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    240G SSD Partition

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by aethon, Dec 6, 2011.

  1. aethon

    aethon Newbie

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    I'm getting a laptop with a 240gb SSD, is it worth partioning the drive?

    Thanks A>>>
     
    aethon, Dec 6, 2011
    #1
  2. miro_gt

    miro_gt Notebook Deity

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    no

    .......................
     
    miro_gt, Dec 6, 2011
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  3. DEagleson

    DEagleson Gamer extraordinaire

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    I agree, you dont need to partition the SSD if you only end up using one OS on it.
    It wont give any performance boosts either.
     
    DEagleson, Dec 6, 2011
    #3
  4. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    I've seen examples of partitioning not being good for synthetic benchmark scores. I'd advise against it.
     
    Phil, Dec 6, 2011
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  5. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    Partitioning wont' give you any performance boost or anything like that as internally the NAND flash cells won't care.

    However, if you want to create a partition to make a "logical" break for your files -> storing some items on one partition vs. the other, then partitioning won't hurt either.
     
    jclausius, Dec 6, 2011
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  6. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    Phil,

    Never seen that w/ an SSD. Any links for that?
     
    jclausius, Dec 6, 2011
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  7. JRS

    JRS Notebook Guru

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    There is a lot of internet noise about leaving a small part of an SSD unpartitioned - supposed to help wear leveling and longevity. Some claims are it doesn't matter if the extra space is or is not unpartioned, any free space will help.

    To the op, I would not partition it for any reason other than what jclausius mentioned with respect to wanting a logical break.
     
    JRS, Dec 6, 2011
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  8. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    I've seen it several times in the last years on a dutch forum I frequently visit. No I don't have any links for that.
     
    Phil, Dec 6, 2011
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  9. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    As a point of clarification, my post is about usable space.

    As JRS posted, some people adjust free space by over-provisioning their SSDs, thus giving their drives more room to operate when deleting data from the 4K NAND page. However, my post is about the space you plan on using within the drive.


    @ Phil - Thx. Without any benches / analysis, I'd chalk that up to plain noise. My usage w/ two partitions for over 6 months have showed no change in benches for my C300.
     
    jclausius, Dec 6, 2011
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  10. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    @ jclausius, I'd rather not spend time searching for old threads.

    It's not strange though in my opinion, especially if you're dealing with older controllers (like the original Indilinx f.e.) and smaller partitions.

    If your benchmark results look healthy your C300 is obviously not bothered by it.
     
    Phil, Dec 6, 2011
    #10
  11. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    NP. It could've been something w/ old drives, lack of understanding of TRIM (if this is a really old post) or anything else. Who knows.

    In any case, if anyone is interested, I have some before/after benches of the C300. Just mention it, and I can post thumb images.
     
    jclausius, Dec 6, 2011
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  12. aethon

    aethon Newbie

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    Tanks for the info guys, so it's a definate 'No...' to the partition.
     
    aethon, Dec 6, 2011
    #12
  13. tilleroftheearth

    tilleroftheearth Wisdom listens quietly...

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    tilleroftheearth, Dec 7, 2011
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  14. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    tiller,

    Do you have any links regarding the "intel trick?" My understanding of any SSD is that partitioning is all virtual. The drive maintains a mapping of what LBA map to the real NAND pages. This makes sense as as pages are deleted or written to, they move from NAND page to NAND page to reduce wear, and the virtual address is just updated with the new NAND page location.

    If that is the case, then it really wouldn't matter what partitioning scheme is used and how much data is allocated per partition. Since at the physical level, the drive has access to ALL the NAND pages, and can use any of those pages as over-provisioning to reduce write-amplification problems.

    For example, it is irrelevant that drive C is full, drive D is 80% free, and drive E is 50%. What matters is the number of empty NAND pages within the SSD which can be used by the drive for any operation it requires. This would be independent of free space within each partition.
    -----

    Edit, just read an intel whitepaper talking about over-provisioning. It is just what I thought. OP deals with allowing the drive to know not all LBAs will be used. In regards to performance, it doesn't matter if you have one partition or four. What matters is reducing user addressable LBAs, allowing the SSD to use the remaining address space as it sees fit.
     
    jclausius, Dec 7, 2011
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  15. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    For some SSDs over provisioning can be useful. For some it's pointless. Without knowing what SSD the OP uses we can't really tell if there's any point to it.

    Personally I like to partition my SSD fully in one partition and never use over 90 - 95%. The benefit is that if I really need to use the extra capacity, I can.
     
    Phil, Dec 7, 2011
    #15
  16. maximinimaus

    maximinimaus Notebook Evangelist

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    I always partition my SSDs/HDDs in a OS and a Data partition. With this I'm always able to restore my OS with an image without loosing my user data.
    Regarding my config with a Matrix RAID0, this gives me 2 volumes for Windows, I get twice the Write Back Cache with the Intel Rapid Storage driver.
     
    maximinimaus, Dec 7, 2011
    #16