(Update: Made some small clarifications)

Do you want to hear about my nightmares?

Of course you don’t, but I will begin anyway.

One horrifying fictional vision that has kept me up at night was where my netbook’s hard drive broke down because I attempted to use it on a bumpy bus ride. Scary indeed. The idea of abusing technology makes me cringe.

So the next night, I dreamed that my netbook had a solid state drive. Things felt good, until I realized that my wallet was completely empty, and the drive was completely full.

This reflects the dilemma that I had–solid state drives are more durable on bumpy buses, but cost more and store less. What I wanted is large capacity plus the classic SSD durability.

The solution I came up with? I purchased a 16 GB class 6 SDHC card, stuffed it into the SDHC card slot into the side of the netbook, and installed Ubuntu to it.

The home directory partition remains on the traditional hard drive–unmounted most of the time. But the most frequently used files of the home directory, such as configuration files, remain on the SD card. I can be fully functional without ever using my hard drive.

The pros? I have a pretty cheap storage medium that acts like an SSD, yet still have the ability to summon the storage capacity of a 120 GB hard drive when the drive is not in danger of being accidentally damaged on a bus ride–all without carrying any external drives. The SDHC card doesn’t count as one because it should never be disconnected, considering it is an operating system.

The cons? The SD card is not a true SSD, so it is somewhat slower and is not likely to last as long. Still, I hope that the cost savings are going to outweigh the reduced lifetime.

A quick Google search shows that I’m not completely insane, and that others have also been thinking of swapping out SSDs for cheaper SD cards, but perhaps you would be a better judge of my own insanity.

Though, at least the nightmares are gone now. :)