I want advice on how to setup partitions on a new desktop system that I'll (initially) put Ubuntu 11.04 on. The system will have the following storage hardware:

• 1 x 80 GB SSD (Intel 320 series)


• 2 x 2 TB HDD (green, 64 MB cache, 5400 rpm, SATA-600)

I'm going to use the system to typeset with LaTeX, to watch movies, to listen to music, to edit images and graphics, to surf the web, as firewall for my LAN and as file and backup server for a laptop (it will sometimes need to be on for days). Some of the data I'm going to keep on it is really valuable so I'm not giving priority to speed over reliability or security. Also, I want to avoid unnecessary wear on the SSD.

The setup I'm considering is the following:

• Have the SSD as boot partition, format it as ext4 (does ext4 work well with SSDs?) and mount it at /. Backup from the SSD will be handled by having sbackup scheduled to backup chosen files to the HDDs.


• Put the HDDs in RAID-1, mostly for reliability, format them as ext4 (for reliability and ability to recover from corruption) and mount it somewhere, maybe /home/archive (what is the correct mount point according to convention?). Backup for these HDDs will simply be having them in RAID-1. Also, I'll keep the swap (how big?) on these HDDs.

I'm thinking that I should take measures to reduce wear on the SSD by mounting it with the flags noatime and discard and keep the swap on the HDDs (the system will have 4 GB RAM but I want to be able to hibernate). To further handle what goes on the SSD and what goes on the HDDs I'm thinking about using symlinks (e.g. symlink ~/Videos to the HDDs). I should say something about the needed storage capacity too. What I plan to initially put on the HDDs is ~400 GB.

My question: Is there anything in the setup that I'm considering that I should change given the mentioned hardware and the mentioned usage of the system? Or more generally: How should I setup my partitions given my hardware setup and how I want to use the system?