SSD, free space in partition

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Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

SSD, free space in partition

Post by Brian K »

How much free space is needed in an OS partition on a SSD for good performance? I've seen figures ranging from 0% to 25% of the partition size. I suspect many of these figure are anecdotal.
TeraByte Support(PP)
Posts: 1644
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:51 am

Re: SSD, free space in partition

Post by TeraByte Support(PP) »

I just go by the amount of data moving around -- make sure there's enough free space to easily handle the largest files being copied repeatedly, for example. You want the drive to be ready to quickly receive the data. I usually don't like the Windows partition getting under 10GB free and that's probably still fine for Windows on a SSD.
Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

Re: SSD, free space in partition

Post by Brian K »

Paul, my OS partitions aren't that large.

I have a test 12.6 GB Win7 partition with 2.42 GB of free space. I copied and resized this partition so it was 10.2 GB with 0.98 GB of free space. I did the Windows Performance Index on each. The Data Disk Transfer Rate in the former was 7.7 and in the latter was 5.9. I had 16 GB of unallocated space remaining on the SSD. So the amount of free space in a partition does make a difference.

I've seen some views stating it doesn't matter if the free space is inside or outside the partition. They say a SSD with an 80 GB partition (that is 100% full of data) and 20 GB of unallocated space performs as well as a 100 GB partition which contains 20 GB of free space. My short experiment makes that view unlikely.
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: SSD, free space in partition

Post by DrTeeth »

On Sun, 2 Sep 2012 14:52:34 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
Brian K disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>Paul, my OS partitions aren't that large.

I'd keep an eye on your temp files folders. The amount of crud that
can accumulate is amazing.
--

Cheers

DrT
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Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

Re: SSD, free space in partition

Post by Brian K »

DrTeeth wrote:

> I'd keep an eye on your temp files folders. The amount of crud that
> can accumulate is amazing.
> --

DrT,

No problems there. My temp files/folders aren't in the OS partition.
TeraByte Support(PP)
Posts: 1644
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:51 am

Re: SSD, free space in partition

Post by TeraByte Support(PP) »

With a small partition you won't be copying/writing large amounts of data. I don't think I would go by just the Performance Index value, though.

I haven't retested mine since I installed it. Might be interesting to see how it's doing since I've restored several times. [Just tested it and it's still says 7.8, same as before.] I haven't moved anything off of mine. The page file, temp files, etc. are all still on the SSD.
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