I'm moving over to Linux for my gaming and I've got a bit of a unique setup. I've got an old SATA SSD around 110GB and a much larger hard drive of about 930GB. Right now, I can't upgrade my hardware, so I'm trying to figure out the best storage configuration. I'm used to Windows where I have an OS on the C drive and other installations on the D drive. I know Linux has a different structure with root and home directories, so can I install programs exactly where I want?
My idea is to use the larger hard drive for the OS with both root and home directories, then only put a few games on the SSD for better performance. Is that a practical choice for Linux? Will there be any issues using a hard drive for root? I understand it might be slower with applications launching, but I'm okay with that. Do modern Linux distros expect SSD speeds? Will games on the hard drive run slower than those on the SSD? Alternatively, could I install the OS on the SSD while having the root on the hard drive? And what about wear on the SSD with constant updates, especially if I go with a frequently updated distro like Cachy?
2 Answers
I think what you’re proposing can work, and here’s my take: I'd suggest setting your root (/) on the SSD. It’ll give you the best speeds for the OS and programs, and then you can put /home and /usr/share on the hard drive since those aren’t as performance-sensitive. As for swap, you might not need a separate partition; using zswap could be a good alternative since it compresses data in RAM and would let you use your resources efficiently. Just be careful with game installations—if you’ll use Wine, make sure to configure its C: drive in root. Lots of users prefer keeping the active parts on the SSD to avoid bottlenecks.
You’re on the right track thinking about HDD and SSD use. If you’re primarily using the hard drive for data and not too intensive apps, going for ext4 is typically recommended. Btrfs has great features like snapshots, but if it’s just for music and videos, ext4 will perform just fine without the overhead of snapshot management. It keeps things simple and efficient!
Is zswap the kind of setup where you have both RAM and some compressed cache before hitting the swap space? I thought you still need to set up a swap partition, even if it's small, to make this work. Shouldn’t I have a little swap set up then?