Question It is bad for a m2 ssd to have partitions? will a partition be more damaged than the others with time passing if you have the OS on it?

[psaez84]

Hi

It is bad for a m2 ssd to have partitions? I mean, imagine that you have 1TB m2 ssd and partition 1 is 200GB and will be used for OS and software, and partition 2 is 800GB and will be used for storage.

Will a partition 1 be more damaged with the use when time passes than the partition 2? consider that the OS and the software will make a lot of writes on the partition 1. On the other hand, partition 2 will be much less used, because you will only storage things some times, like a movie, some photos, etc... That means that if in 5 years you will make 500.000 writes on partition 1, you will be restricted to make those writes on only 200GB of space. On the other hand partition 2 will have only some hundreds of writes.

Maybe is better to not have partitions and let the OS and the disk firmware write on all the space of the disk instead of restricting it to some portion of the disk?

Thank you.

 

[LinuxDevice]

The pool of unused storage is not bound to a particular partition. The amount of data written matters for life of solid state drives, but it won't matter which partition or file is written. Old style hard drives used an exact physical location on the platter, but solid state drives can remap addresses and what references the addresses.

 

[psaez84]

The pool of unused storage is not bound to a particular partition. The amount of data written matters for life of solid state drives, but it won't matter which partition or file is written. Old style hard drives used an exact physical location on the platter, but solid state drives can remap addresses and what references the addresses.

so doesn't matter if I create partitions and use it like I described in the question. The life of the entire SSD will be the same in all of his space.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi

It is bad for a m2 ssd to have partitions? I mean, imagine that you have 1TB m2 ssd and partition 1 is 200GB and will be used for OS and software, and partition 2 is 800GB and will be used for storage.

Will a partition 1 be more damaged with the use when time passes than the partition 2? consider that the OS and the software will make a lot of writes on the partition 1. On the other hand, partition 2 will be much less used, because you will only storage things some times, like a movie, some photos, etc... That means that if in 5 years you will make 500.000 writes on partition 1, you will be restricted to make those writes on only 200GB of space. On the other hand partition 2 will have only some hundreds of writes.

Maybe is better to not have partitions and let the OS and the disk firmware write on all the space of the disk instead of restricting it to some portion of the disk?

Thank you.

What benefit do you believe you will get from partitioning?
200GB is pretty small for the OS today. You will have to be more active in space management than most would like.

 

[psaez84]

What benefit do you believe you will get from partitioning?
200GB is pretty small for the OS today. You will have to be more active in space management than most would like.

well

It was an example, but the most part of the SSD is for gaming and storage, and usually I prefeer to have dedicated partitions for gaming and storage.

the point is that I wan't to do it only if it is not bad for the SSD

 

[kanewolf]

well

It was an example, but the most part of the SSD is for gaming and storage, and usually I prefeer to have dedicated partitions for gaming and storage.

the point is that I wan't to do it only if it is not bad for the SSD

I didn't read any benefit in that answer. Partitions could be beneficial with spinning disks. But without the penalties of seek time and rotational delay, there is very little benefit for SSDs.
Would it be possible to reinstall your OS without wiping out your data partition? Yes. Would you get it correct? Unknown.
IMO, you are much better off without partitions BUT having an automated backup process to protect your data.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Maybe is better to not have partitions and let the OS and the disk firmware write on all the space of the disk instead of restricting it to some portion of the disk?

Partitions don't matter for SSD longevity.
Make sure you have 10% space left unallocated (overprovisioned) for garbage collection/ trim purposes.
It will improve performance and SSD lifespan.

Having OS in a separate partition from user data is preferable.
You can format OS partition/ reinstall OS without worrying about your user data then.

 

[PEnns]

A partition on an SSD is like a folder.

The SSD doesn't care how many you create. There is no reading head (like on HDDs) that would jump from one place to another to fetch the data. Hence, longevity is not really affected by partitions on SSDs.

 

[cirdecus]

I didn't read any benefit in that answer. Partitions could be beneficial with spinning disks. But without the penalties of seek time and rotational delay, there is very little benefit for SSDs.
Would it be possible to reinstall your OS without wiping out your data partition? Yes. Would you get it correct? Unknown.
IMO, you are much better off without partitions BUT having an automated backup process to protect your data.

This is not entirely true.

With two partitions, you could easily format the OS without affecting Steam games or other files on the other.
But without two dedicated m.2 slots, I would say it's not as beneficial. But yes, you can do it and it won't hurt your SSD at all

 

[kanewolf]

This is not entirely true.

With two partitions, you could easily format the OS without affecting Steam games or other files on the other.
But without two dedicated m.2 slots, I would say it's not as beneficial. But yes, you can do it and it won't hurt your SSD at all

I acknowledged the potential for reinstalling the OS without disturbing the data partition. I also could find 100 threads where that went wrong and everything got wiped. So it is possible but not foolproof.