Anything special to do moving to SSD?

[Manish Jain]

Hi,

I use FreeBSD 10.2 amd64 as my primary OS.

I just purchased a Samsung EVO 500 GB Solid State disk, and shall be migrating to it in the next few days. Just wanted to know whether I can use it out-of-the-box, pretty much like an IDE/SATA hard disk, or is there anything special/nice to do for SSD ?

I presume I shall have to reinstall the OS over again. In case it is possible to migrate 'in-place' (data copy), please let me know about that too.


Thanks for any replies.

Manish Jain

[Brandon J. Wandersee]

Post by Manish Jain
Hi,
I use FreeBSD 10.2 amd64 as my primary OS.
I just purchased a Samsung EVO 500 GB Solid State disk, and shall be
migrating to it in the next few days. Just wanted to know whether I
can use it out-of-the-box, pretty much like an IDE/SATA hard disk, or
is there anything special/nice to do for SSD ?
I presume I shall have to reinstall the OS over again. In case it is
possible to migrate 'in-place' (data copy), please let me know about
that too.

If you're using UFS, you can clone your existing installation by piping
dump(8) straight into restore(8).[1] If you're using ZFS then you'd use
`zfs send | zfs receive` instead, sending your filesystems straight to
the new disk/pool instead of backing up and then restoring. Or you could
just use some other reliable tool like rsync. Whatever the case, you
should certainly already have a backup on-hand anyway, just in case.

What is important no matter what is that when creating new UFS
filesystems on an SSD, you need to use the `-t` flag to enable
TRIM. TRIM is enabled by default on ZFS.

[1]: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/backup.html#_copying_filesystems

[Christoph Brinkhaus]

Post by Manish Jain
Hi,
I use FreeBSD 10.2 amd64 as my primary OS.
I just purchased a Samsung EVO 500 GB Solid State disk, and shall be
migrating to it in the next few days. Just wanted to know whether
I can use it out-of-the-box, pretty much like an IDE/SATA hard disk,
or is there anything special/nice to do for SSD ?

I have followed http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/ssd.html
with success.

Post by Manish Jain
I presume I shall have to reinstall the OS over again.
In case it is possible to migrate 'in-place' (data copy),
please let me know about that too.

I have copied the UFS file system by dump and restore
in single user mode and adjusted /etc/fstab.
For other file systems a data copy should work as well.

Post by Manish Jain
Thanks for any replies.
Manish Jain

Good luck,

Christoph

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 17:43:05 +0000

Post by Manish Jain
Hi,
I use FreeBSD 10.2 amd64 as my primary OS.
I just purchased a Samsung EVO 500 GB Solid State disk, and shall be
migrating to it in the next few days. Just wanted to know whether I can
use it out-of-the-box, pretty much like an IDE/SATA hard disk, or is
there anything special/nice to do for SSD ?

Just one thing, use the -t flag to newfs (along with whatever
others you use) when you initialise the filesystems to enable TRIM support,
other than that it's just a (fast) drive.

Post by Manish Jain
I presume I shall have to reinstall the OS over again. In case it is
possible to migrate 'in-place' (data copy), please let me know about that
too.

Provided the existing filesystems will fit on the SSD a migrate in
place is quite easy. I have done this quite recently based on the excellent
write up here http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/ssd.html - don't
treat it as a step-by-step adapt it to your setup (not hard).

[David Christensen]

Post by Manish Jain
I use FreeBSD 10.2 amd64 as my primary OS.
I just purchased a Samsung EVO 500 GB Solid State disk, and shall be migrating to it in the next few days. Just wanted to know whether I can use it out-of-the-box, pretty much like an IDE/SATA hard disk, or is there anything special/nice to do for SSD ?
I presume I shall have to reinstall the OS over again. In case it is possible to migrate 'in-place' (data copy), please let me know about that too.

What kind of machine -- laptop, desktop, server?


What do you use the machine for?


What disk(s) does it already heave?


David

[Manish Jain]

Post by Steve O'Hara-Smith
Provided the existing filesystems will fit on the SSD a migrate in
place is quite easy. I have done this quite recently based on the
excellent write up here
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/ssd.html - don't treat it as
a step-by-step adapt it to your setup (not hard).

I am bothered by this thought. Let's say my old SATA disk is da0 and I
attach the SSD as da1 for copying the filesystem via dump+restore. Next
I remove the SATA entirely and reboot. Now will the SSD still be da1 ?
If not, then I have no way of knowing how to configure /etc/fstab for
the SSD.

Incidentally, I don't know whether this is relevant - my system will be
a dual boot PC, with Win XP as secondary OS. I think that means that I
cannot use GPT and I will have to use MBR for partitioning. Am I right
about that ?

Thanks for your help

Manish Jain

[Warren Block]

Post by Manish Jain

Post by Steve O'Hara-Smith
Provided the existing filesystems will fit on the SSD a migrate in
place is quite easy. I have done this quite recently based on the
excellent write up here
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/ssd.html - don't treat it as
a step-by-step adapt it to your setup (not hard).

I am bothered by this thought. Let's say my old SATA disk is da0 and I
attach the SSD as da1 for copying the filesystem via dump+restore. Next
I remove the SATA entirely and reboot. Now will the SSD still be da1 ?
If not, then I have no way of knowing how to configure /etc/fstab for
the SSD.

Use GPT labels. Or UFS filesystem labels:
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/labels.html

Even on single-disk systems, labels make it easier to deal with
partitions.

Post by Manish Jain
Incidentally, I don't know whether this is relevant - my system will be
a dual boot PC, with Win XP as secondary OS. I think that means that I
cannot use GPT and I will have to use MBR for partitioning. Am I right
about that ?

Yes. But unless you have a strong requirement to run XP on bare
hardware (like for games), install VirtualBox and run it as a VM. That
makes it easy to transplant elsewhere when the need arises.

[Polytropon]

Post by Warren Block

Post by Manish Jain

Post by Steve O'Hara-Smith
Provided the existing filesystems will fit on the SSD a migrate in
place is quite easy. I have done this quite recently based on the
excellent write up here
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/ssd.html - don't treat it as
a step-by-step adapt it to your setup (not hard).

I am bothered by this thought. Let's say my old SATA disk is da0 and I
attach the SSD as da1 for copying the filesystem via dump+restore. Next
I remove the SATA entirely and reboot. Now will the SSD still be da1 ?
If not, then I have no way of knowing how to configure /etc/fstab for
the SSD.

http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/labels.html

A very important advice. Labels make it easier to recognize the
purpose of partitions by name (instead of number), and they also
"survive" if a disk gets moved from system to system.

Post by Warren Block
Even on single-disk systems, labels make it easier to deal with
partitions.

Even on single-disk systems, device names might change due to a
system update: A disk that has been known as ad4 could come up
as ada0 after an improved "controller" has been introduced to
the kernel. :-)

Post by Warren Block
Yes. But unless you have a strong requirement to run XP on bare
hardware (like for games), install VirtualBox and run it as a VM. That
makes it easy to transplant elsewhere when the need arises.

And it saves you a lot of trouble getting "drivers" for hardware
that has been considered "outdated" and isn't supported anymore
by "Windows" or by its manufacturer.