SSD-Question

[Spenser46]

Hi,
I live in Germany and am eagerly awaiting my new i5/128. (1st delivery August 31st.)

My desktop PC has got a SSD from Samsung.
With it came a tool with which you can set the over-provisioning.

My question: which SSD is built in in the SP3 and will such a tool be provided by Microsoft?

Thank you
Jochen

 

[ctitanic]

No that I know. can you provide a screenshot of this Application?

 

[Spenser46]

 

[Spenser46]

Just for you I switched to English.

 

[ctitanic]

View attachment 2693

Nope. We don't have that. I wonder if it can be downloaded.

 

[leeshor]

The Magician is a cool tool and the Samsung drive is a great drive. However, it's best features come into play when the OS has been cloned to an SSD from a hard disk as Windows 7 and 8 understand from the start what adjustments need to be made when being installed fresh on an SSD. The over provision feature of the Samsung isn't a gimmick but it's close. Certainly not one of the better features.

 

[ctitanic]

 

[Spenser46]

"The over provision feature of the Samsung isn't a gimmick but it's close."
I do not agree. It really depends on the Trim command working properly. At least Win 7 sometimes had difficulties. (It was tested by the most renown computer magazine c't in Germany)
If Win 8 has the same problems I don't know.

 

[Spenser46]

@ctitanic
The SP3 doesn't seem to have a Samsung SSD built in. That's why I asked.
I know that Intel offers a similar tool. (Intel SSD Toolbox)
Intel and Samsung don't really think that overprovisioning is a gimmick.
But leeshor may also be right that it is mostly for people who cloned to a SSD.

 

[GreyFox7]

All SSDs may not come from the same vendor. this is common practice in manufacturing. My SP3 SSD is a Samsung MZMTE256HMHP-000MV per Device Manager. that said its likely an OEM version Samsung SSD which may not work or be recognized by the Samsung tool.

Samsung may be keeping the Magic Sauce for themselves.

 

[Charlie Cassidy]

Overprovisioning is a standard feature of every SSD. Basically, every SSD has more physical blocks than the capacity of the drive, to allow for wear leveling and replacing blocks as they wear out. It is uncommon to be able to set the amount of overprovisioning, but you can get the same benefit by reducing the size of your partition(s) and leaving some unallocated space on the drive. This will effectively leave more unallocated blocks for the wear leveling to use.

 

[leeshor]

So, what does the over provisioning do that would not normally happen? Some of the drives including some of the Samsung drives state more than one capacity. More often than not it is NOT because they are stating formatted and unformatted storage but because the drive already has space set aside for over provisioning. (note that I use some of the Intel drives as well and their utility is very good but imo not = to the Magician in options)

If a drive, (assuming current generation drive, chipset and Win 7 or 8), formats out to a given amount of space and the firmware detects a bad cell it will take that cell out of service and reduce the space available. The over provision function reduces the space available from the start by setting aside the cells to put into service if it detects a bad cell which ends up not reducing the available storage space.

I have been selling quite a few SSD drives recently and so far have not had any issues with bad cells on any of them and have quit using the over provision feature. The Samsung EVO drive (80% of the SSD drives I sell/use has a 3 year warranty, the other 20% or so I use are the Pro series that have a 5 year warranty and though they are indeed faster drives they are also considerably more expensive.

My suspicion is that with or without the over provision enabled the drive will likely outlast the system.