Jump to content

Partition or Not Partition a SSD - What is the Best to Do?


Radish

Recommended Posts

I have a SSD. When I got it I partitioned using the same scheme I had used with HDDs for years - six partitions in total. Last night I was looking at my actual use of each partition and what I find is that I've got one partition that is close to chock-full but most of the other partitions have lots of free space. Then I got to thinking that I could better use the SSD if I just had a very small number of partitions and the one massive partition for general use. Then I thought that doing that might be better for the SSD in the sense that there is more free-space on a giant partition for what gets called "wear levelling" functions. This seemed to me a reasonable thought as to why partitions on a SSD should be kept to a minimum. Thinking about that I thought that the only partitions that I really need are:

C:\ - for the OS
D:\ - for my own documents, sheer paranoia leads the way here, I never want that partition corrupted by anything else
E:\ - one massive partition for everything else.

Is this a good thing to do? Are partitions on SSDs really necessary? How does free space on SSD partitions fit into this equation? Does wear levelling of partition x occur only in the free space of partition x? Or would the SSD use all the free space across all partitions for wear levelling of partition x?

I'm just hoping to get the thoughts of others with more expertise than I have with this post. In that way I might be able to work out if I really need all the partitions I currently have.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


I usually prefer to have the OS on a disk all by itself, and use separate disks for other things, rather than use partitions. For desktops anyways, for mobile computers I typically use them for specific purposes and generally have no use for large amount of programs and/or data storage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I usually run a partition for OS/programs and one for everything else.  I hate how Windows wants everything to go to the Documents folder and stuff like that because I can't save everything I want to keep to the "other" partition.  Done it this way since a couple of regular hard drives before and has worked, since it's easy to just scoop the other partition for data backup.  My SSD is partitioned half and half right now, mainly because Windows is a space pig. 

As for your other questions, I can't say I have a lot of technical expertise to tell you anything.  Most of what you'll get is just simple preferences of each person that post.  That said, I would imagine that if a SSD can't function in all the ways that a standard hard drive can, we would all know, and as a result the technology would never have made it to market, nor be adopted as much as it has.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the responses.

Apart from my own musings on this I found this webpage on the advisability/inadvisability of partitioning an SSD. There is one poster there, "Community", that writes quite extensively on how SSDs deal with data on the SSD. (Community's post starts with the first paragraph, "SSDs do not, I repeat, do NOT work at the filesystem level!") Reading it blew all my own thoughts on how SSDs must work out of the water -- if he is right. Problem is I don't have the technical expertise to decide if he is right or wrong. Very interesting read though.

If Community is right then, by my reading, on an SSD you can partition as freely as you please or not partition as freely as you please; it makes no difference how the SSD handles wear levelling.  I was just wondering if any folks on this forum had any thoughts on this.

Edited by Radish
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Radish said:

Thanks for the responses.

Apart from my own musings on this I found this webpage ...

WHICH webpage? :angel

(but yes, wear leveling has nothiing to do with filesystem level activities)

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Radish said:

Ops!  :blushing:

Sorry, jaclaz. Getting older and bit befuddled now and then. Link is in the post now.

No need to be sorry, everyone is getting older, unfortunately.

JFYI, the generic idea (simplified) on how wear leveling works on a flash device (be it a USB stick or a SSD or a CF card) is the following.
1) the actual device has a controller
2) the controller holds addresses (Real addresses, in the following "R") and addresses (Translated addresses, in the following "T"), through a table of correspondences, including the info about how many times the address has been written to. 
3) the T-addresses are less than the R-addresses (there are some "spare" sectors, in the following "S") and are the only address that the OS can actually access

Imagine you have a brand new (very small) device that has in total 5 sectors (of which the OS will see only 3), when it is brand new the table will (loosely) look something *like*:

R0=T0;0
R1=T1;0
R2=T2;0
R3=S0;0
R4=S1;0

After some time of use the situation might become (for some reasons the operating system writes many more times to T1 than on T0, while T2 is written an "average" of times):
R0=T0;314
R1=T1;2120
R2=T2;874
R3=S0;0
R4=S1;0

the wear leveling algorithm may decide that the sector R1 (that the OS accesses as and uses as T1) has been written way too many times and then intervenes, doing the following:

1) copy the contents of sector R0 to S0
2) copy the contents of sector R1 to S1
3) copy the contents of S0 to R1 AND remap the R0 to T1
4) copy the contents of S1 to R0 AND remap the R1 to T0

The situation will become:

R0=T1;314
R1=T0;2120
R2=T2;874
R3=S0;1
R4=S1;1

and after some time of similar usage, will eventually become something *like* (in brackets previous writes+new writes):

 R0=T1;2314 (314+2000)
R1=T0;2410 (2120+290)
R2=T2;1640 (874+766)
R3=S0;1
R4=S1;1

jaclaz 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...