[SOLVED] M.2 NVMe SSD boot drive partitioning. Good or bad idea.

[Ori0n]

Hello all.

I read somewhere recently that partitioning these drives may not be a great idea and may affect performance.

Now I know there's a performance hit on SSD's if the partitions are not aligned correctly, but is that it?
I wish I could find that post, but it alludes me.

So I have a Samsung 970 Evo Pro/Plus 500GB that I want to boot from. I wanted to create the OS partition (accepting size recommendations), and then use the rest for other stuff that needs high speed access.

I am, however, unwilling to do any of this if it's going to dump on the drive's performance.

Any help given will be graciously received.

 

[karenjoly]

Drives are relatively inexpensive . If you have the drive space and a few more shekels, then buy two disks, the Plus and a less expensive sata. What you gain is some security against losing one disk and both drives. The storage disk will also suit as a back up platform .

 

[Ori0n]

Drives are relatively inexpensive . If you have the drive space and a few more shekels, then buy two disks, the Plus and a less expensive sata. What you gain is some security against losing one disk and both drives. The storage disk will also suit as a back up platform .

Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately I have spent over my budget for this build right now, but I think either way I would like to partition.
Firstly to keep the OS part smallish so that I can periodically clone it to an image on another drive, without a bunch of bloat. And secondly I really need the 2nd partition for VSTi's and sound samples which need to be accessible at as fast as possible speeds. I have backups of the samples and vst's so I don't need to worry about loss.

 

[kanewolf]

I wouldn't recommend hard partitioning. It only limits flexibility. Unless you believe that you would want to move the data on the "D" drive to some other location independent of the OS drive, I would keep it as one large partition and manually manage it.

 

[Ori0n]

I wouldn't recommend hard partitioning. It only limits flexibility. Unless you believe that you would want to move the data on the "D" drive to some other location independent of the OS drive, I would keep it as one large partition and manually manage it.

What do you mean when you refer to limiting flexibility?
It's the small as possible OS drive I would need to move independently of the other partition. And by move I mean take an image as an OS backup in case of failure. Be that natural or unnatural failure. And this would be stored elsewhere on another physical drive.
The "D" partition is only for high speed access to throw away files that are already backed up as original installers and compressed repositories.

 

[SkyNetRising]

SSD partitioning doesn't impact performance. That's just rubbish.
What does impact performance on SSD, is free space. It is used by wear leveling algorythms.
Leave ~10% of your SSD unpartitioned and performance will be fine.

Problems may arise, if you give too little space for OS partition and it fills up to 100%.
Then you have to backup data from neighboring partition, delete it, extend OS partition, recreate deleted partition and restore data to it. Quite tedious process.
Also keep in mind - windows updates require quite lot of space.

 

[Ori0n]

SSD partitioning doesn't impact performance. That's just rubbish.
What does impact performance on SSD, is free space. It is used by wear leveling algorythms.
Leave ~10% of your SSD unpartitioned and performance will be fine.

Problems may arise, if you give too little space for OS partition and it fills up to 100%.
Then you have to backup data from neighboring partition, delete it, extend OS partition, recreate deleted partition and restore data to it. Quite tedious process.
Also keep in mind - windows updates require quite lot of space.

Thanks.

So keeping in mind it is 500GB, how would you split the drive? Leaving ample space for OS with expansion space. Another partition for vst's and samples and similar stuff, and what do you recommend for un-partitioned space?

 

[SkyNetRising]

It all depends on software you're installing. I have no idea, how much space your additional software consumes. Also I have no idea, how much those "vst's and samples and similar stuff" consume.

Install windows normally accepting default values,
update it fully,
install all your software,
shrink OS partition , so free space is at least as much as used space (total size no less than 100GB),
create partiton for "vst's and samples and similar stuff",
make sure last 10% of the drive remain unpartitioned (~50GB for 500GB drive).

 

[kanewolf]

What do you mean when you refer to limiting flexibility?
It's the small as possible OS drive I would need to move independently of the other partition. And by move I mean take an image as an OS backup in case of failure. Be that natural or unnatural failure. And this would be stored elsewhere on another physical drive.
The "D" partition is only for high speed access to throw away files that are already backed up as original installers and compressed repositories.

Having one big pool of space is a lot easier to deal with than two physically limited pools. If you guess wrong on either one, then you have unused space in one partition that you can't access easily from the other.
There is no benefit from making your OS drive "as small as possible". You have NO way to know how big future OS updates will be.

 

[Ori0n]

It all depends on software you're installing. I have no idea, how much space your additional software consumes. Also I have no idea, how much those "vst's and samples and similar stuff" consume.

Install windows normally accepting default values,
update it fully,
install all your software,
shrink OS partition , so free space is at least as much as used space (total size no less than 100GB),
create partiton for "vst's and samples and similar stuff",
make sure last 10% of the drive remain unpartitioned (~50GB for 500GB drive).

Thanks for that. It looks like we have some conflicting info here though. From your point of view it seems that partitioning isn't an issue as long as I leave 1.
enough room for OS expansion and
2. an unpartitioned portion for drive functionality.
From kanewolf's side I'm advised to leave it whole as one contiguous storage with no mention of the un-allocated/un-partitioned space.

 

[Ori0n]

Having one big pool of space is a lot easier to deal with than two physically limited pools. If you guess wrong on either one, then you have unused space in one partition that you can't access easily from the other.
There is no benefit from making your OS drive "as small as possible". You have NO way to know how big future OS updates will be.

I understand that your solution is best in most cases but I can't help feeling that the bigger I have to let the amount of data on that drive get, the bigger and harder to deal with an image will become.
Maybe I should have said that the partition size on the OS side doesn't really matter as long as I keep the data on it as minimal as possible because an image will only be as big as the amount of data stored on any given partition.
Next I need to figure out this un-partitioned/un-allocated space that SkyNetRising has described to me. Any views?

 

[SkyNetRising]

From kanewolf's side I'm advised to leave it whole as one contiguous storage with no mention of the un-allocated/un-partitioned space.

Yes. He didn't account for specifics of SSD.
Leaving free space at the end of SSD is the same thing as Samsung Magician overprovisioning option does.

 

[Ori0n]

Yes. He didn't account for specifics of SSD.
Leaving free space at the end of SSD is the same thing as Samsung Magician overprovisioning option does.

So I could leave that part up to Samsung software?
Anyway to do all this before installing Windows?

 

[SkyNetRising]

So I could leave that part up to Samsung software?
Anyway to do all this before installing Windows?

Better to do it manually (gives you more control over things) and after windows is installed.

 

[Ori0n]

Better to do it manually (gives you more control over things) and after windows is installed.

Sorry for the delayed responses, we have a new baby in the house.
The reason I'm asking about partitioning before windows is because there's a way to move the whole C:/User directory, not just the individual documents folders, to a separate drive during Win install. Apparently it's not recommended to do this after.

How to Move Users Folder to another Location in Windows 10

This process is quite interesting.

 

[grokodillus]

i did like 25-60gb for every win partition, based on probable usage in the future and left 1,75gb unallocated space at the end of the disk and the max speed i saw at some random point was 1,4GB/sec copying speed on 970 evo plus 🙄
have not even tested it with any applications yet...