SSD Overprovisioning Windows XP

[o_o]

I know Windows XP is about to die, but I am curious about Overprovisioning. I have a Samsung SSD, and Magician tells me that the OS does not support Overprovisioning. This is understandable because XP does not support moving partitions like Vista or later.

I am going to reinstall XP on this SSD. I am curious if I can partition it into two i.e. one for the OS, and a small unallocated partition for the Overprovisioning. Would this work?? Or is there no way to get Overprovisioning to work Windows XP?

Thank you in advance for your ideas & help.

 

[Cerb]

No, that wouldn't. You need to make it so some LBAs are known to be unprogrammed by the SSD, and stay that way. The surest way would be to secure erase it, then make an aligned partition as big as you want for the OS. Then, install the OS to that, leaving the rest of the space untouched (not partitioned or formatted at all, just empty).

 

[Anuextreme117]

No, LBA's are unprogrammed by the SSD's!

 

[o_o]

No, that wouldn't. You need to make it so some LBAs are known to be unprogrammed by the SSD, and stay that way. The surest way would be to secure erase it, then make an aligned partition as big as you want for the OS. Then, install the OS to that, leaving the rest of the space untouched (not partitioned or formatted at all, just empty).

Thank you very much Cerb. I think that’s what I was suggesting in my earlier post i.e. using a small unallocated unformatted partition and hoping the disk would use it for Overprovisioning.

 

[Cerb]

Thank you very much Cerb. I think that’s what I was suggesting in my earlier post i.e. using a small unallocated unformatted partition and hoping the disk would use it for Overprovisioning.

An "unallocated partition" is a contradiction.

But, the needed step for it to work is to have that unused space TRIMed, or otherwise (such as secure erase) known as unused, first.

 

[Sunburn74]

Why overprovision at all in this day and age?

 

[Cerb]

Why overprovision at all in this day and age?

Because the OP wishes to use an OS from 2 ages ago--and we all know how that discussion will go, so let's just leave it be--but maintain like-new performance.

 

[corkyg]

The question suggests a lack of understanding as to what overpvisioning is in the SSD world, and why it is necessary. There are many explanations on the web, but I find this one has clarity and brevity.

http://www.techspot.com/news/52835-...-need-for-trim-overprovisioning-and-more.html

 

[o_o]

Thank you guys particularly Cerb. Just to confirm, I would first do a secure erase. Then for a 230GB SSD, I would create a partition of about 210GB and install the OS there. The rest of the space i.e. 20GB would show up in Disk Management as Unallocated.

I would then assume that the SSD would automatically use the 20GB for Overprovisioning without any other explicit configuration. Is this correct?

 

[Cerb]

Yes. The objective is to get the SSD to see all those LBAs as free space. In a newer OS, unused space would be told about to the SSD, via TRIM. If a block has had data written to it, it can be free space from your PoV, but to the SSD, whatever is there is still valid data. Fresh from a secure erase, all the SSDs visible LBAs are known unprogrammed to the SSD, and unless they are written to, can be used as spare area.

 

[Sunburn74]

Because the OP wishes to use an OS from 2 ages ago--and we all know how that discussion will go, so let's just leave it be--but maintain like-new performance.

Well I'm aware of that, but what I'm arguing is that with routine daily use with conventional workloads, his samsung SSD will function just fine. It does take a long time to write haphazardly enough to the SSD to start triggering serious write penalties with normal use. I doubt you'd notice those write penalties as tangible real world performance differences (heck the earliest intel drives barely wrote at 70mb/s and these are drives without trim which people swear up and down have no tangible real world performance difference compared to the latest and greatest SSDs.The absolute worst you could do to your samsung is get writes down to the 50mb/s range and thats after assaulting it with 4kb writes as anand did in his review). Finally all thats needed to keep your drive in pretty good performance is once a week of idle time (such as overnight with the bios page on, or the win7 login page, etc). Heck, when I ran my vertex raid-0 setup without trim (which I did for about 2 years until the TRIM hack was discovered), I think I allowed for pure idle garbage collection maybe once every 6 months and there was no real performance difference noticed after I enabled trim.

Why sacrifice 20gb of expensive storage for something you may not notice and is easily rectifiable? Just my bias

 

[razel]

Just to confirm, I would first do a secure erase.

You don't need to do anything. Your Samsung SSD is a very big boy who can take care of itself. It's parents, Samsung has already set aside enough space outside of the stated capacity. Setting aside more is only necessary if you are running the torturous worst case benchmarks that Anand is doing.

Also do NOT secure erase on a whim. Only time I ever recommend doing so if prior to selling the SSD. If you are interested in clearing partition tables or boot sector information (MBR) you can do so with the clean command with Windows' diskpart. That command zeros the 1st and last megabyte of the disk.

 

[Cerb]

Why sacrifice 20gb of expensive storage for something you may not notice and is easily rectifiable?

Because the OP doesn't want to take that risk, and without ready access to a newer OS, it is not so easily rectifiable. 20GB might not be very valuable, in comparison.

Were it me, I wouldn't bother, for a client PC.

On the plus side, though, those long idle times would be wasted, if the OP has any 840 series drive. Light use will be every bit as good.