Just built a new box i7 3370k + 32G ram + 120G SSD + 2TB HDD

[ozitraveller]

Now I have plenty of space and grunt to test my live-build scripts, other distros. THis will be sid and it's my main system, but not the only one I have.

I've been reading up on SSD's and still haven't got my head around the best partitioning structure.

sda /boot ?
      /
sdb /home
      /swap?

/var in ram ?

fstab
sda discard, noatime

Any suggestions?

[VastOne]

Hey Oz,

I know that jedi uses SSD drives and has gone through this, and I believe lwfitz has also

jedi may be a while before he answers, he is down for a while while his lappy is replaced

[jedi]

hey ozitraveller...  Best for me might not be best for you.  Mine has always been via laptop, and using 'ext4'.  Here's mine...

Please make sure you back-up before doing all this.  I'd hate if you messed something up cause of me!  PM me if you want more specifics...

I always stick to the following, root, home, swap; i.e.
/
/home
swap

With the 32Gb of RAM, you obviously won't need swap, but a lot of distro's won't install without it.  The newer SSD drives, (ones manufactured in the last two years for example) are pretty hardy and you really don't have to worry about the "writes" it does to the drive.  On old SSD's this was an issue.  On the 120Gb SSD, I'd use it entirely for / (root) partitions.  The main or go-to partition where your first and most used OS is going to go, I'd allow for say 25Gb, and then I'd create maybe four more partitions on the SSD for my test builds/distro hopping OS's.  My home would for sure be the 2Tb drive obviously.
You'll need to edit /etc/fstab to enable trim on the 'ext4' scheme which is what I use.  From this;

Code Select Expand

/dev/sda1 / ext4 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
to this;

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/dev/sda1 / ext4 noatime,discard 0 1
This might not be the best setting in a server environment as the 'noatime' option doesn't write the access times to the files unless they are actually accessed as opposed to just being read.  This setting alone will reduce the 'writes' to the drive significantly.
The 'discard' option enables Trim. (highly inadvisable in Kernels before version 2.6.36.)
I would also create the following lines in /etc/fstab;

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tmpfs   /tmp       tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777   0  0
tmpfs   /var/log   tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=0755   0  0
tmpfs   /var/spool tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777   0  0
tmpfs   /var/tmp   tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777   0  0

With 32Gb's of RAM you can afford to load that stuff to RAM.  And, of course, it'll decrease the 'writes' made to the drive.
Lastly, I'd move Firefox's cache to RAM as well.  Be careful when you do this as a mistake could be costly.  Open Firefox, and in the address bar type "about:config". (without the quotes)
In an empty space in the browser screen right-click and create a new string called "value browser.cache.disk.parent_directory" (again, without the quotes).  Set the new string value to /tmp.

Hopefully this'll help you out and save you some time doing the "google search" thing! 

[VastOne]

Very detailed Jedi!

Impressive! ... I am sure Oz can contact you with any issues if he runs into them

[ozitraveller]

@Jedi No worries about messing things up, it's a clean first time install with all new hardware, and at the moment I'm using google-stable. Thanks for the help, should be good to go.

There is so much old info out there, it's difficult to tell what is what any more!

Thanks guys.

[dizzie]

Nice machine, what i am going to upgrade to too in a few days. Out of curriosity what graphicscard? I'm going for the Gigabyte 7850 "Twinforce"

[ozitraveller]

I went onboard graphics for the time being, I'm a software developer and mostly design business and database layers, so don't have heavy graphics needs usually. I now work for a company that does large scale heavy duty image manipulation, so will get a graphics card when I sort out what I need.

[dizzie]

I'm very happy with my Gigabyte 7850 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102998
Fair priced too, and i dont care if it will "bottleneck" my i7 when i get it. I'm not a progamer, so i dont care what the rest will say or judge

[ozitraveller]

Looks ok to me, I'm not ready to put a video card in just yet, but will probably go for nvidia.

[dizzie]

Either or will do. If i wanted a nvidia for the i7, i would atleast go for a 650/660 GTX

[ozitraveller]

Oooooh like the 660 GTX!

[dizzie]

The 7850 will earn you a +1 from me though 

[dizzie]

This pretty much shows whats in my build (a few items cant be bought anymore, so i picked "close enough" parts)
Not complete yet. Still need a few bits and pieces



http://pcpartpicker.com/p/MsaG