How much space should be left free on my 2TB Samsung 850 evo ?
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david.boyle01
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- Aug 30, 2017
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I've only had hard drives and SSD's fail when they are over 90% full. Maybe it's coincidence, but I was always taught to never use more than 90% of your hard drive.
gaius_iulius
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SSDs work best when there are at least 20% of free storage space in each partition.
Of course your drive will still work okay with only 10% of free storage.
More important than not filling the available storage to capacity is over-provisioning, however.
When you use your SSD for the first time, you should not format the whole disk, but leave some un-formatted, unallocated space.
The rule of thumb is 7% (for more read-intensive application, which is typical for a desktop machine) of total disk space.
This would be insanely much even on a 500GB drive (35GB), not to mention a 2TB SSD (140GB).
Therefore those 7% may be capped at 10GB, although with a huge 2TB SSD I'd probably go for 20 or even 30 gigs of unallocated space .
Don't underestimate over-provisioning, and don't neglect it, it will greatly enhance the lifespan of your SSD.
Note that many manufacturers over-provision their SSDs natively, so it might not be necessary for you to do it yourself with every drive.
However, when in doubt, do it. 10GB less on your SSD don't make that much of a difference.
Cheers,
Gaius
Of course your drive will still work okay with only 10% of free storage.
More important than not filling the available storage to capacity is over-provisioning, however.
When you use your SSD for the first time, you should not format the whole disk, but leave some un-formatted, unallocated space.
The rule of thumb is 7% (for more read-intensive application, which is typical for a desktop machine) of total disk space.
This would be insanely much even on a 500GB drive (35GB), not to mention a 2TB SSD (140GB).
Therefore those 7% may be capped at 10GB, although with a huge 2TB SSD I'd probably go for 20 or even 30 gigs of unallocated space .
Don't underestimate over-provisioning, and don't neglect it, it will greatly enhance the lifespan of your SSD.
Note that many manufacturers over-provision their SSDs natively, so it might not be necessary for you to do it yourself with every drive.
However, when in doubt, do it. 10GB less on your SSD don't make that much of a difference.
Cheers,
Gaius
- Mar 16, 2013
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Actually, partitions don't really make a difference in SSD's.
In an HDD, partitions are actual physical locations.
With an SSD, that is just a visual representation, shown to the user and the OS.
The SSD firmware shuffles data around as needed for wear leveling.
In any case, 15% or so.
For a 2TB drive (actually 1.81TB), don't go past about 1.5TB.
gaius_iulius
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Hehe, yes, I guess those are semantics ... if you have 20% of free space in each partition, you'll necessarily have 20% of total free storage space.
I didn't know about the wear levelling, thanks for that info.
Does this mean the SSD's mapping tables are constantly being updated? Doing that is very resource-intensive and detrimental to performance.
And don't modern SSDs use journaled mapping tables anyway?
I didn't know about the wear levelling, thanks for that info.
Does this mean the SSD's mapping tables are constantly being updated? Doing that is very resource-intensive and detrimental to performance.
And don't modern SSDs use journaled mapping tables anyway?
- Mar 16, 2013
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Yes, the sector locations are being updated routinely. Wear leveling, so as not to write to a specific cell too many times.
This is also part of the TRIM function.
No, it is not a performance hit. The drive and firmware are designed to do this.
Partitions on a HDD is like a house, with physical walls. Inside each room are pieces of paper with data on them.
Partitions on an SSD is like one large room, and little caffeine infused minions moving those same pieces of paper around so you don't wear out the finish on the floor. And he's just drawn lines on the floor, that you think are walls (partitions).
gaius_iulius
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Hmmm, so this would effectively negate the main reason of partitioning, which is the prevention of data loss in the case of sector damage.
You partition to prevent the damage from spreading.
Question is, will those "virtual walls" (I like the analogy you used, caffeine infused minions made me lol) still fulfil the vital function of preventing damage spreading?
You partition to prevent the damage from spreading.
Question is, will those "virtual walls" (I like the analogy you used, caffeine infused minions made me lol) still fulfil the vital function of preventing damage spreading?
- Mar 16, 2013
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Partitions on an SSD do absolutely nothing for data preservation, or minimizing damage.
And physical partitions on an HDD do little for that as well.
Yes, they are physically discreet. But platter damage can cross that partition line.
If I had an HDD with a failing partition, the entire drive is suspect, and needs to be replaced soonest.
Partitioning is not for walling off damage, but rather to give you the opportunity to reinstall the OS on one partition, and not touch data in a different partition. Or other data segmentation.
And I've seen some people here go waaaay overboard with their partitioning.
One guy had 2 or 3 physical drives, and was actually running out of drive letters in Windows. 8 or 10 'partitions' on each drive.
But with today's drive sizes and prices, individual physical drives is a much better solution.
And actual backups are the real way to ward off damage.
I mostly don't care if a drive dies. My data, in the various levels of backup, is far more valuable than an easily replaceable physical drive.
gaius_iulius
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So the only remaining valid reason for partitioning these days is that it allows you to backup selectively, thus reducing the size of backup files and speeding up backup/restore processes.
I'm using 2 SSDs for my OSs (Debian 9 for work, Windows 10 for gaming).
While I haven't bothered to further partition the SSD containing Windows 10, it is just one large C:\ partition, I have partitioned the Linux disk into
/
/home
/usr
with /var, /tmp and swap on one of the internal HDDs.
I'm using 2 SSDs for my OSs (Debian 9 for work, Windows 10 for gaming).
While I haven't bothered to further partition the SSD containing Windows 10, it is just one large C:\ partition, I have partitioned the Linux disk into
/
/home
/usr
with /var, /tmp and swap on one of the internal HDDs.
- Mar 16, 2013
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And even that is trivial.
My backup routine is a combination of Full and Incremental backups. Daily.
A Full backup of my C drive, currently ~200GB in a 500GB SSD, takes maybe 20 mins to go across the LAN to my NAS box. The Incremental backups take maybe 2-5 minutes per day, depending on which drive.
And I kinda don't care how long it takes, because I'm generally asleep while it does it.
For the restore process...it would probably take longer to open the case and swap drives than to completely recover from last nights backup.
Linux is different. It needs those partitions to operate.
Windows doesn't. But I like to keep data separate from the OS and applications. But on individual physical drives.
gaius_iulius
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No, Linux doesn't require primary partitions to function.
If you wish, you can install a Linux system on a single partition, only /, and Linux will create the necessary subdivisions as logical partitions.
But that's beside the point, there are many different reasons to have "proper" partitions for Linux.
I don't understand what you mean by "open the case and swap drives". They are all internal, 2x SSD and 2x HDD, plus 2x eHDD.
You are right regarding the backups, the saved time is minimal, and backups are mostly done by cron anyway, at night.
Backups of backups on internal HDDs to eHDDs one a week, also by cron.
Still I feel it is somehow "more orderly" with partitions.
I guess I became so used to partitioning over the years that it is hard to not do it, hehe.
If you wish, you can install a Linux system on a single partition, only /, and Linux will create the necessary subdivisions as logical partitions.
But that's beside the point, there are many different reasons to have "proper" partitions for Linux.
I don't understand what you mean by "open the case and swap drives". They are all internal, 2x SSD and 2x HDD, plus 2x eHDD.
You are right regarding the backups, the saved time is minimal, and backups are mostly done by cron anyway, at night.
Backups of backups on internal HDDs to eHDDs one a week, also by cron.
Still I feel it is somehow "more orderly" with partitions.
I guess I became so used to partitioning over the years that it is hard to not do it, hehe.
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