New SSD user questions

[Aquinus]

Incorrect. All SSDs have level 1 OP which comes in at around 7.3%

I thought I was clear about this, clearly I wasn't. There is no added over provisioning. Meaning, yeah they have 7.3% but that is not enough if you start filling the drive. You should try to maintain 20% (after level 1,) anyways.

 

[Jetster]

So i just bought a Samsung 840 Series 250 Gb. I did confirm that is comes with 7% set OP that cant be changed. Then the Magician Software firmware upgrade can add additional OP space if you desire. That was my understanding.
So this space is unallocated right? So it will show in the disk management and not on the system correct?

 

[silkstone]

OP Level 1 is from the conversion from binary to base 10 and comes in at 7.3%.
Level 2 is system reserved space that you cannot partition or use for storage.
Level 3 is from free space (assuming TRIM enabled) and/or unformatted area.

For SSDs with modern controllers there is very little benefit of using level 2 OP unless you are using the drive in an enterprise environment (100% load). All SSDs have 7.3% level 1 OP. Not many drives come with level 2. Level 3 is made redundant by TRIM and other controller functions.

They are all ADDED space. You are basically saying over-over provisioning by saying added over provisioning.

So it will show in the disk management and not on the system correct?

Assuming it is level 1 OP, it won't show at all. What will show is a disk size of around 223GB rather than 250GB, meaning you have 27GB for OP. My binary isnt tha't good, so the conversions might be slightly off, but i think it's enough to get the idea.

Level 2 OP would also not show. Notice how you get versions of the same drive in 120GB and 128GB formats. They are physically the same drive, but you will usually find that the 120GB drive has the other 8GB set aside for OP by the controller.