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Rules regarding leaving free space on SSD?

Deivan8
By Deivan8
in Storage Devices
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Go to solution Solved by TechyBen,

I have the 840 evo 256. Not had any trouble. Not used the Samsung overprovisioning yet. But I do keep 10-30% space free. But only so I can write/move files easily, instead of having to find things to delete when I buy that 30gb game on Steam sales. ;)

 

I read up at the weekend (posted near the same question ;) ), and it appears there are 2 options.

 

1) Run with the normal settings. Use the drive as you normally would. Samsung already allows some overprovisioning for TRIM/wear levelling. This is hidden from the user, and enough for consumer/home use. I would still reccomend leaving 10% free, for those surprise Windows 10 updates, game updates, backups, emergency "I need to download this now" things. Nothing worse than letting a drive max out to 99% full, thinking you have enough time to wait to delete things, and then Windows/games trying to download and causing a problem. :D

 

2) Over provision the recommended 5% and get a tiny boost to write speeds only. As most of us don't care on write speeds (game downloads will be internet speed bottlenecked, game/OS loads won't benefit) , this setting is often left for servers/special case use as it also improves lifespan, if the server is writing TBs per day. (When I checked it warned me the drive would be formatted if I tried overprovisioning. I'd say backup the entire drive before trying)

 

It may allow a little more lifespan, if you over provision more. But the same is true if you leave 5% space free manually. And a home user is not going to be writing TBs every day. (AFAIK the software/drivers/Windows and TRIM commands *know* if the space if free, partitioned or not.)

 

Posted

image.png.80e3765b333bc08d691d25273553f5e3.pngI
I currently have 840 evo 256gb splitted into two partitions. C is for windows 10 pro, while G is mostly for other apps. I just bought Samsung EVO 850  500GB for crazy cheap (spent only 107 GBP).

How much space do I need to free on a SSD/HDD to keep best performance?

If I want to calculate how much space I need to free up, do I need to measure two SSD portitions as one unit (combine their used storage and make sure both have equally free space)? Or I can fill up one partition max and leave another one more empty?


 

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Posted

with SSDs your fine with filling them up. Its mechanical that have the problems because of the segmenting of the files and read/search times for the files. 

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Posted
3 minutes ago, legacy99 said:

with SSDs your fine with filling them up. Its mechanical that have the problems because of the segmenting of the files and read/search times for the files. 

SSDs wear faster when full.  The more space you have free the more efficient the wear leveling algorithms work.

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3 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

SSDs wear faster when full.  The more space you have free the more efficient the wear leveling algorithms work.

Well in theory they shouldn't wear because they have no moving parts unlike a hard drive.
LTT did a video on graphics card wear and they discovered there is no wear since there is no moving parts, shouldn't it be the same case here?
Could be wrong.

 

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1 minute ago, benji_ said:

Well in theory they shouldn't wear because they have no moving parts unlike a hard drive.
LTT did a video on graphics card wear and they discovered there is no wear since there is no moving parts, shouldn't it be the same case here?
Could be wrong.

 

they do

that video is for gpus. i remember hearing this in a ltt video

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2 minutes ago, benji_ said:

Well in theory they shouldn't wear because they have no moving parts unlike a hard drive.
LTT did a video on graphics card wear and they discovered there is no wear since there is no moving parts, shouldn't it be the same case here?
Could be wrong.

A flash cell can only be written ~100 times before it fails.  You get 100's of TB of writes because the flash controller keeps track of what cells have been written how many times and optimizes what cells get written to.

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1 minute ago, Ethocreeper said:

they do

that video is for gpus. i remember hearing this in a ltt video

I know but a moving part is a moving part.
You see where I'm coming from?

CPU: i7 4790k 

GPU: Gigabyte Windforce3 GTX 1080

RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengance 1600MHz (@1333Mhz) + 8GB Balisticx Sport or something 1333MHz

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1 minute ago, KarathKasun said:

A flash cell can only be written ~100 times before it fails.  You get 100's of TB of writes because the flash controller keeps track of what cells have been written how many times.

Ahh, ok thanks :)

CPU: i7 4790k 

GPU: Gigabyte Windforce3 GTX 1080

RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengance 1600MHz (@1333Mhz) + 8GB Balisticx Sport or something 1333MHz

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2 minutes ago, benji_ said:

I know but a moving part is a moving part.
You see where I'm coming from?

 

Could you explain it to me in laymens terms lol

Think of it this way.  You electrically (and to an extent, physically) burn the data onto the flash chips, this causes wear.

 

The more free space you have, the more free cells the controller has to play with for making the drive last longer.

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14 minutes ago, Ethocreeper said:

just keep it one partition and apply the default over-provisioning on the Samsung software

So 10% is enough? 
image.png.a50a5ae7722c2be0574f65eafb6844f7.png
It also seems Samsung over-provisioning is including my two partitions into one: But as most of my files more or less are full, may setting it up damage my data?
What does it mean by "RAW" partition?

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  • Solution

I have the 840 evo 256. Not had any trouble. Not used the Samsung overprovisioning yet. But I do keep 10-30% space free. But only so I can write/move files easily, instead of having to find things to delete when I buy that 30gb game on Steam sales. ;)

 

I read up at the weekend (posted near the same question ;) ), and it appears there are 2 options.

 

1) Run with the normal settings. Use the drive as you normally would. Samsung already allows some overprovisioning for TRIM/wear levelling. This is hidden from the user, and enough for consumer/home use. I would still reccomend leaving 10% free, for those surprise Windows 10 updates, game updates, backups, emergency "I need to download this now" things. Nothing worse than letting a drive max out to 99% full, thinking you have enough time to wait to delete things, and then Windows/games trying to download and causing a problem. :D

 

2) Over provision the recommended 5% and get a tiny boost to write speeds only. As most of us don't care on write speeds (game downloads will be internet speed bottlenecked, game/OS loads won't benefit) , this setting is often left for servers/special case use as it also improves lifespan, if the server is writing TBs per day. (When I checked it warned me the drive would be formatted if I tried overprovisioning. I'd say backup the entire drive before trying)

 

It may allow a little more lifespan, if you over provision more. But the same is true if you leave 5% space free manually. And a home user is not going to be writing TBs every day. (AFAIK the software/drivers/Windows and TRIM commands *know* if the space if free, partitioned or not.)

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
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On 27/03/2018 at 10:39 AM, Ethocreeper said:

just keep it one partition and apply the default over-provisioning on the Samsung software

I did it, thanks.

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On 3/27/2018 at 12:56 PM, Deivan8 said:

So 10% is enough? 
image.png.a50a5ae7722c2be0574f65eafb6844f7.png
It also seems Samsung over-provisioning is including my two partitions into one: But as most of my files more or less are full, may setting it up damage my data?
What does it mean by "RAW" partition?

raw partition means its unformatted

make sure before you make it that the size of the op partition is less than the free space on your ssd

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2 minutes ago, Ethocreeper said:

raw partition means its unformatted

make sure before you make it that the size of the op partition is less than the free space on your ssd

Thanks for explaining. Yupe, already did that on both of my SSDs.

image.png.6b4ea7dcc09fc3e8e20f176eb3df6ab8.png
image.png.c9a57db425f7f964da1351c01de1f264.png

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