Partitioning a NVMe drive.

Gamer X

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 5, 2019
Messages
347
I haven't heard of anyone partitioning the SSD's, etc and was wondering if doing so hinders/hurts the Drives performance, etc. ??
 
I don't see how that could be. If anything, leaving some unpartitioned space may yield an improvement in peformance. It's called overprovisioning and it leads to lower write amplification, which is desireable for reducing stress (less program/erase cycles).
 
No impact. How the OS sees the drive and how the drive operates is different, hence the need for the flash translation layer (FTL). The NAND is accessed logically. There are some exceptions (encryption) but drives are self-encrypting (SED) these days as well.
 
There is no issue with this. Looks like I have 4 partitions + lots of free space on my 1TB 960

Code:
jmd0 ~ # fdisk -l /dev/nvme0n1
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 1TB
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 474AA56E-ECD9-4CAE-A859-9F504FDC726E
Device             Start       End   Sectors  Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1      2048    821247    819200  400M Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p2    821248  16777216  15955969  7.6G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3  16779264 838860800 822081537  392G Solaris root
/dev/nvme0n1p4 838862848 872417279  33554432   16G Linux swap
 
Due to how cacheing works, my Cache NVME drive is in 4 partitions. Yeah, performance is hit if it tries to read from all partitions at once (which triggers occasionally) but i've never seen any issue with it otherwise.
 
Thanks. I like to set my systems up as:

C:
Apps:
Games:
Storage/Media:

First 3 will be partitioned on a 1TB, or 2TB NVMe. While Storage/Media: drive will be on slower SATA drives.
 
FWIW, partitioning is also a decent way to set aside unused space to keep SSDs from getting too full. If you only partition 90% of the drive for use, you're very unlikely to ever fill it up to the point it'll hinder write performance. Sometimes I've later come along and partitioned that unused space as "swap" where it's a scratch area for handbrake, etc as I setup files for recording to a BD-R or whatever.
 
On all my NVME drives I have 10% partitioned away under the names "Can't Touch This" and they're drives X, Y and Z respectively.

I used a partition manager earlier today to wipe, destroy 4 partitions and rebuild 4 partitions on one of my NVME drive. Worked like a charm during all of it.
 
Back
Top