Ubuntu 9.10 on SSD
Productivity Sauce
I've been thinking about replacing the hard disk on my production notebook with a solid-state disk (SSD) for quite a while. So when I stumbled upon a good offer on Kingston 64GB SSDNow V series SSD I decided to take the plunge. 64GB is a far cry from the modest by today's standards 160GB hard disk on my notebook. But since I store all my files on a Bubba Two server, I rarely use more than 15-20GB anyway. The Kingston 64GB SSDNow V series SSD model is available in several versions, including a so-called notebook kit. It's slightly more expensive than the disk itself, but it's well worth a few extra bucks. The notebook kit includes hard disk cloning software (which is, obviously, of no use on Linux) and a hard disk enclosure. The latter is a very handy addition, as you can use it to convert the replaced hard disk into an external USB drive. So I pulled the old hard disk out of the notebook, inserted it into the enclosure, and moved files and profiles to the freshly installed SSD. The entire procedure of installing the SSD and moving the files took no longer than half an hour.
While I was hoping to get a slight speed boost, my expectations weren't very high: the Kingston V-series SSD is designed for the consumer market and the disk offers relatively modest read/write speeds. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when the Ubuntu 9.10's installer zoomed through the installation process in about 10 minutes -- almost twice as fast as with the old hard disk. And I was completely blown away by how fast my notebook booted into Ubuntu 9.10 -- it took about 10-15 seconds. Still skeptical, I launched OpenOffice.org. Yep, it started noticeably faster than before. I haven't done any scientific measurements, but I can say that switching to the SSD disk has had a more significant impact on the system's performance than doubling the amount of RAM.
So if you are considering replacing the conventional hard disk on your machine with an SSD, I say go for it. Before you make the move, though, you might want to do some research to find the SSD model that fits your needs and budget.
Comments
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Canonical Releases Ubuntu 24.04
After a brief pause because of the XZ vulnerability, Ubuntu 24.04 is now available for install.
-
Linux Servers Targeted by Akira Ransomware
A group of bad actors who have already extorted $42 million have their sights set on the Linux platform.
-
TUXEDO Computers Unveils Linux Laptop Featuring AMD Ryzen CPU
This latest release is the first laptop to include the new CPU from Ryzen and Linux preinstalled.
-
XZ Gets the All-Clear
The back door xz vulnerability has been officially reverted for Fedora 40 and versions 38 and 39 were never affected.
-
Canonical Collaborates with Qualcomm on New Venture
This new joint effort is geared toward bringing Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core to Qualcomm-powered devices.
-
Kodi 21.0 Open-Source Entertainment Hub Released
After a year of development, the award-winning Kodi cross-platform, media center software is now available with many new additions and improvements.
-
Linux Usage Increases in Two Key Areas
If market share is your thing, you'll be happy to know that Linux is on the rise in two areas that, if they keep climbing, could have serious meaning for Linux's future.
-
Vulnerability Discovered in xz Libraries
An urgent alert for Fedora 40 has been posted and users should pay attention.
-
Canonical Bumps LTS Support to 12 years
If you're worried that your Ubuntu LTS release won't be supported long enough to last, Canonical has a surprise for you in the form of 12 years of security coverage.
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.
Ubuntu on SSD
There are various blog posts and tutorials out there for fine tuning SSD performance, primarily by reducing swappiness, and aligning SSD memory block size to "cylinder" boundaries. In my experience, they offer modest performance improvemenst, on the order of 5-10% -- hardly worth the effort.
There have been a flurry of articles/posts since mid-November on further speed improvements from a ~200 line kernel patch, OR, a few very small modifications. For example: http://www.webupd8.org/2010...to-200-lines-kernel-patch.html
This works!
Thanks to the cumulative effect of all these changes, my little netbook is now faster at most day-to-day tasks than my desktop iMac.
need help !
The SSD is in its USB box, i've got somme dmesg errors and somes stuff with lsusb
Some help ?
dmesg :
usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[947418.386910] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[947418.391368] scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[947418.391955] usb-storage: device found at 4
[947418.391970] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[947423.389383] usb-storage: device scan complete
[947423.390065] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access PI-291 FCR-HS2SATA 1.04 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
[947423.392415] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[947423.413366] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 250069680 512-byte logical blocks: (128 GB/119 GiB)
[947423.417578] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[947423.417591] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[947423.417599] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[947423.424486] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[947423.424506] sdc:
[947423.429620] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[947423.429636] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current]
[947423.429650] Info fld=0x0
[947423.429656] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Add. Sense: Logical block address out of range
[947423.429670] end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0
[947423.429682] __ratelimit: 22 callbacks suppressed
[947423.429690] Buffer I/O error on device sdc, logical block 0
[947423.431751] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[947423.431768] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current]
[947423.431782] Info fld=0x0
[947423.431788] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Add. Sense: Logical block address out of range
[947423.431802] end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0
[947423.431817] Buffer I/O error on device sdc, logical block 0
[947423.437488] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[947423.437504] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current]
[947423.437519] Info fld=0x0
.......
lsusb => (cf Initio)
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 13fd:1840 Initio Corporation
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:0158 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Mass Stroage Device
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Any idea? I'll appreciate.
Access times vs throughput
SSD's have ridiculously low access times, which speeds everything up significantly.
Even if they don't have a very high throughput.
btrfs
Power consumption
If your aim is power saving with speed secondary, then get 40G drive.
And you may say "Well, it takes the same number of cycles to write a 3 GB file no matter what the speed, so the same energy is drained from the battery" . This is true, but the 40G also has lower idle power consumption, simply due to less memory to leak power in the idle state.
Get over the anxiety
Furthermore, what I did later was to replace the Ubuntu with Fedora 11, in the process wiping out the wasted 5GB of wasted rescue partition that Dell sent it with. So really, Ubuntu did quite fine with the 11GB it had to work with. I am not seeing any issues with boot or shutdown times.
testing speeds
Mounting SSD drives
I have a 16GB SSD on my Dell Mini-9 netbook, and set this option when I installed UNR.
SSD
SSD's rock
I installed Linux and the Boot loader to the SSD and use my old 500gb magnetic drive as my my home drive.
It boots really, really fast.
I should have only bought a 32gb drive though instead of the big expensive one I bought.
What about battery life?
TIA
SSD
Tweaking