Posted on 08/09/2024 8:31:56 AM PDT by Paul R.
How much over-provisioning of an older SSD is best? The drive in question is a 120 GB Samsung 840, Model MZ-7TD120. Obviously this is not the latest and greatest, but is does have Win XP on it and should speed up one of my old XP Machines in my lab. The drive health as reported by Samsung Magician is "Good", with 17TB having been written to it. That's good news, as the TLC NAND is not the most durable in world. (It looks like the existing files on the drive go back as far as 2012, but I'm not to worried about THAT.) However... 67 GB of storage are used, but only 7 GB remain available, as 36 GB are being used up in overprovisioning. That sort of seems like a lot, but then again I an not really familiar with OP settings or these 840 series drives.
Strangely, prices on these online are all over the map. Maybe the cheapos have high usage...
This drive is from my deceased brother and I am only now investigating it. There is some useful software on the drive and it looks like "not much data", so I'm pretty sure my brother was using this as the OS and programs drive, and the HD also in the machine was the data drive and backup OS. (If the C:\ drive failed, just disconnect it and use the slower HD as "C" until a new SSD could be installed.
In any event, if I keep all the programs on this SSD as a OS drive, then 7 GB is not a lot left over, as my lab programs would subtract another 2 GB or so. However:
A) I'm not sure I can easily change the over-provisioning % without losing the programs and OS (reinstallation needed?). That could be problematic...
B) I'm not sure reducing the over-provisioning is a great idea, anyway?
Depending on you all's recommendations, I probably could bite the bullet and delete lesser useful programs.
Thanks in advance!
Samsung Magician Software
https://semiconductor.samsung.com/us/consumer-storage/magician/
Samsung utility to manage SSD drives
I would recommend taking a backup of the SSD before modifying anything, just in case.
Ping!....................
Clone the drive onto another, newer drive (Samsung 870 EVO, or one of the NVDE in an appropriate enclosure), swap the drives, put the old one somewhere away from mag fields and such, just in case something needed gets deleted in error.
I used the 870, a plastic external box to house and host it temporarily, and DiskGenius because it’ll clone the boot drive while booted, handy but slow.
My original drive is an actual drive (!), a WD from 2013, it’s been in use since then.
Note: after the drive swap, the computer may yield an error about correcting drive errors. Don’t Panic! Let it finish!
Free Drive Cloning Applications
ExplainingComputers (the beloved Captain Kangaroo of tech)
1.03M subscribers
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September 24, 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gTJw8ehkVc
time index for DiskGenius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gTJw8ehkVc&t=343s
I am a big believer in SpinRite from Steve Gibson and GRC.
While nothing can low level format a drive anymore, I have use the latest Spinrite to refresh old SSDs.
It is at www.grc.com and is well worth supporting. He writes in assembly and the entire executable is about 300k.
Good call!
I don't believe you can modify the OP allocation; that's generally reserved for the SSD controller and attempting to change it risks losing your data.
Personally I would elect to get a replacement SSD and copy/clone the data over to it, and set the old one aside as a DR (disaster-recovery) backup/reference.
Ok, back “in” to check replies...
Ok, thanks - yeah, I got a lot of answers recommending upgrading the drive yet further, but given the low use on this drive, and this drive is probably faster than the rest of the computer it would go in to, I think I have better places to spend the $$. I’m digging further into what’s on this SSD: I may be able to pull off considerably more than what I need to add (only a GB or so), and then the existing HD in that lab machine becomes the data drive.
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