SSD do you use over provisioning ? how much Gb do you dedicate it?

Hi

do you use over provisioning ?
and how much gb do you dedicate to it ?

many users say 10% of the entire drive is the best bet


thanks

 

Mantra, most SSDs (but not Samsung in its newer iterations) provide for their own internal Over Provisioning in order to manage Garbage Collection and TRIM requirements and don't allow the user to change it. Samsung, through its MAGICIAN, I believe, allows a user to set up their own OP. The world seems to generally recommend 7-10% of the drive for OP.

OP will NOT affect READ performance at all, but will allow for better WRITE management of the SSD (WRITE speed, Garbage Collection and TRIM mgmt) and as a result, longer life for the device. For that, you give up 7-10% of your devices storage capability.

 

hi

may i know which are the newer iterations ? do you refer to the new models? even the older haven't a Over Provisioning

so intel , Corsair ,Crucial (maybe the best ssd around here ) OCZ , Sandisk have their internal over provisioning

yes but i have the operation system installed ,w8.1 , would be a wise choice to enable it?

i mean activate the Over Provisioning partition with w8.1 or w7 , or format , create this partition and re-install

thanks

 

Mantra, to be honest I'm not a SAMSUNG user. I'm aware of the MAGICIAN app for SAMSUNG, especially as it relates to its current line of EVO and PRO drives, but assumed it may have provided its own OP for its older models like all the other brands do... I may be mistaken and SAMSUNG may have always provided user OP control since the beginning.

Anyway, it's really a mistake for them to do that as most users will just install and use. If the drive comes with no fixed factory OP then that drive will be in trouble much earlier than a drive with factory set OP, especially as WRITE thruput is concerned along with wear leveling of the NAND blocks. If the drive contains a factory set amount of OP (say 7%), then allows the user to add more (through MAGICIAN), then there should be no problem... but I know not if that's the case.

As far as I know, that's correct.

I'm not sure you can if you've already installed your OS and no factory OP is present... unless I knew otherwise, I would not. I would ACTIVATE it then install the OS in that configuration. The reason is that the drive would only make available what is not being used for OP, and if OP has no value, the whole drive would be involved in the partition if the OS was installed to an unallocated drive space.

 

hi
but to create an op with samsung magician i need an operation system to run samsung magician
maybe a samsung user could help me?

but this op is an unlocated partition ?
which drive do u use?
cheers

 

Hi mantra,

I own two Samsung 840 PRO SSDs and an 840 EVO SSD. I use the two PRO SSDs as primary (OS) drives in two different PCs.

I set OP in both drives using Magician after the drives were formatted and in use as primary drives (Win 8.1 on both drives). I experienced no issues whatsoever but, of course, would strongly recommend that anyone attempting the procedure do a full image immediately beforehand.

 

thanks Prius04
i have lots of programs installed , so i will create a full image
but w8.1 by default has 350 reserved , os , -1mb free space , at least this what i saw using bibm included in image for linux

i wonder after the op creation , how will be the partitions layout

 

Can this be done pre-OS installation ie pre-partitioning the drive and leaving some unallocated space?

 

Should be exactly the same except the percentage you set aside for OP in Magician will appear as "Unallocated" (the last partition).

 

This is a good summary from Dan Goodell....

 

If TRIM is working, then I would not overprovision at all. Even if you normally leave 20% (or more) of the drive free, it's useful to be able to use that space when you need it for temporary purposes. It's not going to kill the drive, which will use its internal overprovisioning. My one exception would be for a TrueCrypt data drive, as TrueCrypt blocks TRIM on volumes outside the scope of system encryption., and I would manually overprovision such drives. Also, after encrypting a system drive with TrueCrypt, I found it necessary to do a manual TRIM, as TrueCrypt apparently doesn't issue TRIM commands during formatting. At least, when I viewed the drives outside of Windows and unmounted in TrueCrypt, I never observed tons of zeroed sectors until I did this. BitLocker is better behaved in this regard, and it of course doesn't block TRIM (or VSS) on data drives.

 

I too have been an Samsung 840 Evo since its availability. On windows 7 i have used the magician to manage the setup of the drive including TRIM command etc. My understanding is that for general PC usage, the SSD manages itself very well and over provisioning IMO is not needed (until that is your Drive is near full), as the write capability for general PC usage is more than sufficient. I completely agree with @crawfish above. Never had any issues not allocating OP and my SSD health (according to magician is ) perfect. Currently i have only used 50 % of my drive, therefor i have more than enough headroom for effective garbage collection.

 

hi
in the samsung page , they highly recommend to activate op
__http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...isite/SSD/global/html/about/whitepaper05.html

 

You are correct, i have read this document a long time ago. But given i have only used 50% of my large capacity drive and use my PC for general purposes and not workload extensive is it still recommended to enable OP?

"Samsung has chosen to implement a minimum amount of OP in its mainstream drives"

My understanding that they already implement a default amount of OP for efficient data management or is this not the case? too little maybe?

"The controller will use any available free space for this, but free space becomes a premium commodity as we fill our drives with data"

If i near 80% of of my Drive then it was always in my mind to enable OP. Regardless. At the time i was completely new to SSD's, and was only implementing Magicians Pre Defined settings, where there is no mention of OP. But reading the help file at the time i saw no indication that i actually should use OP, but rather a recommendation if a have a small capacity drive near full.

"Thus, a casual user with a large-capacity SSD may not need to set aside any extra space for OP. The SSD will naturally use any available free space to perform its maintenance algorithms. If you have a small SSD, on the other hand, it is recommended to set aside some OP"

This was the basis for me not to implement OP.

There have always been some sort of misconception about the proper usage of SSD's. But with this current generation of SSD's even "improper usage" can see a long service life. " 840 Series, equipped with mandatory OP, will still far outlast the useful life of the hardware it powers"

But given i have all this extra free space, i might as well enable OP.

Regards.

 

i don't know Ts4h
i tried samsung magician 4.4 and it recommend to activate op

 

I guess as a rule one should enable OP for small capacity drives or if they have used 70% of their drive, on the other hand you might as well enable OP if you have a large capacity drive as well ( even though i have not ), that OP allocated space wont be missed.

The advantages are clear non the less.

Although i have never bothered with Samsung's Rapid mode. Thats another question in itself.

regards.

 

If TRIM is functional, the space formerly occupied by deleted files is overprovisioning space. In that case, leaving part of the drive unpartitioned enforces a certain amount of overprovisioning, but more importantly, it prevents you from temporarily using that space you set aside, which again, if you do use it, it's not going to kill the drive, because they all have some amount of overprovisioning built in. So it makes no sense to overprovision in the presence of TRIM if you can manage to keep (say) 20% of the drive free most of the time.

As for Samsung "Magician" and what it recommends, that program is one step removed from malware. It purposely interferes with sleep, because according to Samsung, SSDs can't wake up reliably from sleep. After closing the program window, it remains active in the notification area, hidden there by default, and it also causes BSODs in rock-solid systems upon resuming from sleep, including the first one I had seen in many years. I wouldn't take any of its advice seriously. Its one legitimate function is to perform a manual TRIM on Samsung drives. More on that here.

 

I noticed that it was a pain in the butt to remove from automatic startup as well, with each iteration making a new way for it to startup. Iterations of magician started via startup entry, then service, then task manger. Lol. I never saw the BSOD you described however. If i recall, i used Predefined settings that were manually checked via registry etc, then i uninstalled it after a while.

Still recommended none the less for people who are scared to mess with CMD/OS and Registry settings. (none of those around here)

regards.

 

but a user with operation system and the program that he/she needs , doesn't delele files
i mean i really very seldom delete file on my C:
so w7 doesn't invoce trim command often , and w8 or w7 continue to read & write

 

You are making this too hard. Simply, don't fill the SSD more than 85% with data.

 

hi
it's just a discussion
and Brian there are many dichotomies and contradictions ,at least for the samsung ssds

 

I use Samsung Magician. 10% OP. These drives are SICK FAST.

 

Greetings! Factory Over Provisioning (OP) of all SSDs should be more than adequate for "commercial" (you and I) level operations.

One of the many SSD endurance tests currently being performed has taken (6) random manufacturer drives (Samsung EVO and Pro incl.) and run them to the end of their operational life. Three of them have failed to date... but not until they reached over 720tB of written data, the others have gone over a petabyte and are still fully operational. This was all done with factory delivered OP... nothing added.

If you look at your current S.M.A.R.T. data and see how much data you have written to date, then extrapolate that out to 720+tB, you will discover that you probably will be fully retired, running your cranium installed GOOGLE GLASS module, or partaking in the final dirt nap. These drives, barring some sort of HARD failure mode (which OP has little to do with), will last way longer than any of us will be messing with them.

Unless you have some sort of massive requirement to WRITE a ton of data (NSA... are you listening?) for a long, long time... OP is not even worth messing with, much less spending some valuable brain cells worrying about, regardless of SAMSUNG's recommendations. Those recommendations are very self serving as the Samsung 840 EVO is a TLC device (Tertiary Level Cell) rather than a MLC device (Multi Level Cell... which the 840 Pro is). TLCs require more bits (data states) of data to be stored in a single cell (less cells, cheaper device), causing extensive wear leveling to occur as compared to MLC devices. The additional OP recommended for those devices will help TLC devices last longer then they are expected to last, but even that is not required for typical daily use. The 840 EVO was one of the 1st three devices to fail (no additional OP other than what came from the factory), and that didn't even happen until after the 720tB mark in the test.

Personally I believe user configurable OP is really a non-existent issue... and to require yet another non-productive task like the Samsung MAGICIAN to run on one's system seems a real waste of resources.

PS: although I am primarily an OCZ user, I don't mean to be a Samsung basher... they were just never available at what I felt was a fair price when I was looking, and I found them to be no better technically than most of the others I looked at.

 

Since the release of W7 (TRIM enabled), manual TRIM has always been available with the introduction of the "SSDtool" which does exactly that... with any SSD. It's function was so basic that M$ has implemented it as the "OPTIMIZE" feature for SSDs in W8.

For those SSDs whose real knowledge of Windows data allocation might be different (it will be following any type of external image restoration or data modification done outside of Windows itself), the SSDtool (and W8's OPTIMIZE) does nothing more than pre-allocate all the available unused storage ('cept about 100mB) then DELETE its pre-allocation (no writing of data in the interim). This causes Windows to issue TRIM requests (very little overhead) for all the previously pre-allocated data areas... basically TRIMming the entire drive of its unused data areas... a simple, elegant Windows-based SSD cleanup, non-Magician required.

 

hi Austerity
thanks
do you sometime optimaze it with magician ?
did you find 4.4 buggy?