Advice on SSD install

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I just ordered a Samsung 850 EVO. I need advice and recommendations on install, as well as problems to avoid. In the past, I’ve always dual booted by starting with a Windows system, adding a hard drive and installing opensuse on the second drive. This computer is different. I have Win 7 and opensuse on one drive. My original plan was to add the ssd and move the two OS to it with clonezilla or similar, leaving the current drive for data. Now, I’m not so sure.

Maybe I should delete opensuse, add the ssd and install a fresh copy of opensuse, leaving Win 7 on the existing drive. I have plenty of space for data and I access Windows only one or two times per month. That seems like the easiest, safest way. Especially since I can’t seem to find my Win7 disk. If I do it this way, do I move programs to the ssd with the OS or leave them on the old HD? I have never had an OS with either programs or data files on a separate drive. So, I need the optimal way to set that up. In other words: what goes on an ssd and what is ok on the older drive?

If I do find that Win7 disk, should I use my standard procedure; install Windows then opensuse on the new disk? Finally, what is the optimal way to uninstall opensuse and/or Windows from the old disk?

Thanks for the advice.

2

Most program are installed in /. So it is easier to just reinstall the programs. Cloning can be a problem depending on the details of how it is done.

I recently added a SSD but I used that as a reason to move from 13.1 to 13.2. I have never found reinstalling programs to be a burden. And it has the benefit of getting rid of those programs you tried once and never used again.

No need to actually uninstall it from the HD until you are at least sure all is well on the SSD.

Be sure to add the recommended change to the fstab mount perimeters This depends on the file system used in ext4 I added

noatime,nodiratime,discard,acl,user_xattr

I’m not certain what is needed in BTRFS but some things are set by default

3

On Tue 07 Apr 2015 04:26:01 PM CDT, Prexy wrote:

I just ordered a Samsung 850 EVO. I need advice and recommendations on
install, as well as problems to avoid. In the past, I’ve always dual
booted by starting with a Windows system, adding a hard drive and
installing opensuse on the second drive. This computer is different. I
have Win 7 and opensuse on one drive. My original plan was to add the
ssd and move the two OS to it with clonezilla or similar, leaving the
current drive for data. Now, I’m not so sure.

Maybe I should delete opensuse, add the ssd and install a fresh copy of
opensuse, leaving Win 7 on the existing drive. I have plenty of space
for data and I access Windows only one or two times per month. That
seems like the easiest, safest way. Especially since I can’t seem to
find my Win7 disk. If I do it this way, do I move programs to the ssd
with the OS or leave them on the old HD? I have never had an OS with
either programs or data files on a separate drive. So, I need the
optimal way to set that up. In other words: what goes on an ssd and what
is ok on the older drive?

If I do find that Win7 disk, should I use my standard procedure; install
Windows then opensuse on the new disk? Finally, what is the optimal way
to uninstall opensuse and/or Windows from the old disk?

Thanks for the advice.

Hi
I’m assuming it’s an mbr setup?

Just check you new drive first if it’s gpt or dos type and latest
firmware installed (you may need to use windows tools for firmware…)

How big is the SSD? How much system ram?

All my systems have SSD’s now… all but one have 8GB of RAM.

I use btrfs on a 40GB partition one system dual boots with
openSUSE 13.2 and windows 10 preview (on the SSD sda7), this one also
has an hdd fed by bcache.


lsblk

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    0 119.2G  0 disk
├─sda1        8:1    0   300M  0 part
├─sda2        8:2    0   260M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3        8:3    0   128M  0 part
├─sda4        8:4    0    40G  0 part /
├─sda5        8:5    0  29.8G  0 part
│ └─bcache0 253:0    0 298.1G  0 disk /data
├─sda6        8:6    0     8G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda7        8:7    0  40.8G  0 part
sdb           8:16   0 298.1G  0 disk
└─sdb1        8:17   0 298.1G  0 part
└─bcache0 253:0    0 298.1G  0 disk /data

I use elevator=noop for the scheduling and set the swappiness and
vfs cache in /etc/sysctl.conf


vm.swappiness=1
vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50

I don’t do anything with the mount options for btrfs or xfs filesystems,
just use the defaults.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
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4

When the disk arrives, I’ll try to answer these questions and think of a couple more :wink:

5

I hope this doesn’t show up as a duplicate post. I got interrupted before.

The ssd arrived and opening the box, I found instructions that were pictures only. They included cables I couldn’t identify, screws and a bracket. None of this was in the packaging. Feeling intimidated, I got the school’s tech guy to put the drive in while I was in a meeting. It is not “installed” but is connected and recognized by the bios. I have not run the install disk yet. I lost my nerve with this little project.

I now want an easy way out. I think the easiest way would be to install 13.2 on the new drive, leaving “/” and Win7 and all programs and data on the old hdd. I would prefer to move Win 7 (or re-install it) over to the ssd, but I log into that only a couple of times a month and then for only a short time. Although, it would be nice to have Win 7 boot up fast! How do I uninstall either OS? Should I just disconnect the hdd while I install both win7 and suse on the ssd then point to what I need on the hdd?

Could you folks guide me through this or stop me if I’m trying to do the wrong thing?

6

On Tue 14 Apr 2015 06:56:01 PM CDT, Prexy wrote:

I hope this doesn’t show up as a duplicate post. I got interrupted
before.

The ssd arrived and opening the box, I found instructions that were
pictures only. They included cables I couldn’t identify, screws and a
bracket. None of this was in the packaging. Feeling intimidated, I got
the school’s tech guy to put the drive in while I was in a meeting. It
is not “installed” but is connected and recognized by the bios. I have
not run the install disk yet. I lost my nerve with this little project.

I now want an easy way out. I think the easiest way would be to install
13.2 on the new drive, leaving “/” and Win7 and all programs and data on
the old hdd. I would prefer to move Win 7 (or re-install it) over to the
ssd, but I log into that only a couple of times a month and then for
only a short time. Although, it would be nice to have Win 7 boot up
fast! How do I uninstall either OS? Should I just disconnect the hdd
while I install both win7 and suse on the ssd then point to what I need
on the hdd?

Could you folks guide me through this or stop me if I’m trying to do the
wrong thing?

Hi
How big is the drive? MBR or UEFI booting? Do you plan to upgrade
windows 7 to windows 10?

I would disconnect and install all new on the SSD, then work out what
to do with the data.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

7

There are a ton of options But you must decide what you want then plan then execute.

I recently installed a SSD and it was a piece of cake for all intent and purpose it could have been a spinning runt HD.

There are a couple configuration things you should do but it is generally not critical it just adds life to the drive so can be done most any time. Exact details depend on the file system used.

Drives of any sort seldom get shipped with the mounting hardware. My machine never moves so I just hooked in the wires and let it lay on the bottom. Nice thing about solid state it rally does not care about orientation :wink:

I don’t dual boot I run Windows in a VM. Much better way then dual booting. Unles you run High end Windows Games a VM is fine for most business software and even light weight games.

So What I did I had 13.1 installed on a HD. So I Installed 13.2 on the SSD and pointed to home and swap and my VM partition /vm from the HD.

8

On Tue 14 Apr 2015 09:06:02 PM CDT, gogalthorp wrote:

There are a ton of options But you must decide what you want then plan
then execute.

I recently installed a SSD and it was a piece of cake for all intent and
purpose it could have been a spinning runt HD.

There are a couple configuration things you should do but it is
generally not critical it just adds life to the drive so can be done
most any time. Exact details depend on the file system used.

Drives of any sort seldom get shipped with the mounting hardware. My
machine never moves so I just hooked in the wires and let it lay on the
bottom. Nice thing about solid state it rally does not care about
orientation :wink:

I don’t dual boot I run Windows in a VM. Much better way then dual
booting. Unles you run High end Windows Games a VM is fine for most
business software and even light weight games.

So What I did I had 13.1 installed on a HD. So I Installed 13.2 on the
SSD and pointed to home and swap and my VM partition /vm from the HD.

Hi
Both my Crucial and OCZ 2.5" SSD’s came with mounting hardware (2.5"
to 3.5")and screws…

I’ve been using bcache to feed via my SSD (small partition) to the HDD
for speed improvements in read/write make it feel like a large SSD.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
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please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

9

The ssd is 120GB.
I don’t know about the booting. I’m guessing MBR
I assume that I will upgrade to Windows 10. Do I really have a choice?
I was going to disconnect the hdd and install new on the ssd. I need to know how to point to the data that will remain there and how to get the old install of Win and opensuse off there… or at least prevent them from booting.

I can’t remember the command that would give important info on my disk, so I’m mixing sources:

optiplex960:/home/bill # parted -lModel: ATA ST320LT014-9YK14 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 


Number  Start   End    Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  106MB  105MB   primary   ntfs            boot, type=07
 2      106MB   166GB  166GB   primary   ntfs            type=07 -----> using 36GB
 3      166GB   320GB  154GB   extended                  lba, type=0f  ------> using 1KiB ?
 5      166GB   168GB  2157MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)  type=82
 6      168GB   211GB  43.0GB  logical   btrfs           type=83    ------> using 14GB
 7      211GB   320GB  109GB   logical   xfs             type=83  -------> using 4GB




Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label
Model: ATA Samsung SSD 850 (scsi)                                         
Disk /dev/sdb: 120GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags:

If I read this right, it means I am using less than 60GB for everything? So, I can move the 2 OS plus programs (if moving programs to ssd is the smart thing) with no problem. What about swap? I think you are supposed to keep that off of the ssd. As you can see, I didn’t run the install disk on the ssd yet. I don’t know what questions I might be asked about the ssd install and I want a plan laid out in case I have to make a decision during its install.

10

I was browsing through the Samsung docs and saw that the migration software is one step but appeared to delete data from the origin drive. I called Samsung to see if that was correct. The guy told me they don’t support cloning dual boot, but more importantly, opensuse doesn’t support TRIM. Without TRIM, eventually the ssd will die. What do we know about that?

So, my plan to disconnect my hdd and do clean installs on the ssd and somehow leave the data on the hdd looks like it goes on hold until opensuse supports TRIM.

11

He does not know what he is talking about. Linux fully supports trim. I have not researched it but my guess is that Linux had trim before Windows

I’m using ext4 and use

noatime,nodiratime,discard,acl,user_xattr 1 1

parrimeters. discard is more or less the same as trim.Or you can use trim from command line or a cron job

noatime stops writing of the access time every time a file is opened saves a bunch of writes same for nodiratime.

I don’t think these are needed for BTRFS not sure aout discard. or maybe it is the other way around discard is not needed but

any how here is a nice explanation of trim command

http://blog.neutrino.es/2013/howto-properly-activate-trim-for-your-ssd-on-linux-fstrim-lvm-and-dmcrypt/

12

On Thu 16 Apr 2015 03:16:01 PM CDT, Prexy wrote:

I was browsing through the Samsung docs and saw that the migration
software is one step but appeared to delete data from the origin drive.
I called Samsung to see if that was correct. The guy told me they don’t
support cloning dual boot, but more importantly, opensuse doesn’t
support TRIM. Without TRIM, eventually the ssd will die. What do we know
about that?

So, my plan to disconnect my hdd and do clean installs on the ssd and
somehow leave the data on the hdd looks like it goes on hold until
opensuse supports TRIM.

Hi
That’s fud… :wink: If you go btrfs then in the btrfsmaintenance package
there is a trim and balance script that can be run weekly (present in
SLED 12, not in openSUSE 13.2 weekly cron jobs).

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

13

Stop listening to that nonsense…

I use an EVO840 with EXT4 and rather than using the “discard” option in fstab, I use fstrim at boot by adding two lines to /etc/rc.d/boot.local such that it now reads:


#! /bin/sh
#
# Copyright (c) 2002 SuSE Linux AG Nuernberg, Germany.  All rights reserved.
#
# Author: Werner Fink, 1996
#         Burchard Steinbild, 1996
#
# /etc/init.d/boot.local
#
# script with local commands to be executed from init on system startup
#
# Here you should add things, that should happen directly after booting
# before we're going to the first run level.
#
fstrim -v /
fstrim -v /home

Works like charm.

14

I only have root on the ssd so not much eraser is happening,

But there are the facts you can write the capacity of the drive daily for 5 years for most SSD’s today (one of the new higher end SSD is claiming 3X capacity daily for 5 years). In 5 year something better faster bigger sexier will be available. I don’t worry too much. The big savings comes from not writing the time date every time a file is opened. It is not that many bytes but each change means a large block of flash has to be erased and shuffled so reducing these small but unneeded (by me) writes is important. I don’t normally shut down the machine and it can go months without a reboot. So I’d have to run fstrim in a cron job or remember to do it manually. Using discard is a bit more stressful to the ssd but it should last 5+ years no problem

15

Thanks for the reassuring advice. I will begin the migration process shortly.

16

This may be the new shiny shiny in storage

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2859266/a-terabyte-on-a-postage-stamp-rram-heads-into-commercialization.html

17

Well, this is not entirely wrong… since TRIMmability depends on the filesystem.
At the moment, for instance, TRIM is not supported by ntfs-3g, so that the “Win” partition will NOT be trimmed under OpenSuse, nor will any data partition using NTFS for Win**** compatibility.

Apologies for my former post :cry:

18

On Tue 21 Apr 2015 01:16:02 PM CDT, OrsoBruno wrote:

Prexy;2705180 Wrote:
> I was browsing through the Samsung docs and saw that the migration
> software is one step but appeared to delete data from the origin
> drive. I called Samsung to see if that was correct. The guy told me
> they don’t support cloning dual boot, but more importantly, opensuse
> doesn’t support TRIM. Without TRIM, eventually the ssd will die. What
> do we know about that?
> .

Well, this is not entirely wrong… since TRIMmability depends on the
filesystem.
At the moment, for instance, TRIM is not supported by ntfs-3g, so that
the “Win” partition will NOT be trimmed under OpenSuse, nor will any
data partition using NTFS for Win**** compatibility.

Apologies for my former post :cry:

Hi
Well, one could argue that Windows doesn’t support unix/linux
filesystems with respect to trim… :wink:

Seriously though if your dual booting it should clean itself up
depending on the OS in use…

I still recommend a small SSD ~120-128GB for operating systems put data
on a rotating device. If your keen, use bcache as well.

Laptops I use a HDD caddy and have an external USB dvd if really need
it, most OS’s installs work fine from USB devices these days with both
windows and linux tools available to image.

I don’t worry about the OS, installs take less that the time to
image/recovery. Track your config changes, use scripts etc and in less
than an hour you can be up and running…

Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

19

Here is where I stand at the moment. I entered the bios at boot time and deselected the hdd as a boot device. I then booted with a Win7 disk in the dvd drive and installed Win7 on the ssd. Nothing else was installed but an update to Internet Explorer and my webcam software. Windows Explorer still sees the original hdd and I can point to programs there and run them. How can I make it permanent or automatic for this install to put docs on the hdd not on the ssd? Do I want programs to also go on the hdd? If so, how do I get them to install there? I am talking about new programs if I find any. I assume I can link desktop icons or the start menu to the hdd?

Next, I began to install opensuse 13.2 on the ssd. Letting it make automatic choices, it planned to install on the hdd, going all the way down to sda7. I cancelled and took the one of the options for non-automatic choices. It first offered me a choice of the hdd or the ssd. After that I got stuck. I don’t know what choices are correct, so I cancelled the install. How do I put “/” and everything but the OS on the hdd? Since all my docs and programs are there, can I just point to it somehow and not install anything new? Do I want to put any programs on the ssd? Can I make it permanent or automatic that new programs or data go to the hdd?

I know this is a vague question, but I have no idea what the right install choices are. I was confronted with an install question for some partition where the choices were btrfs, xfs and something else. The default seemed to me xfs. I had no clue on what to pick on that or any other question that I normally just let opensuse go where it wants.

For the time being, I made the hdd bootable again and am using my opensuse as before.

20 
For the time being, I made the hdd bootable again and am using my opensuse as before.

Good choice, STOP and PLAN before messing things up.
With the current setup you have TWO Win7 that may be made bootable and this is asking for trouble, unless setup properly.

How can I make it permanent or automatic for this install to put docs on the hdd not on the ssd? Do I want programs to also go on the hdd?

Maybe you want your documents to be shared between OpenSuse and Win7?
I think that the easy way is:
0) BACKUP everything important to you, just in case;

  1. setup a separate partition on the HDD, format it as NTFS;
  2. Make your Win7 place the “user” directory you want to share on that new partition (I don’t recall the exact sequence, but it is possible for sure).
  3. Move all your user files to the new place (if Win7 did not move them already, I don’t recall exactly…);
  4. At installation, tell OpenSuse to mount that new partition as, say, /home/DATA
  5. after installation of OpenSuse, edit the /home/<your_username>/.config/user-dirs.dirs file so that it reads as:

# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
# 
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="/home/DATA/<your_Win7_user_dir>/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="/home/DATA/<your_Win7_user_dir>/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="/home/DATA/<your_Win7_user_dir>/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="/home/DATA/<your_Win7_user_dir>/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="/home/DATA/<your_Win7_user_dir>/Documents"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="/home/DATA/<your_Win7_user_dir>/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="/home/DATA/<your_Win7_user_dir>/Videos"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="/home/DATA/<your_Win7_user_dir>/Music"

How do I put “/” and everything but the OS on the hdd? Since all my docs and programs are there, can I just point to it somehow and not install anything new? Do I want to put any programs on the ssd? Can I make it permanent or automatic that new programs or data go to the hdd?

What is your PLAN? Leave Win7 on the HDD and have ONLY OpenSuse on the SSD?
If so, I would do the following.

  1. Leave Win7 alone, after having told it that <users> are now on the new “DATA” partition;
  2. Make a new partition of 40 GB or more on the SSD and format it to EXT4;
    (maybe my old habit, but I didn’t see any benefit using BTRFS or XFS on my laptops so far…)
  3. if you plan on using “hibernate”, make a new SWAP partition on the SSD, slightly larger than your installed RAM;
  4. leave some 7-10% of the SSD uncommitted and unformatted to allow faster garbage collection to the SSD firmware;
  5. at installation, tell OpenSuse to mount the EXT4 partition as / (root);
  6. since you plan to store all your data on the new DATA partition on the HDD, I would not bother to setup a separate /home partition;
    6b) as an alternative, I would setup a small (a few GB) EXT4 partition to be mounted as /home if you plan to save all your user setup in the event of a new Linux installation.

If all this makes sense to you, we may go further with specific questions.