Installing Ubuntu on a SSD and HDD system

Question

So I have this 128 GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD. And I plan to install Ubuntu on this system that uses them.

Now all the info that I have found in here about similar problems, are usually with limited SSD space, but mine is pretty big. It is a Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB.

So my question is, what would be the intelligent way of partitioning my system in this case?

Obviously the / will go on SSD. Then /home and /swap will go on HDD. But what else? Should I care about "/tmp" and "/var" also and move them on my HDD? How much size would it be smart to allocate for them then?

Solution 1

I'm running a similar system at home. I've got a 256 GB SSD with ~ 90 GB allocated to linux. Even with a 15 GB game on the SSD, I've still got a lot of space left over. So basically, you probably don't need /home to be on a separate HDD.

/tmp you can likely just leave on your SSD without giving it its own partition. /tmp is cleared on every reboot. Giving it its own partition with a fixed size just opens yourself up to not have enough space to open a file in tmp with little to no benefit.

I can't really speak to /var, but this question on the Unix stack exchange may help you make the decision.

Solution 2

I have a 128GB SSD. I have 20 GB for / which I really need (running both Gnome and Unity and a bunch of games, several db servers, etc.)

In your case I would put both / and /home on the SSD, but I would put the individual large folders as projects, videos, and pictures on the HDD.

The advantage of keeping all your documents on the SSD is that they open in under a second. Very nice.

Edit: If you actually make a /home/media and put that on the HDD then you can configure it so that all the users of your computer (apart from guest) can access it. That comes in very handy.

Comments

[Kaspar]

But how much space did you allocate to it?

[TC1]

You really, really wanna put the swap on the SSD instead of the HDD. It makes a world of difference if you ever start hitting swap, with an SSD it just gets mildly annoying, with an HDD you can pretty much just hit the hard RESET button.

[Volker Siegel]

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[user3728501]

This question is not a duplicate of the marked question

[Kaspar]

I would agree. The marked duplicate has answers completely irrelevant to the question here.

[Trylks]

why /swap does "obviously" go to the HDD? Swap is basically the part of memory that doesn't fit in the memory, having fast access as in a SSD could be a good solution in case you need it (e.g. running an in-memory database or such). AFAIK, /swap could be one of the best candidates for the SSD, how am I wrong?

[Mitch]

What I personally do is this: /home is for things that benefit from speed, and things that HAVE to be in /home I set up my other HDDs to be mounted at boot with specific destinations (/media/username/1TB and /media/username/2TB) On those folders is where I put all my other stuff. For Example, on the 1TB I have a Downloads folder; I removed the ~/Downloads folder and put a symlink from that one to the one on my 1TB drive.

[user68186]

Also see askubuntu.com/questions/282831/… for how to keep /home in the SSD and create soft links to folders with large files in the HDD.

[Kaspar]

But will you see the new Download folder nicely in nautilus like we do right now?

[Mitch]

Yep! Here's a picture in thunar (xubuntu's file manager): imgur.com/zTg3M4z

[Mitch]

It's recommended to leave 10-20% free