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January 5th, 2017 08:00
SSD Over Provisioning: Help a Confused Noob
This old dinosaur is familiar with and used to working with HDDs. Of course, that's old school and I see every new laptop comes with an SSD. Before I buy I'm doing some reading on this and the subject of over-provisioning the SSD seems to be a hot button. Lots of opinions, facts, fallacies, pros and cons. So let me throw out a few questions to the braintrust here. For starters, I'm looking at buying the XPS13, 9360. I wouldn't want less than 500GBs of storage, so I can either buy the 128GB that is offered with the unit and add a second drive, (if that's possible), or just pull out the OE drive and upgrade to a 500GB or more capacity unit. With that said. . .
1) In real world use, (mainly internet, emails, MS Office), will I see any difference OPing vs not?
2) Do SSDs come from the manufacturer already provisioned?
3) What percent of the drive should be set aside on, say, a 500GB unit?
4) Can a drive be provisioned at any time, even after being used and containing data and files, or must it be done on a new drive prior to use?
That's all I can think of for now. Appreciate any feedback. . .and thanks for dealing with my ignorance on this matter.
ejn63
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January 5th, 2017 08:00
1. Probably not; see #2
2. Yes, drives ship with spare sectors and the SSD controller automatically allocates them as needed to both level wear and call spares into use when original cells fail.
3. Not necessary.
4. That depends on the operating system. Some partitions can be resized and moved; others cannot.
All SSDs, as all hard drives will eventually fail - and they do eventually wear out. However, though SSD technology is constantly changing, most models from the top tier of manufacturers (Samsung, Intel, Crucial) are robust -- and of course, as is the case with hard drives, your best defense against a drive failure is your most recent backup.
Mac290
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January 5th, 2017 08:00
Thank you for the quick reply. So then for my use, over provisioning an SSD won't offer any sort of noticeable performance boost. Sounds like my best move would be to buy the laptop with the 128 GB drive, then upgrade to a quality SSD and be done with it and enjoy the ride.