Switching to SSD - Overprovisioning needed?

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by Ocky, Aug 24, 2017.

  1. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 6, 2006
    Posts:
    2,713
    Location:
    George, S.Africa
    I will soon be getting a new Desktop PC. The SSD is a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO. Some folks advise to leave some unpartitioned space. Is this really recommended. See below ..
     
  2. J_L

    J_L Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 6, 2009
    Posts:
    8,738
    Needed? No. Recommended? Depends. Would I do it? Yes, with Samsung Magician.
     
  3. blacknight

    blacknight Registered Member

    Joined:
    Sep 25, 2007
    Posts:
    3,344
    Location:
    Europe, UE citizen
  4. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 15, 2007
    Posts:
    2,976
    Overprovisioning (at least for micron/crucial ssds) works only if the drive has ntfs partitions.
    Leaving unpartitioned space does not mean that will be used for overprovisioning if you use ext4 partitions or a a combination of ntfs and other formats.
    For this reason Micron introduced FlexCap so the owner can modify/reduce/restore the available size of the ssd seen from the OSes.

    ps. almost all (if not all) ssd's articles in the net are full of BS (e.g. the ssds run cooler than hdds or leave unpartitioned space for overprovisioning, etc.)

    Panagiotis
     
  5. TS4H

    TS4H Registered Member

    Joined:
    Nov 5, 2013
    Posts:
    523
    Location:
    Australia
    Over provisioning is really only useful when you near capacity of storage. IE when at say 240GB used space in a 250GB Drive. If you are not even close to maxing out storage on that drive then its not worth bothering with.

    By default Samsung drives leave minimum amount of headroom and will use any available free space for Garbage Collection, Wear-Levelling, Bad Block Management etc. This headroom is not visible to the OS. So when it shows that your drive is full, it is not. Thats a good thing. This is in essence over-provisioning, aka leaving some room so that the SSD can move data around for the aforementioned reasons. In Evo card, over provisioning is not mandatory, there are enough safeguards in the way the drives behave that you do not need to worry about these things.

    All you need to worry about is when your drive nears capacity, offload some data to another drive.

    regards.
     
  6. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 6, 2006
    Posts:
    2,713
    Location:
    George, S.Africa
    Good info from all of you. Thank you. I already thought I would not need to over-provision, and now confirmed.
     
  7. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

    Joined:
    May 9, 2005
    Posts:
    10,215
    It's simple - in all likelihood, your hardware vendors and driver developers know the best. So there's no reason to do anything special.
    Mrk
     
  8. SirDrexl

    SirDrexl Registered Member

    Joined:
    Apr 14, 2012
    Posts:
    556
    Location:
    USA
    I would leave some space, but just leave it available as free space (don't fill the drive) rather than forcing it via over-provisioning. It doesn't matter either way; available blocks can be used for wear leveling regardless of whether they're part of the partition or cut off via over-provisioning.
     
  9. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

    Joined:
    Jan 28, 2005
    Posts:
    12,115
    Location:
    NSW, Australia
    I agree. It doesn't matter if the Free Space is inside or outside a partition.
     
  10. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2005
    Posts:
    1,926
    SSDs normally already reserved some NAND cells for the purpose of efficient garbage collection and tirmming. For example, in a 240GB SSD, the actual NAND capacity would be more that 240GB, such as 256GB. The invisible 16 GB space is specifically reserved to over-provisioning. It's called factory overprovisioned space on SSDs and it's totally invisible to the OS.

    So there is no need to further manually specify any more space. Otherwise it will be a waste of valuable SSD space.
     
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.