Extreme Over Provisioning

[Lagartus]

Hello guys, so here's the question....

Ive read a lot about this feature and I ended up setting my OP to 50% of my total SSD capacity.

Reason? I dont know, some say it could increase SSD's lifetime , some say it lets TRIM or Garbage Collection to work better, something good is supposed to happen, right ?

Some say that OP at 5-10% is already enough, but the thing is, I intend to use my SSD up to 30-40% maximum, so why wouldn't I set my OP to half size?

I just wanted to hear your opinion, should I decrease my OP size even if Im not planning to use 50%+ of my SSD capacity ? :hmm:

I own a Samsung 840 PRO 256GB, it rocks btw. :thumbsup:

 

[Deders]

Overkill

 

[BrightCandle]

You paid for it so if you want to pay double for the same performance level and space then who am I to argue. But if you are expecting magic then you will be disappointed, the gains on all fronts will be marginal.

 

[Carfax83]

If you're completely certain you won't exceed 30-40% of your SSD's capacity, then why set an OP limit at all?

I have an 840 Evo 1TB SSD, and I'm certain I won't ever go over half the capacity on this drive. So I didn't even bother with setting an OP limit of any sort..

 

[G73S]

on my two 1 TB 840 Evos, I just set the Samsung recommended 10%

I tried both 30% vs. 10%, no difference in performance, and my drivers are only about 10% for the first SSD and 40% filled for the 2nd SSD even with OP being there.

I say anything about 30% is really overkill.

10% is best, but if you feel like wasting SSD speed, then OP by 30 not more

 

[CakeMonster]

The only time I would overprovision would be when installing for someone else who was clueless and would be likely to fill up the drive completely because of incompetence.

There's no magic speed bonus and if you managed to register here you don't need it.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

The only time I would overprovision would be when installing for someone else who was clueless and would be likely to fill up the drive completely because of incompetence.

There's no magic speed bonus and if you managed to register here you don't need it.

My knowledge about SSDs is limited to what I'm using and how I'm using it. I went through the sequence of tweaks suggested in Samsung Magician, and let it overprovision a 500GB 840-Pro to grab about 48GB away from the logical C: drive.

 

[BrightCandle]

Back in the early days of SSDs Intel had a really good presentation about the amount of overprovisioning necessary for the purpose of reducing the write amplification down. The sweet spot was somewhere around 5-10%, past that there was real diminished returns.

 

[milee]

Actually that's not true if you're talking about Intel SSDs with their controller.
The OP percentage after you're getting diminished returns is 32% for the G3 controller and 50% for the G1 & G2 (even those marked as G3 like 320, 710 use the updated G2 version).

For light workloads I wouldn't even bother with OP.

 

[coffeejunkee]

I wouldn't settle for less than 100% overprovisioning. Performance gains are unbelievable and your ssd will last forever and beyond.

But srlsly, I think you're wasting your time. I'm still on an Intel X25-M, haven't done any optimization except disabling defrag. I have swapfile on it, internet cache, downloads etc. Occasionally I check in Intel SSD Toolbox and remaining life is still stuck at 99%.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I wouldn't settle for less than 100% overprovisioning. Performance gains are unbelievable and your ssd will last forever and beyond.

But srlsly, I think you're wasting your time. I'm still on an Intel X25-M, haven't done any optimization except disabling defrag. I have swapfile on it, internet cache, downloads etc. Occasionally I check in Intel SSD Toolbox and remaining life is still stuck at 99%.

I "tested the water" so to speak over the last three years with SSDs. First, the ISRT configuration with a 60GB caching SSD and Sandforce controller. Second, an Intel Elm Crest SSD for my elderly mother's machine -- still working great -- not a problem. And now, I've replaced my HDD on my sig/flagship workstation with an 840-Pro 500GB. I've configured the OP and other features -- ironing out the troubles of getting my WHS backup for the machine working again.

As I may have already said in another thread or post, the cloning of a 1TB HDD to a 500GB SSD shrunk my "System Reserved" volume from 120MB to 60, and this may have been one factor failing my WHS backups for this machine. Since OP was already set to the recommended 10%, I reduced it to 9% so I could manipulate my "C:" volume and free up 50MB to expand "System Reserved." Acronis and Magician both made aspects of these manipulations easy, reliable and possible.

Everyone seems worried about how long their SSD will last -- an understandable question -- since I myself paid a premium for the 500GB 840-Pro. I think what Essence-of-War is saying about this: you may likely have moved on to another system drive or storage technology by the time the SSD is performing poorly or craps out.

Over-Provisioning may help at the cost of a few dozen GB of storage. If the manufacturer -- in my case, Samsung -- recommends it, I will follow.

But to exclude yourself from the use of 50% of SSD storage, that's unreasonable. Of course, if SSDs were as cheap as KOOL cigarettes, you wouldn't care.

 

[milee]

Working those (now old) 320s and 710s with constant 8k-64k writes made them slower and wore them out faster without OP.

For SF drives Intel sais that leaving unused space on their SSDs won't count as OP, but I have tested it with their 520 series and leaving ~11% resulted in a write amplification of .9 as opposed to not leaving any space and getting a WA of 2. No measurable performance differences, just wear.

Their older SLC drives and newer HET MLC are a different story.

For desktop usage, you just have to count on your manufacturer warranty and not worry of OP.