Partitioning a 16GB SSD (Asus EeePC 901GO)?

M

MasterOne

I intend to give FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE a try on my good old Asus EeePC 901GO, once it has been released, and I am wondering how to put those 16GB of SSD space best to use.

ZFS is a no-go, since that netbook only has a 32bit Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM, so it will be GPT partitioning and UFS2-UJ filesystems.

What partition layout would you choose for a total of just 16GB?

Are there any additional recommended steps to prevent unnecessary stress on a lame MLC SSD (Asus used a really slow and crappy SSD in those early EeePCs)?
 
The standard installation of 9.0 currently installs a swap partition and one big root partition. It has no other partitions. This may or may not change when the release comes.
 
I guess that makes the most sense, to only have swap + root partitions, either when storage space is limited, or generally for workstation / laptop / netbook use, and when installing a server or for other purposes one can always decide to split into more partitions.
 
I'd recommend creating at the very least a separate /home partition/filesystem. That way, if you ever need to re-install the OS, or what to use a different Unix-like OS, you don't lose all your personal data.

With a 16 GB disk and 1 GB of RAM, I'd suggest something like:
  • 6 GB for /
  • 8 GB for /home
  • 1 GB for swap
  • 1 GB unallocated to allow extra space for wear-levelling of the SSD
 
Good point, although it would be quite easy to backup just the /home folder for a reinstall.

I am not quite sure if such a SSD can put unallocated space to use for wear-leveling, I thought that's a kind of low level magic with unavailable sectors for normal use, if at all. That way, 1 GB would just sit there unused.

There is not much going on with that netbook, just some web surfing, music listening and video watching, so I never had the problem of 16GB not being enough storage (it's still in use with an older Ubuntu Netbook Edition). Not sure if 1 or 2 GB of swap are appropriate in that case.
 
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