Re: [tlug] Memory upgrade and CPU bit-width question

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

Hi Dave,


On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 8:49 AM, David J Iannucci
<jlinux@example.com> wrote:
> So now, because I've also got a sweet new SSD, I'm just gonna do a fresh
> install of Gentoo onto the SSD and make it a 64-bit system all at once.
> Can't wait for the result :=)
>
> Anyone who has read this far and has hints and dos-and-donts related
> to any of this, esp. the transition to SSD, I'd be very grateful to
> hear them!


I am many years out of date with respect to SSDs, but when they first
came out, they were known to not be very reliable in terms of the
number of reads and writes before failure.  I think they are still not
as good as hard disks, but whether or not they are "noticeably" worse
than hard disks, I don't know any more.  (A salesperson corrected me
recently by saying that SSDs aren't that bad, but then again, he was a
salesperson and trying to sell a computer with SSDs to me!  He failed.
:-)  )

I'd like to hear what others here with recent hardware experience
says.  But if it is true, then you probably want to avoid having the
SSD store any partition that has a lot of reads and writes.  For
example, the swap partition or /tmp might be bad choices.  /bin might
be better.

Also, if SSDs do fail easier, then you don't want the SSD failing to
result in a non-bootable system.  Maybe you want to copy important
parts from the SSD to the hard disk and, if the SSD fails, then change
the paths to the relevant mounted partitions in /etc/fstab to recover
your system "quickly".

Just a thought (or two)...

Ray