Tag: ssd

A Data Management Fantasy [en]

[fr] Mon rêve: un système qui cacherait sur un espace donné de mon SSD (disons 50GB) les fichiers les plus récemment ouverts se trouvant sur mon disque dur externe. Ainsi, j'aurais à portée de main et sur disque dur rapide tous mes fichiers courants. Vous connaissez une solution qui fait ça?

I’m now running a happy MacBook with a 120Gb SSD (too big or to small depending on how you look at it, but I was in a hurry and dependant on what was in stock in the shop). I have an external 500Gb HDD to store all my junk on.

And here’s my dream. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could devote a certain amount of space on the SSD to my files, say 50Gb, and have that space occupied by cached copies of the files from the external drive that I most recently used? When I modify the files, the cached copies and those on the HDD would sync. And if I haven’t touched a file for long enough, it would be removed from the cache to free up space.

Like that my “current” files would be on the super-fast SDD and close at hand when I’m on the road.

I’m sure a solution to do this already exists — heard of anything?

Going SSD and Amahi Home Server [en]

[fr] En train de mettre un SSD dans mon vieux Macbook (performance!), ce qui signifie stockage distant de mes données: disque dur externe, serveur maison Amahi, et Crashplan pour les backups.

I’ve been drooling on the MacBook Air over the past weeks, to the point I’ve pretty much decided it’ll be my next machine. Sure, a MacBook Pro is way more powerful, but do I need all that extra power? The eternal question when changing computers.

I understood that one of the things that make the Air zippy is the SSD. But why wait for another machine to have an SSD? I’m going to put one in my MacBook directly (I’ve already changed the hard drive twice, no biggie thanks to ifixit). Actually, I would be doing this now, if I hadn’t by mistake ordered a 3.5″ SSD instead of 2.5″ (I have two on my hands by the way, if anybody is interested in buying them off me, still in their unopened box).

The reason it took me so long to warm up to SSD strategy is the price. Horribly expensive per Gb, compared to a “normal” hard drive! But what I’ve understood is that if you go the SSD way, you also stop storing all your data on those expensive Gb. You keep the expensive SSD Gb for your OS and applications, and all the data that is just “storage” goes on something slower.

For example, an external hard drive (I’m going to have a 2.5″ 500 Gb one once I swap it out) or… an Amahi Home Server, like the one I’m currently building. The server is a good solution for me to keep my data on a flexible redundant system (Greyhole).

Add to that Crashplan, which plays nice with Amahi, and the server will also allow me to host distant backups for my friends (with the idea that they might also allow me to use some of their storage space for mine). VPN acces, etc.

Right, I’m going back to my hardware!