Async.fi

Debian SSD tips

  • Do not use swap; this may be overly cautious these days as the drives have fancy wear-leveling schemes and whatnot implemented but still, if you're not tight on memory then it should not hurt. And if memory is an issue then in order to avoid performance problems perhaps you should upgrade it in the first place.
  • Do use the "noop" I/O scheduler, i.e.
  • apt-get install grub
  • add GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="elevator=noop" to /etc/default/grub
  • update-grub
  • after boot, /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler should read "[noop] anticipatory deadline cfq"
That last part about the scheduler ensures that the default disk I/O scheduling, which rearranges reads and writes to boost IOPS for traditional cylindrical platters and is therefore just bad for SSD performance, is not used. With the "noop" scheduler, reads and writes happen in order.

Tagged with:

Categorised as: