What should I format my SSD with?


 
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# 1  
Old 10-28-2014
What should I format my SSD with?

Hello All,

I recently received a new SSD that I am going to use for the purpose of Booting Virtual Machines. I use VMWare Player to boot Windows Guest Operating Systems onto my Linux Laptop.

I currently have a SSD drive that I use for this exact same purpose that is formatted as ext3 and I'm wondering if I should format the new one with this same format? Is there preferred format to use for booting Virtual Machines? My current SSD has some age to it and is only 128 GB, and my new one is 256 GB.

Not sure if it's my OS or the drive itself or even the age of the Disk, but almost everyday palimpsest, *i.e. OpenSuSE's Disk Utility program, warns me about errors/issues in the SMART data. Usually if I go into the program and refresh the SMART data for that drive the error(s) go away so I'm not sure if the program is just not geared toward SSDs since some of the errors I don't think apply to SSD drives, like errors for SpinUp Time since SSD's have no moving parts, or even Head Flying Hours since SSD's don't have that either. Which is why I thought it was strange I would get errors on those specific things...

But anyway, what would be a preferred formatting option for an External SSD that will contain and run Virtual Machines from..?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated!

Thanks in Advance,
Matt
# 2  
Old 10-28-2014
SMART statistics are just index numbers. The drive doesn't actually tell the computer "flying head time is too long", it just spits out some numbers -- a test number, a value, and the acceptable ranges(so your program doesn't have to know what it is to know it's bad). So, whatever test number "flying head hours" is may mean something totally different for your SSD. Look up the manual for your drive or ask the manufacturer.

I reccomend ext4 over ext3 for heavy-duty things since it's faster for large partitions (ever tried to fsck a 100GB ext3 partition? Takes a while). Also, it can be defragmented without unmounting it, which could end up being very important for the long-term performance of your virtual machines.

Otherwise, making a filesystem work well with an ssd is mostly about fine-tuning it to match its block sizes and boundaries. If you get it wrong, it won't explode, but performance might be just slightly worse. See SSD - Gentoo Wiki for some general advice.

Also, an fstrim once in a while is good for the SSD, it helps wear-levelling work better by informing the SSD which blocks it doesn't have to care about anymore. See the wiki again for that.

Last edited by Corona688; 10-28-2014 at 05:39 PM..
This User Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
# 3  
Old 10-28-2014
Great Info Corona, thanks for the reply..!

Ok cool, you definitely told me quite a few things I wasn't aware of for SSDs before... When you said the ext4 doesn't need to be unmounted in order to defrag it. Do you mean you can Defrag it from within the Windows VM while its booted up? Or is that from within my Linux Host OS, *i.e. my laptop's Linux OS? Sorry, I don't think I've ever tried to defragment a Disk before from within Linux, done it on Windows many many times, just never with Linux.

Thanks again for the reply, much appreciated!

Thanks Again,
Matt
# 4  
Old 10-28-2014
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corona688
SMART statistics are just index numbers. The drive doesn't actually tell the computer "flying head time is too long", it just spits out some numbers -- a test number, a value, and the acceptable ranges(so your program doesn't have to know what it is to know it's bad). So, whatever test number "flying head hours" is may mean something totally different for your SSD. Look up the manual for your drive or ask the manufacturer.

I reccomend ext4 over ext3 for heavy-duty things since it's faster for large partitions (ever tried to fsck a 100GB ext3 partition? Takes a while). Also, it can be defragmented without unmounting it, which could end up being very important for the long-term performance of your virtual machines.

Otherwise, making a filesystem work well with an ssd is mostly about fine-tuning it to match its block sizes and boundaries. If you get it wrong, it won't explode, but performance might be just slightly worse. See SSD - Gentoo Wiki for some general advice.

Also, an fstrim once in a while is good for the SSD, it helps wear-levelling work better by informing the SSD which blocks it doesn't have to care about anymore. See the wiki again for that.
Except that defragging really doesn't matter for SSDs because without a head to seek, non-contiguous access is the same as contiguous access. Smilie
This User Gave Thanks to achenle For This Post:
 
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