How to partition a small SSD alongside an HDD when installing Ubuntu

Actually, installing Linux into an SSD is very good... with a little bit of modification.

Install Windows first to the HDD. Only once Windows is installed and working OK do you bring in Ubuntu.

Put the swap partition on the hard drive as well as /var and /tmp because those are written to constantly; moving those off the SSD will prolong the life of the SSD to match the HDD life, because older SSDs live much longer if you don't write to them constantly, and swap, /tmp and /var are the areas which are written to heavily.

(Note: Now that Linux supports TRIM, modern SSDs often outlast HDDs.)

Also put /home in an ext4 partition on the hard drive, for if the SSD fails for whatever reason it is much more difficult to recover data from it than an HDD. Resizing the partition(s) created by Windows is easy, menu-driven, and painless.

/ (AKA root) takes up as much space on the SSD as you have available. Ubuntu should fit well into the 24GB you have available, since it typically is only 6GB, but if the / partition grows to take it all you can move some parts of the filesystem off to the HDD flexibly.

Other configuration modifications help as well, such as enabling TRIM.

Here's testimony which shows Linux LIKES SSDs... What about the performance enhancement when using an SSD as the main disk? and Setup for dual disk (SSD+HDD) with /home partition .