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 I have looked at [Multi HDD/SSD Partitioning Scheme][] but it is too complex and probably outdated (last modified 2013-10-17).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