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How do I setup over provisioning on new SSD to be used as Win 7 boot drive?

H

hurrakan

Member
Hi,

I have a new 256GB Samsung 840 Pro and I want to setup over provisioning so the performance is more consistent.

I plan to use it as my main boot drive in a new system, installing Windows 7 from the Win 7 setup CD.

Is it ok to use Samsung SSD Magician software to setup the over provisioning first? Will installing Windows 7 on it afterwards mess up the over provisioning (or alignment)?

And how much spare area should I set aside for over provisioning?

I've connected the SSD to my current Win 7 system, initialised it using Win 7 disk manager, created a simple volume and NTFS partition and quick formatted using default settings. msinfo32 says the Partition Starting Offset is 1,048,576 bytes so I think that is 4k aligned.

Now the 840 Pro shows up in SSD Magician, which recommends an OP allocation of 23.80 GB - leaving me with 200GB. Should I just use that recommendation? Anand only leaves 192GB, but I wouldn't mind keeping those extra 8GB if it doesn't make too much difference heh.

(I'm still going to have a Samsung 830 120GB and an Intel 510 250GB as spare drives in my new system)

Thanks,
 
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According to LSI, the SSD has to be in a clean state in order to correctly initialize the extra overprovisioning space:

http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/English/Collaterals/Proceedings/2012/20120822_TE21_Smith.pdf
(read slide 14)

Samsung drives might be working differently, though.
More specifically, the software Samsung Magician doesn't perform a secure erase when it increases OP, so probably it is sufficient so perform a partition-level TRIM operation (which isn't possible with OS-provided tools in Win7 as far as I know. It is in Win8, though).

Anyway, unless you write several dozen gigabytes/day of data continuously and/or with TRIM support disabled, increasing OP isn't going to affect performance and write endurance in a significant way.
 
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As long as you are in a TRIM environment, the OS will clean it for you. No need to SE.
OP not needed for 99% of consumer workloads.
 
I assume the Magician software repartitions and/or reformats the drive. The Help page for over provisioning states that "Magician only supports NTFS and raw (Unformatted, Unallocated) partitions."

But I guess I don't need to bother with the over provisioning anyway.

Considering I want to install windows 7 on the SSD, should I first delete the partition etc I created with disk manager and let the Win 7 setup redo everthing?
 
There is almost zero reason to use anything other than the Windows installer to partition and format your drive to the full size the drive tells the installer is available. Yes you should delete the partition(s), but you can use the Windows installer to do it. Just delete all the partitions until it shows a single unused volume and then select it and tell it to go.
 
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