[ltp] Re: T520: Proposal for SSD

Theodore Ts'o linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Wed, 9 Oct 2013 20:32:17 -0400


On Wed, Oct 09, 2013 at 09:50:03PM +0200, Philipp Kern wrote:
> 
> MSATA is in the WAN port, not WiFi. My early Intel MSATA SSD was a quiet bad
> decision (does not sustain load). But maybe newer ones are better. (And it was
> hard to squeeze into the space of my T420 given that the antennas need to be
> put somewhere.)

I've not had a problem with even the early Intel mSATA SSD's, although
what I tended to do was to keep my kernel git trees on the SSD, but
put the object files on an HDD --- since asynchronous writes to an HDD
aren't a significant performance problem, and the object files take up
a lot more space and tend change more frequently than the source
files.  (i.e., I could make a small change to a header file that
requires rebuilding all or most of the .o files).

If you are trying to put a transaction processing database on an Intel
mSATA device, I could easily see how that might not end well.  Like
all things, it depends on your workload.

These days, I'm using a T430s with a 240GB Intel mSATA disk, a SamSung
830 Pro 480GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD in the ultrabay slot.  I'm a storage
geek; can you tell?

I'm very sad that future Lenovo laptops don't look like they'll have
room for a mSATA SSD, a 2.5" SSD, and an ultrabay slot for an HDD.

					- Ted