Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

miharkula · 2017-03-10 03:31:52

My PC has a hybrid 2 TB drive that has a 32 GB "SSD". The 32 GB has gone mostly unused since dumping windows. I could probably install all of bunsenlabs on that drive but eventually it would run out of space so I thought I would ask. Anyone have suggestions as to what partitions to have on the SSD?

Steve · 2017-03-10 06:34:31

Id leave windows dormant on part of the ssd in case you have technical dificulties with the motherboard/bios or something like that(if it is sold as a windows machine). Im not sure what a hybrid drive is but couldnt you symlink the 2tb drives partitions into say a 500 GB home drive to the ssd root?

Last edited by Steve (2017-03-10 06:37:09)

damo · 2017-03-10 09:32:50

My preference is to install BL to a single partition, and symlink /home/dirs to a separate data partition. That enables sharing data between different OS's, and makes reinstallation easy.

miharkula · 2017-03-10 13:56:59

Thanks for the replies all.

Regarding Windows comment, I completely removed Windows on my computer awhile ago so its not going back on. I've thought of converting my 2 drives setup as NTFS over to a linux type but I don't have anywhere to move the files while I do that (they are both basically used as backup drives).

Not sure I have used XFS before. I usually just let the installer auto configure the drive and only thing I ever do is tell it to use LVM or not.

Would having /boot on the SSD be beneficial or should it just be on the HDD also?

damo · 2017-03-10 15:50:21

earlybird wrote:

damo wrote:
My preference is to install BL to a single partition, and symlink /home/dirs to a separate data partition. That enables sharing data between different OS's, and makes reinstallation easy.
Symlinks? Why not mount the data partition at /home?

Because then I couldn't use the same ~/documents, ~/dropbox, ~/images, ~/videos etc when multi-booting. The data partition doesn't have any configs or dotfiles. If I reinstall or try a different distro, I just set up the symlinks again.

DangerousDave · 2017-03-14 18:52:19

Hi, I'm confused that the SSD portion of the hybrid drive is displaying as separate in the Partition Manager. Hybrid drives work by having a massive Cache supplied by a non-volatile SSD. The logic for deciding what is stored on the SSD resides on the Hard Drive, the OS and user should only see a single device. Their operation is outlined in this PCWorld article:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2012223/ … atter.html

Hope this helps, I was hoping to buy a hybrid drive for my old laptop now that prices are rock bottom. But now I'm not so sure . . .

Steve · 2017-03-15 07:24:11

It would be interesting to see a gparted screenshot of this hybrid drive Dangerousdave. Pretty sure they would show up as seperate drives but it sounds like the firmware is the key in making it work as one.

Apparently there are patches for the linux kernel to use these drives abilities for something called host hinting.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= … px=MTgyNTg

http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kern … 04551.html

https://lwn.net/Articles/618489/

DangerousDave · 2017-03-15 15:51:23

Yes. Maybe the OP could provide one.

I assume BL has all the required hooks and optimisations to make use of these hints? :-)

miharkula · 2017-03-15 22:41:49

They show up as separate drives in both BIOS and inside linux. The "SSD" part shows up as sdb (sda is the other part of the drive)

Gparted screenshot:

---Mod edit: fixed the embed code for you --

Last edited by damo (2017-03-16 01:02:57)

damo · 2017-03-16 00:13:39

^ 403 Forbidden

Either make it a Public share, or upload to a free image hoster. Have a read of the opening post in the Artworks/Screenshots sub-forum for a HowTo...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 304#p46304

NB Use a linked thumbnail please, not a large screenshot image

miharkula · 2017-03-16 00:46:00

That's odd..it is a shareable link. I'll have to check it again.

EDIT: guess it only works for the link they give you and not the image it links to.

EDIT2: Its only a 32k image so I didn't know there would be an issue linking to it.

Last edited by miharkula (2017-03-16 00:49:39)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2017-03-16 07:28:09

DangerousDave wrote:

I assume BL has all the required hooks and optimisations to make use of these hints?

From the linked Phoronix article:

Jason Akers published the Linux SSHD kernel patches this week on the kernel mailing list and hopefully they'll be finalized in time for merging with the Linux 3.19 kernel.

Stock BunsenLabs (Hydrogen) uses a (patched) 3.16-series kernel, to take advantage of SSHDs perhaps try a newer kernel version from the jessie-backports repository.

tynman · 2017-03-16 14:14:32

The screen shot from gparted shows 4 drives, not one drive with two partitions, which is what I expected to see from the discussion so far. (Reviewing the thread, I see nobody has actually said that, so I am inferring this out of thin air.)

For a drive sold as a "2 TB" drive, one would expect it to show up in Linux as 1.82 TB, due to the misleading math used by drive manufacturers when they size their drives in their specs. (i.e., 2,000,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 /1024 1024 = 1.818989403545856) . And gparted is showing /dev/sda as 1.81 tib.

None of the linked articles here about the capabilities in the Linux kernel to support the hinting feature for SSHDs suggest that a given SSHD drive would show up in Linux as two drives, or as two drive partitions.

So can anyone explain what we see in the gparted screenshot? My explanation would be that miharkula's computer has a discrete 30 gb drive installed -- although I don't know where you would obtain a 30 gb drive these days. EDIT: Maybe a USB thumb drive?

Last edited by tynman (2017-03-16 14:15:54)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2017-03-16 19:54:01

tynman wrote:

So can anyone explain what we see in the gparted screenshot?

Nope

Never trust a GUI...

@OP: can we see the output of:

sudo parted --list

EDIT: please also explain the disposition of your storage devices.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2017-03-16 19:54:50)

miharkula · 2017-03-16 22:37:45

What is showing as sda and sdb is 1 physical drive (at least from appearance). I have no idea what it looks like inside the drive. The other 2 drives (2TB and 3TB) are external (or atleast used to be as I took the 2TB one out of its case and made it an internal one).

Model: ATA ST2000DM001-9YN1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
 2      1049kB  1976GB  1976GB  primary   ext4
 1      1976GB  2000GB  24.0GB  extended
 5      1976GB  2000GB  24.0GB  logical   linux-swap(v1)


Model: ATA SAMSUNG SSD PM83 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 32.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  32.0GB  32.0GB  primary  ext4         boot


Model: ATA ST2000DL003-9VT1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  2000GB  2000GB  primary  ntfs


Model: WD My Book 1140 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 3001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  3001GB  3001GB  primary  ntfs

Last edited by miharkula (2017-03-16 22:38:20)

Steve · 2017-03-17 00:10:39

I had a feeling sdc and sdd are external drives. So to get the benefits from the SSHD one would need to use a later linux kernel than the one currently within BL.

Last edited by Steve (2017-03-17 00:13:13)

#1 2017-03-10 03:31:52

Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#2 2017-03-10 06:34:31

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#3 2017-03-10 09:32:50

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#4 2017-03-10 13:56:59

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#5 2017-03-10 15:50:21

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#6 2017-03-14 18:52:19

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#7 2017-03-15 07:24:11

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#8 2017-03-15 15:51:23

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#9 2017-03-15 22:41:49

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#10 2017-03-16 00:13:39

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#11 2017-03-16 00:46:00

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#12 2017-03-16 07:28:09

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#13 2017-03-16 14:14:32

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#14 2017-03-16 19:54:01

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#15 2017-03-16 22:37:45

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

#16 2017-03-17 00:10:39

Re: Partition Suggestion Request - Hybrid drive

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