Making the most out of 256GB of NVMe

Lucipher · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 11 Feb 2007 Posts: 78

So I just bought a new computer and I couldn't resist and buy a 256 GB of NVMe, now what to do with that?

My new computer features an Intel i5-8400 (with integrated Intel graphics chip), a Gigabyte mobo B360M Wifi, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, 2TB of HDD, and a WD Black 256GB NVMe over M.2 slot.

I am no gamer and my computer is mostly used for internet browsing and other light to moderate activities (see list below). Of course this is a Gentoo, so I compile my own kernel and all my packages except for LibreOffice. So, how can I get most of the NVMe while keeping its life spam. I read I should put my ~/.cache in a tmpfs which is going to be located in the NVMe. I also thought of putting my whole system there because it would take less than 30% of its 256 GB. Sure it would boot and load KDE very fast. But what else? Putting swap in the NVMe would reduce its life, but would make my computer run faster when it needs more than 16GB, which I don't think it would happen very often. What else to send to NVMe? Should I put /var in the NVMe? Any guidance?

My computer activities are:

- Internet browsing
- Email
- Occasional astrophotography image processing using native Linux software and windows software ran through Wine (memory intensive)
- Occasional Monte Carlo simulations (little to no disk access while running, but it may run for more than 10 hours straight)
- Other mathematical analysis software like R, Root, Octave. This one may have various degrees of memory and disk access.
- And Gentoo updates.

So, how can I make the best of my new 256 GB NVMe?

Keruskerfuerst · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2018 2:35 pm Post subject:

/boot/efi ~50 MB
/boot ~500 MB
/(root) ~100 GB
/home ~100 GB

rest of 256 GB ? (~30 GB) - maybe /var or /tmp

benchaney · n00b Joined: 28 Dec 2017 Posts: 30

dm-cache maybe?

Keruskerfuerst · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2018 5:51 pm Post subject:

And I have forgotten:

the distfiles cache should be on the (magnetic) HDD.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

Moved from Documentation, Tips & Tricks (as this is none of those things) to Gentoo Chat.
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Quis separabit? Quo animo?

Lucipher · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 11 Feb 2007 Posts: 78

Thanks guys!

I will probably do what Keruskerfuerst suggested and leave the HDD for more permanent data storage and distfiles storage.