Install packages/programs to an other drive, possible?

**Bufeu** · July 24th, 2012

The problem is that I want to have some program on the HDD and some on the SSD.

**gordintoronto** · July 24th, 2012

Originally Posted by Bufeu

The problem is that I want to have some program on the HDD and some on the SSD.

The Linux Way is to have your root (/) on the SSD, and /home on the mechanical drive.

I have quite a few programs installed beyond a basic installation, and my root is less than 6 GB. Even a small SSD is much larger than this.

Programs just aren't that big! Media, on the other hand...

**Bufeu** · July 24th, 2012

Originally Posted by gordintoronto

The Linux Way is to have your root (/) on the SSD, and /home on the mechanical drive.

I have quite a few programs installed beyond a basic installation, and my root is less than 6 GB. Even a small SSD is much larger than this.

Programs just aren't that big! Media, on the other hand...

But I mean... Temporary files then? A SSD can only handle a certain number of writes...

**Cheesemill** · July 24th, 2012

There are a couple of steps that can be used to tune an SSD system...

1 - Add the discard and noatime options to your /etc/fstab file.

The discard option enables trim support whereas the noatime option disables the write that usually happens every time a file is accessed.

2 - Move /tmp to a RAMdisk.

If you have a large amount of RAM then you can mount /tmp in RAM instead of using a physical drive. This also cuts down on the number of writes to your SSD.

3 - Have swap on a physical drive.

This will also cut down on the number of unnecessary disk writes.

Some research for you:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1981478
http://www.howtogeek.com/62761/how-t...r-performance/
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

**Bufeu** · July 24th, 2012

2. Of course, I can move /tmp to a partition on my HDD?

3. Do I really need a swap (I have 8 GB RAM)?

**Cheesemill** · July 24th, 2012

Originally Posted by Bufeu

2. Of course, I can move /tmp to a partition on my HDD?

Of course.

3. Do I really need a swap (I have 8 GB RAM)?

You don't have to. I just have a swap partition the same size as my RAM (12GB) for the few occasions that I hibernate, space on my HD is cheap and plentiful

**Bufeu** · July 24th, 2012

So you mean the programs will not be so big so it's necessary to move program by program to the HDD (in other words, can all programs be installed on the SSD without too many writes?)