SandForce SSD

[UaVaj]

i have a mushkin chronos deluxe sandforce SSD which comes from the factory with the 7% overprovisioning (aka RAISE).

for those that do not undderstand what this 7% overprovisioning is.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5710/the-adata-xpg-sx900-128gb-review-maximizing-sandforce-capacity

while partitioning the primary partition for use. looks like i "am" able to manually delete the 7% overprovisioning partition for more space.

obviously some of the newest sandforce ssd are coming without this 7% overprovisioning. my understanding of the article is that this overprovisioning is actually optional. that this overprovisioning is for hardware trim, error correction and raid 5 support. also 2200 series sandforce controller are well capable of running with RAISE disabled on a consumer level platform.




now the real question. not guessing. only real experiences only please.

what are the "real world practice" effects of manually deleting this 7% overprovisioning (aka RAISE)? let us know how long u been using it with RAISE? deleted RAISE. then now how long has you been using without RAISE?

do share your thoughts.

 

[Mfusick]

I'd leave it alone. If you need that space that bad just buy a bigger drive.

If you want performance boost buy another and run RAID 0

Otherwise just leave it alone

 

[tweakboy]

Agreed. grab a 512GB and we wont have this problem lol

 

[masteryoda34]

Removing the overprovisioned space has two consequences I can think of:

1) Poor performance when the disk is full

2) Reduced drive lifespan

Is that worth it for an extra 7% disk space?

 

[Mfusick]

That 8gb of space ain't gonna do much...

 

[UaVaj]

thank for chiming in.

let me further clarify. 7% space was never the motivation, however long term performance and reliability is.

basically what are the effect of long term real world usage between (1) sdd which have the provisioning vs (2) the ssd which does not have the provisioning?

 

[F1shF4t]

RAISE is not over-provisioning. Its a redundancy scheme in sandforce SSDs which takes one NAND die. (Think of something like RAID5)

Over-provisioning for consumer SSDs is usually the difference between the binary GiB and the decimal GB. For example 256GB SSDs have 256GiB of NAND but only 238GiB user accessible. This "missing" 18GiB is used for over-provisioning. This is all set in firmware. I don't think any manufacturer provided a tool where this can me modified. (You can't see or modify over-provisioning space in partitioning utilities)