Installing an Intel X25-E SSD on FreeBSD 8.1

Submitted by John on Thu, 2010-10-14 11:02

This is on an existing FreeBSD install. I'm not booting from the SSD; I'm just adding it so it will show up at /var/cache.

# mkdir /var/cache

I installed the solid-state drive on a Dell OptiPlex 755. I unplugged the SATA cable from the DVD-ROM drive (who uses optical media anymore?) and connected the cable from SATA1 on the motherboard to the SSD.

When booting, FreeBSD found the drive:

ad10: 61057MB <SSDSA2SH064G1GC INTEL 045C8860> at ata5-master UDMA100 SATA 3Gb/s

Next, I formatted it using sysinstall and fdisk using the information found in the FreeBSD Handbook. The only special thing I did was to add Newfs Opts in the Disklabel Editor to add -i 1024 since I know I'm going to have a gazillion small files and didn't want to run out of inodes.

I knew what to put in fstab by looking in the DiskLabel Editor under the "Part" column.

Here's my new /etc/fstab.

# Device		Mountpoint	FStype	Options		Dump	Pass#
/dev/twed0s1b		none		swap	sw		0	0
/dev/twed0s1a		/		ufs	rw,noatime		1	1
/dev/twed0s1d		/tmp		ufs	rw,noatime		2	2
/dev/twed0s1e		/usr		ufs	rw,noatime		2	2
/dev/twed0s1f		/var		ufs	rw,noatime		2	2
/dev/ad10s1d		/var/cache            ufs     rw,noatime              2       2
Topic: 
FreeBSD