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how much free space am I supposed to leave on SSD?

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Coup27 said:
But don't the drives come with that as spare area already? Are they asking us to OP an additional 7-10%?
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i've read that but can't point to any evidence, to the contrary. e.g., an 80 GB intel 310

"Intel uses the same in-house PC29AS21BA0 controller on the 310-series SSD as they do on both the 160GB X25-M and the 40GB X25-V.
The board makes use of only five 16GB Intel 29F16B08JAMBA flash modules, and a smaller (in size, not capacity) 32MB IS42S16160D DDR chip."

http://www.storagereview.com/intel_ssd_310_series_80gb_review
 
readymix said:
i've read that but can't point to any evidence, to the contrary. e.g., an 80 GB intel 310

"Intel uses the same in-house PC29AS21BA0 controller on the 310-series SSD as they do on both the 160GB X25-M and the 40GB X25-V.
The board makes use of only five 16GB Intel 29F16B08JAMBA flash modules, and a smaller (in size, not capacity) 32MB IS42S16160D DDR chip."

http://www.storagereview.com/intel_ssd_310_series_80gb_review
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The flash chips are 16 GiB chips, not 16GB chips. SSD are sold at standard HDD Gigabyte rating, that is, 1 GB = 1 000 000 000 bytes. Flash chips are manufactured in Gibibytes, ie 2^30 -> 1 GiB = 1 073 741 824 bytes.

You'll notice that in Windows, the total amount of free space reported on an Intel 80 GB SSD is ~74.4 GiB. However, the 80GB drive actually contains 80 GiB of flash; Intel (and everyone else actually) just conveniently uses this ~7% discrepancy as spare area.
 
MadAd said:
I did not...thank you for the information

now I have to confront myself over whether im willing to risk updating it, its worked flawlessly
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I've updated an X25-M G2 twice, and 3 x 320 series once. Never had an issue. The Intel firmware update is quite a reliable proceedure as until recently it has always been performed in pre-boot.

I prefer the bootable ISO over the Windows method. Far less can go wrong.
 
Coup27 said:
When I read the Samsung SSD 830 user manual it said drives perform best when 7-10% is allowed for over-provisioning. But don't the drives come with that as spare area already? Are they asking us to OP an additional 7-10%?
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I think I may have the answer.

I have just upgraded to a Samsung 830 128GB and during the Windows installation I made a single partition the size of my drive.

In my SSD Magician in the overprovisioning section it says:

Current overprovision available 0GB.
Overprivision recommended 11.90GB.

So I take it to assume that the amount they include as spare area by default is not classed as overprovisioning and they would like us to do that extra bit manually.

They should really make that clearer as it's much easier to leave a bit off your partition at the start than it is to do it after.
 
That number sould be the amount that is kept from the user completely. You just partition the 'whole' thing. The over provision is already hidden from you.

For instance, my force gt 120gb partions to 111gb if I use 100% of the space.
 
jellowiggler said:
That number sould be the amount that is kept from the user completely. You just partition the 'whole' thing. The over provision is already hidden from you.

For instance, my force gt 120gb partions to 111gb if I use 100% of the space.
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You clearly didnt read a word of what I put above.
 
So I take it to assume that the amount they include as spare area by default is not classed as overprovisioning and they would like us to do that extra bit manually.
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I guess I'm a little confused also and I did read what you wrote.

Maybe it's just semantics.

Some have used the term under provisioning and some say there's 2 levels of over provisioning.

I've always considered it a spare area that couldn't be changed, was invisible to the OS, and was always 5-9% of the drive's capacity.

Is this what you meant?
 
Coup27 said:
I think I may have the answer.

I have just upgraded to a Samsung 830 128GB and during the Windows installation I made a single partition the size of my drive.

In my SSD Magician in the overprovisioning section it says:

Current overprovision available 0GB.
Overprivision recommended 11.90GB.

So I take it to assume that the amount they include as spare area by default is not classed as overprovisioning and they would like us to do that extra bit manually.

They should really make that clearer as it's much easier to leave a bit off your partition at the start than it is to do it after.
Click to expand...

How big (in Windows' "GB") does Windows tell you your SSD is Windows Explorer?
 
Coup27 said:
You clearly didnt read a word of what I put above.
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I think he understood you just fine. Read any of Anand's articles on SSDs from the "anthology" days and you'll get all the schooling you will ever need on SSDs. The SSD manufacturers took a few revisions to decide on the proper amount to leave over-provisioned for consumer drives. And they hide the over-provisioned space from the user. So just partition the whole amount available on your SSD, don't do any manual over-provisioning.

Since the over-provisioned amount is hidden from you, you *cannot* partition the actual full space on the drive. Partition the whole thing and don't worry about it.
 
Kevinsbane: 119.24GB.

I think everyone has managed to miss what I put. I understand that there is already an amount of NAND which is not visible to the user which is used as spare area, and reading Kevinsbane's post explains how that NAND comes about.

The topic of this thread is overprovisioning. The key word here is over. It wasn't until I got my Samsung and looked at the Magician software and user manual that I understand exactly what they're talking about.

When I installed Windows I made a single aligned partition (no 100MB system partition) and installed to it. It says in the 830 user manual that best long term performance can be achieved by overprovisioning 7-10% of the capacity. What it should say is "If you manually overprovision an additional 7-10% of your visible capacity this will help the controller in maintaining speed over time".

The reason I am sure of this is because when I went into the overprovision section of my SSD Magician when I had a single partition, it said:

Current Overprovision: 0GB.
Recommended Overprovision 11.90GB

I then used the overprovision tool within SSD Magician to shrink my only partition by 12GB. This process took about 5 seconds and now in disk management I have 12GB unallocated space. SSD Magician now reads:

Current Overprovision: 12GB.
Recommended Overprovision 11.90GB

So overprovisioning is indeed the user manually overprovisioning their accessible capacity ontop of the spare area which already exists on the drive. It's important to note that this is not a requirement. This is an option if the user wants to give the controller more room to achieve best results.

It's also important to note that it does not mention in an Intel user guide about overprovisioning nor does their toolbox have an option for it. Crucial have no user manual or toolbox so they obviously dont feel it's important either. Samsung obviosuly do though.

Edit: I know how everyone loves pictures SSD Magician screenshot:

op.jpg


Page from User Guide:

op2.jpg
 
Last edited:
What it should say is "If you manually overprovision an additional 7-10% of your visible capacity this will help the controller in maintaining speed over time".
Click to expand...
OK, this is just the extra space idea that started the whole thread and Samsung has decided to call it overprovisioning.

No big deal but some are calling it other things....it's just semantics.

This overprovisioning/free space/partition is the 20% area I used to leave as RAW when patitioning the drive to make sure the drive's electronics see it as free space/computation area.

As you can see, some think it's needed some don't.

I only use @ 50GB of 512GB avaliable and don't bother with the seperate RAW partition anymore.
 
Old Hippie said:
OK, this is just the extra space idea that started the whole thread and Samsung has decided to call it overprovisioning.

No big deal but some are calling it other things....it's just semantics.
Click to expand...
It is the extra space idea but until I went through all this I was under the impression like others that the free space was already there but concealed from you as spare area. I didn't know they expected us to give up additional capacity to assist further. I didn't overprovision at all on my X25-M and I used it for at least 2 years on the same installation and I CDM not long before I sold it and the scores were what Anand got when he benched it in the reviews..
 
The hidden space has always been called "over-provisioned" in everything I've ever read, so your implication that it is just "provisioned" and only the user-configured stuff is "over"-provisioned wasn't apparent.

The Intel controllers and the SandForce controllers have the ability to use user-partitioned-but-free space the same as over-provisioned-but-unpartitioned space. Anand's articles have talked about this in detail (again, I suggest you read them if you haven't). I am not sure if the Marvell controllers can also, but I suspect so. Apparently the Samsung controller cannot, as that would explain why the Samsung utility is encouraging you to over-provision manually. Intel's utility does not, as it is not needed.

The more free space the controller has available for wear-leveling the more efficient it can be at prolonging the life of the drive. If the controller cannot access the partitioned-but-free space for wear-leveling, then the amount of over-provisioning becomes more important. This is part of the reason to recommend you don't completely fill up your SSD. For a controller that can use the partitioned-but-free space, completely filling up your drive kind of cramps it's style, so to say. So I guess if the Samsung controller cannot use partitioned-but-free space, then you have a point in being interested in over-provisioning more than the default amount. Going with the amount that utility is recommending might not be a bad idea. But it isn't completely needed, just like not filling up your drive isn't something to worry *too* much about. Just a general guideline.
 
I have read Anand's articles and I think the way Samsung goes about this subject and the terminology they use threw me out.

I think we can conclude now though for best results with any non-Samsung drive you can either leave a portion RAW, or partition it all and be sensible how much you fill it to the brim. With a Samsung drive, you will have to leave a portion RAW.
 
I didn't overprovision at all on my X25-M and I used it for at least 2 years on the same installation and I CDM not long before I sold it and the scores were what Anand got when he benched it in the reviews..
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With or without the spare area if your SSD is starting to show intermittent, dramatic performance decreases the spare area needs increased.

While it may decrease cell life if the space isn't large enough, IMHO 2 years isn't enough time to really notice.

It is the extra space idea but until I went through all this I was under the impression like others that the free space was already there but concealed from you as spare area. I didn't know they expected us to give up additional capacity to assist further
Click to expand...
Unfortunately many have the same thoughts but I think that many don't understand the basics of how these drives actually work and as your post indicates, semantics have made it harder. 🙂

With a Samsung drive, you will have to leave a portion RAW.
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I don't see anything that indicates RAW in your Samsung chart.....just unallocated.
 
RAW, unallocated and unformatted are again, more words that mean the same thing.
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Pretty unfortunate.

AFAIK RAW and unformatted are the same but unallocated could be either.

I'm assuming you're little program just makes a unallocated partition which can be done after the drive has been installed.

AFAIK you can't unformat a single partition to make it RAW. It must be done before partitioning the whole drive during the install.
 
It says that if a partition becomes unallocated then it is also RAW.
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That's not how I understand it but you can think what you want.

When I set my Intel 80GBs in a RAID array I didn't partition 20% and it read a RAW not unallocated because it hadn't been formatted.

This was how I was taught to do it so the drive would assume it was an area to be used for GC.

There were many discussions regarding unused partitions and actual RAW partitions as to which was needed and which did the best.

You are more than welcome to think what you want.

Had Samsung made this clearer I would have just l made my partition less 12GB in the partition editor.
Click to expand...

It's just a suggestion and I'm very suprised you weren't aware of this technique.

As you can see not all think it's required because it isn't.

It just depends on how you are using the drive.
 
That's not how I understand it but you can think what you want.
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You sound like you're getting a bit arsey. It's not just me. The Samsung manual and that link both say the same thing.

I was aware you could overprovision but as it's been said above, all non-Samsung controllers do not need a dedicated portion of [whatever it's called] to do so. You could achieve the same results by simply not brimming your SSD with data. I don't think anybody apart from Readymix who has joined in this thread was aware of Samsung's unique position on this and the fact they suggests users block off a portion of their SSD.
 
You sound like you're getting a bit arsey.
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LOL!

Not at all.

Samsung has just decided to put in writing what experienced users have known all along and there's really no sense in discussing it any further.

It really doesn't matter to me what you call the space but I thought I would share my experience.

Like I said, think what you want.
 
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