On 12/8/21 6:27 AM, Jorge P. de Morais Neto wrote:
Hi everyone! I have a Dell Inspiron 5570 laptop with 1TB HDD and 16 GiB
RAM (it supports 32 GiB). I am about to buy an M.2 NVMe 250GB SSD---a
Western Digital WD Blue SN550. I would like to set the system for
reliability, SSD durability¹ and performance.
I have looked at [Multi HDD/SSD Partitioning Scheme][] but it is too
complex and probably outdated (last modified 2013-10-17). I would like
something simpler. For backups, I would continue my weekly manual
backups to my 1.5 TB external HDD with duplicity.
On the SSD I intend to leave 35 GB unpartitioned for extra over
provisioning. It would have just one 215 GB partition.
On the HDD I would put a 34 GB swap partition at the beginning, then a
215 GB partition for RAID1 with the SSD, then a 751 GB partition. I
intend to put Debian system *and* /home on the 215 GB RAID1, but I would
set all the XDG user dirs² on the 751 GB HDD partition. I would have
tmpfs on /tmp---I have read that long thread where someone alleged that
moving /tmp to tmpfs makes it useless but I disagree.
Would all this be reasonable? Do you recommend any change? Any tip? I
run Debian stable with only official repositories, including
bullseye-backports. I also manually installed GNU Guix package manager
and my main Guix profile has 163 packages.
Regards!
[Multi HDD/SSD Partitioning Scheme]
https://wiki.debian.org/Multi%20HDD/SSD%20Partition%20Scheme
¹ According to its data sheet, the 250GB WD Blue SN550 endures 150TBW.
² See the xdg-user-dir manpage.
I would remove the 1 TB HDD, install the 250 GB NVMe SSD, and do a fresh
install of Debian 11 with MBR partitioning, 1E+9 byte boot partition
(ext4), 1E+9 byte swap partition (random key encrypted), and 13E+9 to
27E+9 byte root partition (passphrase encrypted ext4). (E.g. partition
table and first three partitions fit onto a "16 GB" to "30 GB" device.)
Once the system is built, I would add a fourth partition (key file
encrypted ext4) using all remaining space for development, audio/ video
working and "scratch" files, VM's, etc..
Over-provisioning was a big deal when SSD's first came out. I would not
worry about it on that laptop with that SSD. If you do have an app with
an intensive and sustained write workload, build a specific computer.
I would put the 1 TB HDD into an external HDD enclosure and use it to
store system images (e.g. partition table, boot, swap, and root). I
take images of all of my system drives every month, and retain images
for a few months. You will need a USB flash drive with a Debian
installation, or some live distribution (e.g. Debian Live, Clonezilla,
etc.), to take and restore images.
I backup daily.
I recommend a file server or NAS for bulk data -- downloads, music,
photographs, videos, etc.. Set up a VPN for remote access.
(Windows has Offline Files. Does Debian GNU/Linux?)
I recommend a version control server for user project files and system
configuration files.
(My SOHO server runs both of the above services in VM's. Storage is RAID.)
David