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I have a Lenovo U410 with a 1TB HDD (ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB) and a cache SSD (SanDisk SSD U100 24GB). I want to install Ubuntu 14.04 as the only operating system. I'm currently looking into the right way to use and partition the two drives.

I'm currently using a dual-boot system with Windows 8 where the Ubuntu partition uses 16GB on the HDD for the installation and has a different drive in common with Windows 8 for the home folder. I have found this 16GB to be on the limit since I have a lot of software installed. I therefore don't want to use the SSD for Ubuntu and have only the home folder on the HDD: just to be sure I won't run out of memory.

Now what are my options?

  • Everything on HDD but home on SSD, as suggested here? I could have large files in a data partition of the hard disk, but configuration files of /home on the SSD.
  • The operating system on SSD, but /swap, /usr and /home on HDD, as suggested here?
  • Perhaps only have the system use the SSD to boot fast (if that's possible?)?
  • Other options...?

And then there is this post which says I shouldn't trust a cache SSD as it's not intended to be reliable. Is that true? Is there a way to check if my cache SSD is suitable to run the OS or hold the home folder?

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Since I wanted to focus on fast booting and starting programs, I decided to try the following:

SSD: OS installation, /usr and /opt for programs
HDD: /swap, /var, /home

I decided to have /var on the HDD as well because I have rather big databases in the /var/lib/mysql and also my /var/www is quite spacious.

So far this is working fine. Booting and starting programs is incredibly fast. If I experience any problems with the SSD in the future I will update this post. So your safest bet is to have a look at the timestamp: if this post is old enough and I didn't edit it, you can assume I didn't have any problems.