ssd overprovise

ive read on the internet quite a bit about overprovisioning . it affects and boosts performance of an ssd from what I know to a certain degree. I have a samsung 840 evo 120Gigabyte model.
I just get mixed answers abot overprovisioning on the web though.

Im thinking of overprovisioning my ssd to where it only has 15gigs of space available for me.
I think that 15 gigs would be more than enough for updates and future files since storage isnt really a problem (i just mainly browse web/email/open a few documents here and there). nothing major.

im trying to pump all the performance out of my ssd so any other additional comments are welcome.

 

The 120 GB 840 EVO already has 12% over provisioning built in. You can do a little more if you want, but it's not absolutely necessary, and certainly not to the degree you're thinking. You will have upgraded to a faster drive long before NAND wear becomes an issue.

 

Personally, I'd just overprovision 10% of the drive and leave it at that. That is more than enough for normal consumer use and you'd be surprised at how much you can use space that you initially didn't plan for. Don't forget that your page file and hiber.sys files are also on the OS drive and I wouldn't mess with those unless absolutely necessary.

I managed to trim a Windows install to ~12 GB with some major tweaking, but that leaves only 3 GB and you'll want some programs on the SSD too.

What I would do were I in your shoes:
1) Install Windows and leave it alone, seriously, no tweaking
2) OP 10% of the drive using the magician software
3) Install your programs on the SSD
4) Make an image of your drive for backup purposes
5) Enjoy the speed afforded by the SSD and never look back

 

I agree. Except the Hibernate file really can go away (elevated command prompt: powercfg -h off) unless you really have a need for hibernate over sleep. That will gain you space approx equal to the RAM you have.

 

"Extends life and sustains performance" I was under the impression that was the whole idea of OP'ing. I use ~ 40 GB and have a second 20 GB partition (empty) and the remainder ~14 GB is unallocated on my Intel 80 GB drive and performance is still excellent (twice a year I benchmark it and the numbers are very similar after 3 years). My usage is very similar to the OP but I do have a second hard drive for data storage only.

 

AnandTech has an excellent piece on why OP is important. I recommend reading through the entire thing if you have time (weekend reading perhaps?).

 

This link is more on topic:

AnandTech | Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs


I recommend 30% OP'ing but I also recommend ~150GB for the C: drive (O/S and Programs) too.

120GB SSD is cutting it very tight, depending on what you're installing and how much static data you have - I have installed a very full version of Win8.1 on a 64GB eMMC SSD with all programs on a 64GB microSD card (14GB free on C:\); but I am constantly running out of room just with Dropbox doing it's thing (and boy is eMMC slow compared to a SATA3 connection or faster).

 

Out of curiosity, how many GB of writes does it show are on that drive?

That article is over five years old. While it does do a decent job of explaining how SSD's operate it's not really all that relevant to today's technology regarding OP.

And on cue... 120GB is fine for an OS with a few basic programs. For a small drive I would OP 10-15% at most, mainly to keep your drive from fully becoming "filled" with data. But 30% is not really necessary.

 

20-30% for older drives, yes (early 2012 and older), but newer ones seem to do well on 10-15%.

 

There is such thing as diminishing returns with overprovisioning. Like others have mentioned, it already has 12% by default, this already allows you to claim about 75% of the performance consistency benefits. Another 18 % will likely yield the remainder. After that, you're wasting space which is arguably more important in a 120Gb drive. You don't need to do much to run out of space.

 

@people: Yea I know that AnandTech article is quite old, but I think it very nicely explains the "why" behind everything.

 

SMART data shows just over 2 TB, indexing is off, no hibernation, and swap file is 1 GB ...

 

Thanks! So in what, about four years it's used 2TB on an 80GB drive? That's ~ 1.5GB/day and only 25-50 write cycles (of over 5000)... lol. And people worry about their drives failing on writes.

 

Some people made them paranoid

Sent from a Galaxy far, far away

 

And that's on an 80GB. Imagine on a 250GB it'd be like 8-12 write cycles only. This may be an extreme light use, but I don't think it's too much out of the norm. People install OS and apps, and leave them. Then the only writes are whatever the OS does, which for a media/browsing/light work device is minimal. I guess if you use Dropbox or some other cloud sync software that write count might double, but still not a lot to worry about.

 

You're 100% correct, that is what OP'ing is about.


See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...marks-brands-news-advice-214.html#post9317068

 

Just a note that depending on your usage patterns, the amount of over provisioning you need or may want can differ greatly. There is no golden rule to balance, overprovisioning with the amount of storage needed and your workload. Someone who is going to "abuse" their SSDs with I/O is definitely going to want to overprovision more than than someone who does internet browsing and doesn't fill up the drive much. Likewise, someone who may fill up the drive to near capacity even with an average Joe workload will want to overprovision more to make sure that there is NAND available for GC to perform normally even if all usable partitions on the drive are full.

10% is a decent rule of thumb, but it is by no means the be all/end all of overprovisioning.

 

But, but... my rule of thumb is 30%.

 

lol, hey brother can you spare a dime, or two, maybe three. The byte thieves are a coming!!!

Seems somewhat a contradiction: not hammering IO, and not nearing filled up = un-allocate the space and expand the partition into it when it is needed. If you do this then you'll know when it is time for a larger drive or a little bit of storage relocation maintenance.

But , but... I'm set at 50% - only tool in my box is a hammer so every problem looks like a nail

 

Now that I think about it, my M6700 has no op'ing what so ever aside from what comes with the drives already (the two system drives have some amount of it, the data drive does not). I'd still recommend 10% for peace of mind to anyone who is worried.

 

I cannot believe I just read this!!!

My friend, you're the one who introduced me to (OP) and then a second SSD. You don't have any OP? What?

lol, all in fun. I do thank you for helping me back then, some two years ago. All those links you provided helped out a lot.

 

Well, two of my drives have OP out of the box (Intel 520) so I never really bothered with more. My desktop running a 256 GB M4 has roughly 15% OP so does my Elitebook 2760p.

 

Oh that's is right, I remember now that you have the Intel's and M4.
lol, Full disclosure

 

My Plextor 512GB ssd does not even offer overprovisioning there is no option for it in the Plextor toolbox app, i have nearly 19TB of writes on it now though, but it does have SLC Nand so it should last for a while yet fingers crossed.

John.

 

Do it yourself. And there's a Plextor app?

 

For Windows 7:

Start --> right click Computer --> Manage --> Disk Management from left hand side --> Shrink Volume of largest partition

The size of the "unallocated partition" is effectively the size of the OP area.

 

Thanks guys but i am not going to bother with OP, and the Plextor app is called PlexTool

John.

 

You forgot an important step. Shrink volume, create a new volume in the free area, then delete that free area volume. That essentially "frees" that amount of space for OP.

 

anandtech did a test with the samsung drives. And when you get to 25% over provisioning the writes on the SSD became a lot faster and much more stable with less variance in speed. There is no point to go above 25% OP after that the performance doesn't change much. I OP to 775GB which is 25% because the drive comes wit some OP. So the 1TB SSD has 775GB free space and 25% OP. Writes are noticeably faster especially when copying large files the extra OP just makes writes wayb faster and more efficient. There is def a purpose behind it.

 

Also note that most performance gains come from WRITES not READS. Most consumers are primarily concerned with READ performance because once you install your OS and apps and other crap, your amount of data written pales in comparison to data read. Unless you do a lot of video or audio processing where you need a fast scratch disk, it won't matter a whole heck of a lot. Writes usually aren't the bottleneck of a typical consumer laptop workload, it's usually processor speed or some other I/O.