Over-Provision a Crucial M4 512GB SSD?

1Wolf

1Wolf

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2007
Messages
433
I just installed a Crucial M4 512GB SSD and was wondering whether I should set aside some unallocated space for Over-Provisioning? If so...how much? 10%?

I already have a system with a Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD and the Samsung SSD Magician recommends about 10% for their drives. Unfortunately, the Crucial doesn't come with much in the way of documentation so I'm not sure whether I should or shouldn't set aside space for over-provisioning on a 512GB drive.

Thanks!
 
What is your perceived need for the OP? If it is you are worried about write endurance issues and want to leave spare cells, dont. With current generation drives, between wear leveling routines in the firmware and on-the-fly compression (Sandforce generally) you will get years out of most drives. That said, if you have extremely write-heavy workloads (Hundreds of gigs a day) you might want to look into an SLC drive instead. In any case, what you would be doing isn't really over-provisioning, true over-provisioning is what is done by the manufacturer (you will see it in a lot of the Sandforce drives, which are 120/240/480 as opposed to other drives which are 128/256/512. They have extra nand die which aren't being used which can be switched on as other cells die, leaving you the same amount you started with. You can read more about this here.
 
Last edited:
Just to give you an idea of durability.

My Intel G2 160GB shows to have been powered on for 408 days (9790 hours powered on).
My host writes are at 5.56TB

The Intel Toolbox shows my drive to still be at like 98% estimated life remaining.
 
Yeah, leaving free space was kind of a big deal when SSDs first came out (and their internal garbage collection was spotty or unknown), but I don't know that it is still something you need to worry about.
 
Are you using the SSD with TRIM? If so, you have little to gain from extra OP, since any unused space on your filesystem will be reported to the SSD as unused, and the m4 will be able to use that space just as well as if it had been overprovisioned by the amount of unused space on the filesystem.
 
Unless you plan to fill almost the entire SSD and keep it filled most of the time, you do not need any overprovisioning as long as the OS is TRIM-aware. If it is used as some sort of cache drive overprovisioning could make sense.
 
To answer your question, you can do it with Windows Disk Management. Right-click the Crucial disk, select Shrink Volume, and enter the amount you'd like to OP. If you want to shrink it X GB, multiply X by 1024 and enter the amount in the space to shrink field.
 
Actually that would probably not work unless a trim command is sent. Overprovisioning is something you do on a new or just zeroed SSD, by making a partition smaller than the size of the drive.
 
While I did not test this, I think the Windows 7 installer trims the whole partition region when you delete a partition. I noticed a freeze of several seconds while deleting a whole-disk partition on a 256GB SSD. This never happend with HDDs. I would expect that the partition manager does the same at least when deleting partitions, but this has to be confirmed.
 
You're right, so you could make a partition with the liberated space and then delete it.
 
Aesma said:
Actually that would probably not work unless a trim command is sent. Overprovisioning is something you do on a new or just zeroed SSD, by making a partition smaller than the size of the drive.
Click to expand...

An unallocated partition equates to over provision. Samsung's magician performs the exact same thing that disk management does. Regardless of which method is used, OP currently only works with MBR, not GPT. If you do some searching over at Xtremesystems.org, you'll find that OP actually increases IOPS capability (QD 4 and up), and slightly reduces latency. Now, I realize most users will generally be performing tasks that have a very low QD, but OP is good for certain kinds of users. The obvious example would be users doing heavy workloads and OP also is great for people running RAID0 without trim enabled, which will only help with the GC.

29606352.jpg
 
Last edited:
Thanks everyone for the terrific info.

Unfortunately, I'm not quite as well informed as some of you so I need to ask....based on all of your responses and MissJ84's excellent informative post...it sounds like OP isn't "necessary" unless I'm going to really fill up the disk. However, based on MissJ84's post it sounds like it can be a good thing for performance and speed things up? Or am I misreading that?

If so...what would you recommend? 7%? 10%?
 
I ask you again, will you be using the SSD with TRIM? If you don't understand the question, then tell us what operating system you will be using, and will you be using the SSD in RAID or as a cache?

The post by MissJ84 is not applicable to your situation at all if you will be using the SSD with TRIM.
 
1Wolf said:
Thanks everyone for the terrific info.

Unfortunately, I'm not quite as well informed as some of you so I need to ask....based on all of your responses and MissJ84's excellent informative post...it sounds like OP isn't "necessary" unless I'm going to really fill up the disk. However, based on MissJ84's post it sounds like it can be a good thing for performance and speed things up? Or am I misreading that?

If so...what would you recommend? 7%? 10%?
Click to expand...
It's really not going to speed anything up unless you're doing very heavy I/O operations. With the exception of people who are using RAID 0 or specific operating systems, the info I provided probably applies to less than 1% of PC users. If you're a "normal" user, like most people, you will typically reach only queue depth 1-4. Answer JoeComp's post and I'm sure you'll receive the answers to your questions :)

JoeComp said:
I ask you again, will you be using the SSD with TRIM? If you don't understand the question, then tell us what operating system you will be using, and will you be using the SSD in RAID or as a cache?

The post by MissJ84 is not applicable to your situation at all if you will be using the SSD with TRIM.
Click to expand...

This^
 
Last edited:
Thankyou again.

Yup...I'm pretty sure my SSD will be used with TRIM. I'm running Windows 7 x64 and, for what its worth, I've checked to be sure DisableDeleteNotify = 0.
 
1Wolf said:
Yup...I'm pretty sure my SSD will be used with TRIM. I'm running Windows 7 x64 and, for what its worth, I've checked to be sure DisableDeleteNotify = 0.
Click to expand...

Yes, Windows 7 will automatically TRIM your SSD when you format it and when you empty the trash of deleted files.

So you do not need to overprovision your SSD at all. If, in the future, you find that your SSD has slowed down and it is 99.9% full, then if you just delete some of the files (and empty the trash), then TRIM should give you back performance the same as if you had overprovisioned the drive.
 
Like others have said you don't need any more overprovisioning than what's included by the manfg.

I've used a 20% overprovisioning on my earlier RAID arrays but did it before the OS install by reducing the size of the drive and leaving it unformatted.

I now run a 3 drive RAID0 system and only use @ 15 - 20% of the space.

All storage goes on my server.
 
JoeComp said:
Yes, Windows 7 will automatically TRIM your SSD when you format it and when you empty the trash of deleted files.

So you do not need to overprovision your SSD at all. If, in the future, you find that your SSD has slowed down and it is 99.9% full, then if you just delete some of the files (and empty the trash), then TRIM should give you back performance the same as if you had overprovisioned the drive.
Click to expand...

So overprovisioning is unnecessary with a 256gb ssd?
 
westrock2000 said:
Just to give you an idea of durability.

My Intel G2 160GB shows to have been powered on for 408 days (9790 hours powered on).
My host writes are at 5.56TB

The Intel Toolbox shows my drive to still be at like 98% estimated life remaining.
Click to expand...

My 80GB G1 purchased around 4 years ago and used every single day since in my linux based htpc server has 96% life left in it according to Intel.
 
So how is OP different then leaving unused space, lets say 256GB > only 150 used as OS volume for example?
 
psyside said:
So how is OP different then leaving unused space, lets say 256GB > only 150 used as OS volume for example?
Click to expand...
It's only when the partition to be used for over repartitioning is labeled "RAW" that the drive believes it's a useable space for computations.
 
Old Hippie said:
It's only when the partition to be used for over repartitioning is labeled "RAW" that the drive believes it's a useable space for computations.
Click to expand...

So how is the correct way?

All i did is i left like 25% of volume space (OS) as unallocated, from like 240GB i set it to 190GB as OS volume partition before i installed the OS, did i do anything wrong?
 
psyside said:
So how is the correct way?

All i did is i left like 25% of volume space (OS) as unallocated, from like 240GB i set it to 190GB as OS volume partition before i installed the OS, did i do anything wrong?
Click to expand...

If you did it that way right from the start, it will be fine.
 
psyside said:
So how is the correct way?

All i did is i left like 25% of volume space (OS) as unallocated, from like 240GB i set it to 190GB as OS volume partition before i installed the OS, did i do anything wrong?
Click to expand...

The correct way is leaving the space unallocated and unformatted in the BIOS.

It will show as "RAW" in disk management.

Like I said it needs to be seen as RAW for over-provisioning.
 
westrock2000 said:
Just to give you an idea of durability.

My Intel G2 160GB shows to have been powered on for 408 days (9790 hours powered on).
My host writes are at 5.56TB

The Intel Toolbox shows my drive to still be at like 98% estimated life remaining.
Click to expand...

You're writing 157 kilobytes per second.
 
Old Hippie said:
The correct way is leaving the space unallocated and unformatted in the BIOS.

It will show as "RAW" in disk management.

Like I said it needs to be seen as RAW for over-provisioning.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help..

:(

I guess i messed up...

How to make it RAW now?

sdfsdf.jpg
 
What do you mean by "unformatted in the BIOS".
Click to expand...

Sorry, I meant during the Windows install I create a partition of 20% for over-provision and leave it unformatted.

Do it anyway you want but the over-provisioning partition must be labeled as "RAW" in Windows Disk Management and that's the only way I know to do it.
 
It won't be called "RAW" if you do it that way.
Click to expand...

I dunno what to tell ya.

I've done it several times and it's always been "RAW" in disk management.

But you are correct about leaving the partition with no designation.

Just create the partition and leave it alone. :)
 
Last edited:
An unformatted partition is unallocated space. The space gets only allocated from the SSDs point of view once it is written to at least once, and it only gets deallocated on a secure erase or TRIM. The SSD has no concept of partitions and filesystems, it only sees block writes. Creating a partition will only allocate it from the OS point of view, because it will only cause a write to the partition table.
 
omniscence said:
Creating a partition will only allocate it from the OS point of view, because it will only cause a write to the partition table.
Click to expand...

... unless you do a full format when you create the partition, which will write to each block in the partition.
 
Skakruk said:
So the answer to psyside's question would be, no, he didn't mess up.

And the most elegant method of OP would be secure erase -> leave desired OP space unpartitioned when you do your initial partitioning during windows install or disk initialization, and any additional steps would be unnecessary?
Click to expand...

So your saying everything is fine on my setup right?

That's what i did, i left unpartitioned space before i install the OS.
 
The best solution is not to worry about it at all. Manually over provisioning the drive will not do a thing or be noticeable for most people unless you are a benchmark junky. Real world is not benchmarks. I've manually stuffed an old Crucial C300 256GB SSD to 99.9% full of junk files just to test, and in normal usage (i.e. Office programs, Internet, etc) there is still no felt difference in normal everyday usage. Yes in benchmarks the too-full SSD performed poorly, and will stutter badly with some programs that require enormously sized scratch type temp files, but the real world normal usage patterns presented no real "felt" difference in operation.
 
xer0 said:
The best solution is not to worry about it at all. Manually over provisioning the drive will not do a thing or be noticeable for most people unless you are a benchmark junky. Real world is not benchmarks. I've manually stuffed an old Crucial C300 256GB SSD to 99.9% full of junk files just to test, and in normal usage (i.e. Office programs, Internet, etc) there is still no felt difference in normal everyday usage. Yes in benchmarks the too-full SSD performed poorly, and will stutter badly with some programs that require enormously sized scratch type temp files, but the real world normal usage patterns presented no real "felt" difference in operation.
Click to expand...

This is [H] dude. I would spent like hours, for 15% perf increase on my drive :cool:
 
psyside said:
This is [H] dude. I would spent like hours, for 15% perf increase on my drive :cool:
Click to expand...

Yeah, but us performance junkies (or normal folk for that matter) wouldn't fill a SSD to 99.9% either. Performance junkies have at least two SSD's in RAID0 maybe 20% full at tops! with 90% of the wear from running ASSSD over and over in different configurations...;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top