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SSD question/concern

I'm building a new computer, and I want to use an SSD as my OS booting device.

I'm just wondering if there are any major downsides to installing applications and their dependencies to the SSD, and was wondering if it would be possible to install them to another partition or not (I'm guessing you can, but I'm sure the recommendation is to just keep all of the stuff for the OS and otherwise on the same drive). I could go with a just for the OS and applications drive and then a beefy HDD for my home partition. I never found Artix to be slow to boot or anything, but, the only real concerns I have about SSDs is their write/read lifespans.

I've never used any long enough for me to notice a problem. I know by keeping everything in the home partition, it's probably safe to say I wouldn't lose anything important unless the drive failed... (which totally would never happen, it isn't like everything is made with such poor quality these days!...) I have several spare drives that work fine, I plan to have a good amount of storage and maybe eventually make a NAS.

I hope this is the correct part of the forum to ask in.

Re: SSD question/concern

Reply #1 –
It's possible to install native packages in other drives by mounting related directories to second hard drive. BUT

why the hole purpose of using a  SSD is to gain a boost load time for application and libraries. by doing such a thing you defeat the purpose. beside in a system with 3000 package the storage used by packges would be at most 50 GB. I have 3000 package and it only the hole OS is 27GB.

If you want, you can mount cache directories to HDD, these directories can take a fare amount of space if you never clean them up.

put the who "/" in SSD and "/home" in HDD
also consider something like zfs or btrfs.

Re: SSD question/concern

Reply #2 –
Indeed the problem with putting /home on a slow drive makes for a pretty paradoxical experience of fast loading but slow performance overall afterwards. Of course you won't feel it that badly with a good HDD, but still the paradox will weird you out like it did with me when I tried it.
SSD's got so cheap now for 1 TB and under that you can do with that amount of scrap working space easily, only if you need 4+TB this will make sense.
Quote
also consider something like zfs or btrfs.
Oh yeah one big volume with ssd as cache, i remember when the kernel itself had a native module to do that with any volume, dm-cache/bcache i think, now because of cloud companies you are limited to weird FS options (zfs needs to be compiled, btrfs requires some parameters)

Re: SSD question/concern

Reply #3 –
As much as possible on the SSD. It makes a big difference to the speed of your system.
Regular automated backups to the HDD and if short of space store your media on the HDD.

Expect all storage devices to fail imminently. They hopefully won't but if they do you be glad of your backup's

Re: SSD question/concern

Reply #4 –
NVMe drives compare to SSD's as SSD's did to old spinning disks, they connect to the PCI bus which is faster than the SATA interface. Used they are comparable in price. Also as they don't have the date and write speed written on them, if you check the model numbers against specs you can find newer used fast ones for the same price as early slower ones - people just don't seem to understand them. Neither did I until cat herders of linux was talking about getting one recently! A heatsink is helpful but not essential up to Generation 3, the fastest new Gen 4 ones require one.  Check what your system supports and boots from though. I've used SSD's for everything as the main drive with no problems but making backups is a good idea whatever you use. Spinning disk hdd's in external enclosures are good for backups or storage and are still faster than many USB sticks I find.

Re: SSD question/concern

Reply #5 –
I've been lucky with HDDs, I've never had any fail on me in my 25+ years of using computers. I still have drives from the 90's that work fine. (Then again they don't make stuff like they used to) The only drive I've had fail was an OEM drive that was bad that came with the machine (and it failed within like a day or two of getting that OEM). The replacement is still kicking. I'd always read things about SSDs but again, I have no real experience with them. So I appreciate everyone's input!

Any recommended brands or drives? I'm completely new to SSDs outside of prebuilt machines that I didn't get a say in their construction and didn't get to use them long enough to notice any issues.

Re: SSD question/concern

Reply #6 –
with ssd specs, they can be a little crafty!   Don't just look at the read/write specs, but look at the sustained read specs, as cheap often have great read speeds, but they drop off pretty quick in actual use.  For a cheap, decent sata drive, WD blues are decent.
 

Re: SSD question/concern

Reply #7 –
you buy an SSD once a 10 years, buy something like samsung or kingston. good reliable.
all current SSD do support things like TRIM and etc.
if you go cheap the important spec to look is amount of memory cache. this is the reason for what #gavincc explained.
I personally prefer kingston under linux, easier to get firmware update.