Congratulations on your new system, Myles!
I think in time, you'll be glad you purchased the 240 GB version instead of the 120. Things have a way of changing contrary to our expectations.
Knowing that needs vary with the individual, I'm going to make some suggestions based on my viewpoint, and it may not be consistent with yours, but here goes:
1. Since you're in a mixed environment (SSD and HDD), it might be advisable if you could create your /home partition on the SSD and keep the photos and other media files on the HDD (for example, establish a /data partition on the HDD).
That would provide the advantage of being able to format /home on a version upgrade using the clean-install method if you needed to "freshen" the application and system configuration files stored in /home, without worrying about having to backup-restore your media files. Normally, you would not want to format /home, but sometimes it becomes necessary when something has become corrupted. Rather than debug it, it's just easier/quicker to format /home during the clean installation upgrade.
Therefore, you'd have free choice on a clean-install version upgrade to either not format /home (and save your configs, documents, bookmarks, and e-mail stored locally), or let it be formatted (albeit with the need to backup-restore docs, bookmarks, and e-mail data and reconfigure any desktop modifications and all the application program configuration revisions), but sometimes it's necessary if something in /home is causing a problem, as happens occasionally.
2. SSD failure due to excessive writes: There are many articles on the subject and of course it varies by not just how the person uses it, but by the type of flash memory used and the controller firmware. The problem is that it usually occurs suddenly without warning, and might cause a lot of grief! However, even HDD's fail, often without warning and prematurely, so that part's not different.
The best thing you can do is to minimize the writing; and moving the media files to your HDD is one way. Another is to establish a /swap file in RAM (in addition to the one on your drive (much, MUCH faster!), and set the "swappiness" to 0 (will only swap if out of RAM occurs), that's the way I've been running for more than 2 and half months; and with several applications running (e-mail, 2 open tabs in Chrome, YouTube video playing), the most Total RAM usage I've ever seen was 1.5 GB; normally, it's 778 MB at desktop only, and 1.1 GB with 3 tabs open in Chrome as I'm typing this now (that's Total RAM usage including the swap file, /tmp, and several other system files I moved to RAM).
With 8 GB of RAM, you may never use the /swap on the drive, unless you use hibernate, and even then maybe not (monitor the swap file usage to verify). Also, I wrote that the swap file allocation on my drive is 3.8 (not 2.8) GB. A swap file size of 4 GB is the amount recommended for 8 GB of RAM. I requested 4 GB in the partitioning section of the Mageia installation, but it resulted in 3.8 GB. It may have something to do with Mageia wanting to keep the next partition aligned on a number divisible by 2048 which is mandatory for an SSD; not sure though. I could have then continued to ask for an amount slightly more than 4 GB until it ended up giving me 4 or more, but now that I'm not seeing the swap partition on the SSD ever being used (I don't use hibernate), 3.8 was plenty enough.
Here's a quote on the subject:
<Quote>
Red Hat Recommendation
Red hat recommends setting as follows for RHEL 5:
The reality is the amount of swap space a system needs is not really a function of the amount of RAM it has but rather the memory workload that is running on that system. A Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system will run just fine with no swap space at all as long as the sum of anonymous memory and system V shared memory is less than about 3/4 the amount of RAM. In this case the system will simply lock the anonymous and system V shared memory into RAM and use the remaining RAM for caching file system data so when memory is exhausted the kernel only reclaims pagecache memory.
Considering that 1) At installation time when configuring the swap space there is no easy way to predetermine the memory a workload will require, and 2) The more RAM a system has the less swap space it typically needs, a better swap space
Systems with 4GB of ram or less require a minimum of 2GB of swap space
Systems with 4GB to 16GB of ram require a minimum of 4GB of swap space
Systems with 16GB to 64GB of ram require a minimum of 8GB of swap space
Systems with 64GB to 256GB of ram require a minimum of 16GB of swap space
<End quote> Source:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-swap-space.htmlAnd don't forget to optimize the SSD usage by setting the "swappiness" at 0 (only swap when out or RAM), revise the scheduler to "deadline", enable the TRIM command, move /tmp to RAM if it isn't already there, and verify that all partitions begin on a location divisible by 2048 (those that don't will have the message: "Partition n (the specific partition number) does not start on physical sector boundary".
I hope this helps.
) as I use Windows - rarely - for some things, but Mageia is my main system. I certainly don't want "secure boot" enabled. Then I have 2 x 2Tb drives to hold data and my Mageia installs and maybe some other test Linux distros. So I will be re-partitioning the SSD and installing Mageia /boot (and /?) or something onto the SSD and the rest onto the 2TB drive/s.
I had to end up going with a 240Gb SanDisk Extreme SSD as the supplier didn't stock the 120Gb one I was going to get.
