T61 SSD question SSD over provisioning

[Hans Gruber]

I have a OCZ trion 120GB TLC SSD drive in one of my T61. I just updated the firmware and setup 12GB worth of over provisioning for this OCZ drive. I downloaded the OCZ guru software and over provisioning was an option. Does anybody over provision their SSD drives? I have read on Samsung forums that over provisioning is commonplace and usually they over provision about 10% of their SSD space. I did a little research online and it says that it reduces the workload on the SSD and improves performance and increases the life of the SSD drive.

My read speeds are 280mb and write speeds 170mb on this drive.

Do any of you over provision your SSD drives?

[MikalE]

Yes. Mine is OP'd by 10%. I have read that 10-20% is the norm.

[ajkula66]

Mine are usually OP'd at 25-35% depending on the drive size and I never go under 20%, not even on SLC drives.

[theterminator93]

I usually buy drives overprovisioned at the "usual" intervals (e.g. 240 for 256, 120 for 128) and leave that alone, however I also buy drives with a capacity at least 2-3 times what I project ever needing to use. I use a platter disk for my "dead" storage (e.g. programs, swap file, pictures/videos/music/downloads, etc.). In my case, 240 (256) gig drives have proven to be plenty for my OS when coupled with a 320-500 + gig drive for everyday data; the first SSD I've owned has been in service now for about 5 years and it isn't half full yet. I'm not an SSD guru but my understanding of their inner workings leads me to believe this is an fairly safe method to use them by.

As far as performance... all I can say is every one of my SSDs completely saturates the bus when I benchmark them. As far as reliability, well... none of them have failed (yet)!

[ajkula66]

I usually buy drives overprovisioned at the "usual" intervals (e.g. 240 for 256, 120 for 128) and leave that alone

That's not real over-provisioning...very few drives have proper OP from factory. Micron P300 is about the only one that I can think of right now.

[theterminator93]

Clearly I have much more learning to do on the subject of SSDs!

What does that extra space get used for, is it only for bad cell reallocation? Or does it get used for load balancing as well ... or does it depend on the drive?

[ajkula66]

Clearly I have much more learning to do on the subject of SSDs!

Good place to start:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6489/playing-with-op