[Hampshire] disk types and layout on a new box

Hi,

My ageing desktop system is due for a replacement. It's single core processor,
2 Gig of RAM and old AGP graphics just don't hack it any more for photo work
and it's tiny 120 Gig hard disk is almost always full. So I'm looking at a
modern processor, 16 Gig RAM box, with modern graphics.

I've pretty much decided to get a flash drive as the root file system, my
preferred "bidder" are currently building with Intel 335 drives. I'm not sure
exactly what combination and mix to go for.

I don't think the 180 GB drive is large enough on it's own, so I could get a
pair of them and then LVM them together and put a single ext4 over the two.

I can't justify a pair of 240 GB drives on price as that's a bit too much.

The second viable option is one Intel and one spinning drive, which is a lot
cheaper than two flash drives and gives me a decent amount of slower disk
space for bulk storage. I wouldn't LVM them together but I'd probably mount
the spinning drive as /srv or something similar.

Given the amount of RAM on the system I was also planning on no swap partition
and if I need swap (which I doubt) I'd use a large swap file.

The "bulk" files will probably be VM disk images (multi GB), photos (many-many
multi MB), some video files (iPlayer and DVB recordings), ISO files (not that
many but some). Most of these will be written once and read now and then but
not change a lot - the VM files will change the most when in use.

Any thoughts on combinations, and file system layout?

I think it's now reached the point that consumer flash is as reliable if not
more reliable than spinning rust. Flash drives are noticeable faster
(especially when new) than spinning rust and capacities while still a fraction
of a mechanical drive are now usable for most purposes. Price-wise nothing is
ever cheap but flash is at least reasonable in price now...

--
Adam Trickett
Overton, HANTS, UK

A man is known by the books he reads.
    --  Ralph Waldo Emerson