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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Is using an HDD with an SSD as cache on Linux a good idea? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by qaz@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I currently have a 1 TiB NVMe drive that has been hovering at 100 GiB left for the past couple months. I've kept it down by deleting a game every couple weeks, but I would like to play something sometime, and I'm running out of games to delete if I need more space.

That's why I've been thinking about upgrading to a 2 TiB drive, but I just saw an interesting forum thread about LVM cache. The promise of having the storage capacity of an HDD with (usually) the speed of an SSD seems very appealing, but is it actually as good as it seems to be?

And if it is possible, which software should be used? LVM cache seems like a decent option, but I've seen people say it's slow. bcache is also sometimes mentioned, but apparently that one can be unreliable at times.

Beyond that, what method should be used? The Arch Wiki page for bcache mentions several options. Some only seem to cache writes, while some aim to keep the HDD idle as long as possible.

Also, does anyone run a setup like this themselves?

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[–] Deckweiss@lemmy.world 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

For many games, the loading times are not thaaaat different when comparing HDD vs SSD vs NVME. (Depends on how impatient you are tbh.) And it barely affects FPS.

The biggest appeal of NVME/SSD for me is having a snappy OS.

So I would put your rarely played games on a cheap, big HDD and keep your OS and a couple of the most frequent games on the NVME. (In the Steam interface you can easily move the games to a new drive)

I find it to be a much simpler solution than setting up a multi tiered storage system.

Some sources:

https://www.legitreviews.com/game-load-time-benchmarking-shootout-six-ssds-one-hdd_204468

https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-gaming-disk/3

https://www.pcgamer.com/anthem-load-times-tested-hdd-vs-ssd-vs-nvme/

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 days ago

Seconded, move the games to the NVME if you notice slow load times or textures not rendering quickly enough.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

Thanks for citing sources

[–] narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago

It actually performed decent until Apple gimped the SSD part to a mere 32 GB (down from 128 GB) in newer iMac models.