentice Joined: 09 Jul 2010 Posts: 206 Location: Israel

'ssd' flag is btrfs specific. Specify 'discard' for ext4 to enable ATA TRIM. Intel g2 SSDs, while nowhere new, do a very good job of handling real world jobs. While aligning partitions is advisable (the blog linked is a very good article, I suggest you reread it), it isn't a must on Intel SSDs, your performance won't suffer much. They are also proven to be reliable (as much as it is possible for a <3 year old product), if you decide to use ext, I wouldn't give up journalizing, just use ext4 with discard flag.
Make sure to update firmware.

Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

I use an 80GB Intel X25-M G2 SSD and I find it to be very nice. If you get one of Intel's SSDs, make certain it is a G2. G1 models do not support TRIM.

By the way, this probably should be in the Kernel and Hardware forum.