SSD's to boot.

[cfx795]

I ordered a $35 SSD - DREVO X1 PRO 64GB. Not the end game for me, but if it works properly, I imagine it's still loads faster than this 40GB WD HDD, that is about 12yrs old - which simultaneously works fine, is relatively quiet, and is slower than molasses. (click on your browser after initial boot = can you hold?) I get that this SSD is no Samsung, but then I didn't pay Samsung prices for it, either. Nor am I particularly concerned about the longevity of the drive. If it lasts for the duration of its 3yr warranty, I'm probably down with that. If it lasts much longer, I'm especially down with that. The reality is that I just don't have a lot of important files, where if I lose them, I'm devastated. I ordered the SSD from the DREVO Store, which... well, I really didn't quite grasp when I ordered it that it looks to be a Chinese warehouse. I think. Hard to tell. 3-5days to process the order, and 7-20 to ship. Yikes. Should have done better research on that, but I guess I'm not in a hurry. Good thing, huh? I should have ordered it from some domestic seller/retailer.

I've read a couple reviews of this SSD. Well, one was specifically for the 64GB SSD, and I think the other was for the 240GB model. But both of them were largely positive. Not glowing, but like hey, at this price... More or less the gist was "not really a top performer, but solidly built..." The one review they took it apart and looked inside, etc.

Anyway. We'll see how it goes. If it's a mistake, then so be it, I still like to tinker with components and try things and sometimes you win and other times... yeah. Not so much.

So if the SSD ever gets here (it might) and it works (it might!) then maybe I'll get, say, a WD Blue 1TB HDD for storage. Or 2TB. Something. My question for our resident tech gurus is... there's a way to format these two drives, like in tandem, so one's boot and the other's storage, right? Remind me how I do that again? Seems like if I did that, and my SSD was "strickly" system boot, don't you think my SSD might last a while?

Would the HDD still be a drag on the rest of the system?

[PCNetSpec]

Easiest method would be to follow this tutorial:
https://forum.peppermintos.com/index.php/topic,1835.0.html

but where that tutorial has the DATA partitoon on the same drive as the OS, instead have the DATA partition on the HDD

so basically install Peppermint onto your shiny new SSD as normal .. then add the HDD and format it with a single large partition .. then follow the tutorial using the partition on the HDD as the DATA partition.

Would the HDD still be a drag on the rest of the system?

Only when loading something like a doc/pic/video/music into an app .. the app itself will load from the SSD, but the file you load into it would come from the HDD which in general is plenty fast for simply reading data files .. so the short answer is NO (or not that you'd notice).

[cfx795]

Thanks, Mark! I'll likely have ample time to think this over - hah hah. My SSD appears to be on the slow boat from China...

[VinDSL]

So basically install Peppermint onto your shiny new SSD as normal .. then add the HDD and format it with a single large partition ..

I'm as lazy as the next guy. That's as far as I go. And a couple of more steps ...

Then ... open 'Disks' and name the drive ... then have 'Disks' set it to auto-mount at boot. Done.





I had 1000's of podcasts, going back to 2011, spread across multiple machines. I needed somewhere to archive them on 1 machine. Also, I needed to find a place to locally store my sync'ed MEGASync downloads and uploads. Between those 2 things, I was dangerously close to running out of space on my Peppermint 7 install.

Sure, I could have shuffled the deck, and sliced n' diced it with symlinks, but it was easier to throw a second HDD in this machine and call it a day.

The only complexity I ran across was config'ing MEGASync to sync to/from the secondary drive, instead of the primary drive. And, getting Guayadeque to index the saved podcasts, once I added more files to the existing DB. Anyway, that has more to do with anomalies in these 2 apps, not the way the HDD was provisioned.

So, there's a lazy man's way of doing it ... 

[cfx795]

Oh boy. Prolly best that my SSD is gonna take a while to ship... hah hah. I'll need time to digest this. Thanks.

[PCNetSpec]

Oh yeah, missed that step, you'll want to automount the DATA partition on the HDD at boot time, but that's pretty easy.

In fact it's all pretty easy, it just looks complicated when you're looking at a wall of text.

It can all be done in steps, so there's no need to panic .. simply start by replacing the current HDD with the SSD and do a standard installation of Peppermint.

Then we can move on to adding a HDD back in....

[VinDSL]

'Disks' make it stupid simple. It's a great lazy man tool. 

Use it to 'Edit Mount Options...', click a few boxes, enter a 'Display Name', and you're done.

[PCNetSpec]

Yep, probably gonna use disks to answer this:
https://forum.peppermintos.com/index.php/topic,6193.msg62752.html#msg62752
rather than talking the guy through manual fstab entries.

[cfx795]

OK thanks. I know what you are talking about, now - disks. That actually looks familiar. But I think my SSD is literally on the slow boat from China. I tried to cxl the thing because of the long shipping estimate, but I think it may have already shipped. I think 3-5days for an order to ship is a bit much in this digital age, but maybe I'm spoiled with the likes of Newegg, et al.  If I order an HDD it'll be a domestic retailer, I won't make the same mistake twice. It may be a couple weeks before I actually have the thing. What you've presented there does look pretty straightforward... thanks.

EDIT: Maybe 1TB or 2TB HDD. I probably don't need 2TB but they are generally only $20 more than 1TB.

[VinDSL]

OK thanks. I know what you are talking about, now - disks [...]

Maybe 1TB or 2TB HDD. I probably don't need 2TB but they are generally only $20 more than 1TB

'Disks' is a drive/media management app. It's included with Peppermint, in the Menu (under 'Preferences'). Should have mentioned that.

And, as far as the size is concerned, I'd go with the biggest HDD(s) I could afford. Plus, big drives will open up a few more options for you.

For instance, I have 2 x 2TB HDDs striped together a RAID config, in my NAS.

Never know when you might want to do something like that, and it doesn't hurt to have some big drives around... 

[PCNetSpec]

Striped (RAID-0)....

I've gone with 2x4TB mirrored (RAID-1) .. mirroring for protection against drive failure was the reason i went for the dual-bay.

[VinDSL]

Striped ?

I've gone with 2x4GB mirrored .. mirroring for protection against drive failure was the reason i went for the dual-bay.

Just pulled a drive out - you're right - I have 2 x 4TB HDDs.

You only have 2 x 4GB drives in yours 

[VinDSL]

n/m 

I see that was a typo.

Glad to see you do that too. LoL!   

Now, you have me wondering. I'm going to go to the CP and check my config.

[PCNetSpec]

Yeah edited
(if I only had 2x4GB i'd definitely have gone for RAID-0 striping )

I went for RAID-1 because with my old single bay drive I always worried that I'd loose everything if the drive died .. you start to worry when it gets to around 5 years old

Not worried now, there's little chance of them both going at the same time .. and I have another backup of the important stuff as well 'just in case'.

[PCNetSpec]

I'm pretty sure OOTB the ReadyNAS is configured for RAID-1 mirroring.