[TriLUG] SWAP and SSD vs HDD

[matt at noway2.thruhere.net]

I tend to agree with your reasoning and this was my thought after reading
the question.  I imagine that swap usage would likely be minimal on a
machine like that as far as needing it, but expect the old adage of "if
you build it, they will come" to apply.  In other words, if you give the
machine swap space, it will routinely use it for something even if it
isn't strictly needed.  As it would still be slow by comparison, I would
be inclined to put it on the HDD as you probably won't notice the
performance difference and you would eliminate the unnecessary SDD wear.

> Well my thoughts, and the reason I asked are the concerns over SSD useful
> life in applications where there are frequent smaller writes, such as
> swap.  Now most likely I will elect to turn the vm.swappiness value down
> to
> about 10 on this machine when all is said and done.
>
> The way I was figuring it was like this:
>
> 1.  put swap on ssd and better swap performance, but potentially lessen
> useful life of drive
> 2.  put swap on hdd and worse swap performance, but ssd faces less
> frequent
> writes
>
> I can't say I have ever setup a machine without swap other than how my
> Chromebook is setup.  That works just fine and all but maybe I am thinking
> to old school in this case by saying to myself:
>
> "Thou must have SWAP!!!"
>
> Ken