[mythtv-users] Mirroring root partition on SSD to a hard drive -- bad idea?

[Ben Kamen]

FWIW,

  My experience/usage with flash memory as a drive has been this:

I normally develop microcontroller firmware - we tend to be particularly aware of flash cell write endurance.

That being said, in any operating system like Linux where I've used solid state memory, it's been limited to ReadMostly operations like the root file system where the only time things are being written are OS updates or installing new software or the occasional config change.

I usually set up the file systems that do a lot of writing (like /var and /tmp) to a spindle. I've run systems for years like this -- (crossing fingers) -- so far, so good.

On the converse, I once in the past set up a system for a phD at a local engineering university where the root system was an SSD (against my recommendations) but warned the
scientist NOT to work the SSD with a lot of write operations.

He ignored me, and burned out the drive in about 3 months.

So far the setup I've been using at home has been working out -- but remember, wear leveling is supposed to compensate for any limitations in write endurance.

Wear leveling is a software feature.  And that's one avenue of potential failure that's of consideration.

So...  again, FWIW...

* SSD for pretty much read-mostly file system. Probably "OK".

* Spindles for file systems that get a lot of write "work-outs".


   -Ben