I recently purchased a Dell Inspiron notebook that came with Windows 8 installed. I plan to install OpenSUSE 12.2 without uninstalling Windows. My concern today springs from the fact that my notebook includes a 32 GB SSD, which Dell informed me is being used as a cache drive to improve the speed of booting up and loading programs in Windows. How can I take full advantage of the presence of this SSD for OpenSUSE? Would it be for example a good idea to create the /boot and Swap partitions on this SSD, instead of having them on the main HD?
You may want to read this first SDB:SSD performance - openSUSE Wiki
The information in https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:SSD_performance, from what I understand, primarily concerns changes to be made once OpenSUSE is installed. I would greatly appreciate advice on what should be the best way for me to partition both of my storage devices (one traditional 1 TB HD + one 32 GB SSD) during the OpenSUSE installation (i.e., in the Custom partitioning section). I changed my mind concerning preserving the pre-installed Windows 8, and decided to configure both storage devices from zero, meaning I will setup and finish configuring OpenSUSE first, setting aside about 50 GB in the main HD for Windows 7, which I plan to install later.
It depends on how you want to partition it and how and what data you want on the SSD. I’d guess you want root to be on the SSD and home and swap on the HD. But that really depends on what you intend and you expected usage. You could break out /var and /tmp to the HD since that would reduce ware on the SSD.
It is better to install any Windows version first since will always mess up the MBR.
Do you have a uEFI BIOS or an older type?
How is the driive partitioning done the classic or the new GPT??
Thanks for the response gogalthorp. Your suggestion “root to be on the SSD and home and swap on the HD” in principle sounds good.
My computer uses UEFI for booting up.
I don’t know a lot about MBR vs. GPT – how can I know if my computer supports GPT? My computer is a very new Dell Inspiron 7520, if that helps in any way.
On Wed 26 Dec 2012 11:16:01 PM CST, gogalthorp wrote:
It depends on how you want to partition it and how and what data you
want on the SSD. I’d guess you want root to be on the SSD and home and
swap on the HD. But that really depends on what you intend and you
expected usage. You could break out /var and /tmp to the HD since that
would reduce ware on the SSD.
It is better to install any Windows version first since will always
mess up the MBR.
Do you have a uEFI BIOS or an older type?
How is the driive partitioning done the classic or the new GPT??
Hi
Here is my current setup on this notebook;
lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 55.9G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 100M 0 part /boot/efi
└─sda2 8:2 0 55.8G 0 part /
sdb 8:16 0 232.9G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 8G 0 part /var/tmp
├─sdb2 8:18 0 8G 0 part /var
├─sdb3 8:19 0 8G 0 part /tmp
├─sdb4 8:20 0 53G 0 part /home
├─sdb5 8:21 0 149G 0 part /data
└─sdb6 8:22 0 6.9G 0 part [SWAP]
df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs 57592068 7550212 47116288 14% /
devtmpfs 3983568 8 3983560 1% /dev
tmpfs 3992356 288 3992068 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 3992356 1092 3991264 1% /run
/dev/sda2 57592068 7550212 47116288 14% /
tmpfs 3992356 0 3992356 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 3992356 0 3992356 0% /media
/dev/sda1 102182 772 101410 1% /boot/efi
/dev/sdb4 54702524 1286008 52360600 3% /home
/dev/sdb5 153786412 124000788 28691960 82% /data
/dev/sdb3 8256952 152828 7684696 2% /tmp
/dev/sdb2 8256952 1013120 6824404 13% /var
tmpfs 3992356 1092 3991264 1% /var/lock
tmpfs 3992356 1092 3991264 1% /var/run
/dev/sdb1 8256952 149564 7687960 2% /var/tmp
sda is an OCZ 60GB device, sdb a 250GB device in a hdd caddy.
Here is my ssd fstab entry;
/dev/sda2 / ext4 discard,noatime,acl,user_xattr 1 1
I use UEFI/GPT and grub2(-efi) both disks setup prior to install with
gdisk on a live cd. I also had to have the original dvd in place to
UEFI boot the dvd…
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.2 (x86_64) Kernel 3.4.11-2.16-desktop
up 21:33, 4 users, load average: 0.03, 0.11, 0.13
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU
Boot a Linux CD and do a
fdisk-l
it will show the current partitioning. Note it is not reliable for GPT but it will show you that it is GPT. It probably is since it has uEFI.
Note it may or may not have secure boot and if it does it is most likely easier to turn it off in the uEFI setup screens rather then to try and fight it. Note also that turning it off will probably make Win8 unbootable but you plan to remove it anyway.
On 2012-12-19 10:06, untarnished wrote:
>
> I recently purchased a Dell Inspiron notebook that came with Windows 8
> installed. I plan to install OpenSUSE 12.2 without uninstalling
> Windows. My concern today springs from the fact that my notebook
> includes a 32 GB SSD, which Dell informed me is being used as a cache
> drive to improve the speed of booting up and loading programs in
> Windows.
Notice that this is a Windows only feature. Linux doesn’t have it.
Windows uses that SSD dynamically, things stored there change with time.
I forget the official name of this setup.
How can I take full advantage of the presence of this SSD for
> OpenSUSE? Would it be for example a good idea to create the /boot and
> Swap partitions on this SSD, instead of having them on the main HD?
No combination would improve things in the same manner; installing the
whole system in the SSD, and home in the HD (and ditching Windows
completely) would make the system faster only while it does not need
data files…
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
I can understand usage of SSDs on big databases and servers which serves to improve the performance of website or something
But i fail to understand why vendors try and push SSDs onto PCs. Ok it will make boot faster. How many people shutdown their machine in first place ?
Nowadays the desktop machines are very fast as it is with multiple cores and huge(8 and 16 GBs) and efficient rams(sdam<ddr1<ddr2<ddr3)
Adding an ssd will maybe improve performance by a few milli seconds!
On 2012-12-27 13:36, vazhavandan wrote:
>
> I can understand usage of SSDs on big databases and servers which serves
> to improve the performance of website or something
> But i fail to understand why vendors try and push SSDs onto PCs. Ok it
> will make boot faster. How many people shutdown their machine in first
> place ?
> Nowadays the desktop machines are very fast as it is with multiple
> cores and huge(8 and 16 GBs) and efficient rams(sdam<ddr1<ddr2<ddr3)
> Adding an ssd will maybe improve performance by a few milli seconds!
Yes, machines are very fast nowdays, but hard disks are not much faster
today than a decade ago, access time is around the same or worse (bigger
disks).
That laptop has an hybrid system, hard disk and ssd. Things frequently
retrieved are stored on the SSD for faster access, automatically. This
is a type of software raid that Windows has and Linux doesn’t.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
but hard disks are not much faster
today than a decade ago, access time is around the same or worse (bigger
disks).
But we have better access technology IDE < SATA
On 2012-12-27 20:16, vazhavandan wrote:
>
>> but hard disks are not much faster
>> today than a decade ago, access time is around the same or worse
>> (bigger disks).
> But we have better access technology IDE < SATA
True. It is possible to transfer more data per second. The disks are
still mechanical devices, with huge capacities, but we are not seeing
advances like multiple reading heads per enclosure, so that access speed
is duplicated or triplicated.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
Hi untarnished !
After all I read, the SSD is being used as a cache in such systems.
Such a system usually is set up as some special kind of RAID.
But different from a cache in RAM, the changes that took place by means of writes
are not necessarily written to the (large) hard disk at the time of shutdown,
because different from RAM, the SSD stores the data permanently,
i.e. even if power supply is cut.
Linux until present does not provide support for this kind of setup.
Period.
As a result, using the SSD as a separate drive under Linux then is impossible.
And changing contents of the (large) hard disk using a Linux operating system
(like openSUSE etc.) may even render your hard disk unreadable
- it can on principle happen that Linux would change contents on the (large) hard disk
that already aren’t valid anymore, or change data of file sizes that
differ from those on the SSD.
But what happens next, if windows is booted again and the contents of the hard disk
are no longer coherent to the contents of the SSD ?
Not nice but true.
So in consequence, installing any Linux on such a system is not recommended - at least as long as
you want to keep your installation of Windows 8 with the SSD cache setup.
Read well again the posting of malcolmlewis in this thread:
As can easily be seen, this setup is one without any windows (7 or 8, regardless),
but a setup in which the SSD is accessed as a separate drive, like a first hard disk
- and not, in any way, as a special cache drive in a special RAID configuration
usable by windows only !
Don’t bother about UEFI boot etc.
These are completely other topics.
To say it again in other simple words:
As long as you want to keep using your windows 8 in it’s current configuration
with the SSD used as a cache you should clearly abstain from using any Linux on the same machine,
as long as Linux doesn’t support this special setup too.
That’s it.
Mike
I would greatly appreciate advice on what should be the best way for me to partition both of my storage devices (one traditional 1 TB HD + one 32 GB SSD) during the OpenSUSE installation (i.e., in the Custom partitioning section). I changed my mind concerning preserving the pre-installed Windows 8, and decided to configure both storage devices from zero, meaning I will setup and finish configuring OpenSUSE first, setting aside about 50 GB in the main HD for Windows 7, which I plan to install later.
For me the first thing I would want to see is the output of
su -
fdisk -l
I think this is using what I believe to be called something like “windows fast boot”, I have no experience with it, but from windows can you alter the amount of space available to “fast boot” ?
“fast boot” is an option that does not need to be used, on installing windows you could choose not to use it, if Linux is your primary system you could then make good use of the SSD for for “/” and possibly also “/swap”.
If, as has been suggested, opting to use “fast boot” does mean you can not install other OSes, you then need to decide weather or not “fast boot” is worth it.
I changed my mind concerning preserving the pre-installed Windows 8, and decided to configure both storage devices from zero, meaning I will setup and finish configuring OpenSUSE first, setting aside about 50 GB in the main HD for Windows 7, which I plan to install later.
For your situation, I believe this to be the best course of action, boot loaders can be sorted out latter.
The fdisk -l output requested is the first step, with UEFI and GPT we are likely to ask for output from further commands