[Discuss] I need a recommendation for a Linux-compatible high-end PC builder

[Murray Strome]

I have SSDs on some of my computers. I cannot say that the performance 
is enough better to warrant the extra cost. I bought the Samsung ones as 
they have a five year warranty. One failed (and of course, when they 
fail, it is not at all graceful -- they just instantly die). It took 
over a month to get a refund from Samsung. Unlike Western Digital or 
Seagate who both replace failed drives within warranty with no hassle, I 
had to first find my receipt, then ship the drive back to Samsung who 
then sent me a cheque in the amount I paid for it. Incidentally, the 
drive that failed was the one which I had used the least!  On the plus 
side for Samsung, they paid the shipping costs to return the drive; for 
the other vendors, you have to pay for that.

Murray


On 2018-01-25 07:55 PM, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> I am debating about whether to add an SSD to the large HDD I intend to
> order for my "dream machine". Of course, the big positive for SSD's
> versus HDD's is the former has reduced latency and typically higher
> throughput, but my thought is those advantages don't matter so much if
> you have lots of memory (64GB on my dream machine) where Linux already
> caches the heavily used files.  And, of course, the SSD advantages
> would be completely wasted for overnight testing.
>
> So right now I am leaning toward not adding an SSD since there appear
> to be some negatives with regard to SSD's such as
>
> * SSD's are roughly 8 times the cost per unit storage compared to
> enterprise class (e.g., 5-yr warranty) HD's.  For example, for roughly
> the same cost I could add an additional 4TB enterprise class HDD to my
> hardware package for the cost of a 0.5TB SSD.
>
> * Special configuration measures are needed to keep SSD's from wearing 
> out quickly from too many
> writes.
>
> * Deciding which part of your files you put on the SSD adds some
> partitioning and mounting complexity as well as some on-going
> complexity for users if the SSD is used for user-generated files. For
> example, if I configure both a fast (SSD) and a slow (HDD) partition
> which are write-accessible by ordinary user accounts, then the user
> has to decide which of those to use for a given workload.  For
> example, I would choose fast for a test where I wanted quick results.
> But my tests tend to generate ~5GB of files each time so I guess there
> is some potential of wearing out the SSD unless I am careful to only
> use it when needed, and, for example, use the slow partition instead
> for automatic tests done every night.
>
> Is the issue that I am not keeping up with Linux capabilities? For
> example, I have heard of a Linux kernel capability that uses the
> combination of SSD and HDD capabilities wisely (much like a combined
> SSD + HDD disk), but I have forgotten the name of this capability, and
> I don't know how easy that is to configure or how transparent it is
> for the user.  And if that works really well, maybe I could get away
> with a much smaller SSD?
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Alan