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I am running Linux Mint 17. I'm posting this on Superuser rather than Unix & Linux because this probably isn't a Linux-specific question.

I was thinking of buying a SSD but a ~250GB drive will be somewhat tight on space and I can't afford a bigger drive. I understand that over-provisioning will increase the lifespan of the drive but this would reduce the amount of space I can use to store data. I have 8GB of RAM and since I've lowered the swappiness value, I haven't had to use any of the swap space I have allocated. I would need a swap partition in order to hibernate my computer, something I plan to do. If I had a swap partition just for hibernation, would this partition be used by the drive for routine maintenance, wear levelling, etc. while not in use or will I have to create unallocated space or another partition in addition for overprovisioning? If so, I could just create a ~20gb swap partition and let that serve as a a buffer for the ssd as well...

I am thinking of getting a 250gb 850 EVO, if that matters. Does anyone know if this drive comes with hidden (built-in) OP? I sort of feel like this should be built into modern drives and it is unnecessary to allocate a percentage of the drive as free space. Do I even need to worry about this?

TL;DR - Will a swap partition be used as overprovisioning on an SSD? Is overprovisioning built into modern drives (specifically the 850 EVO) and do I even need to worry about it?

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OP must operate within a partition on the drive it is OP-ing. Therefore it will not utilise SWAP.

There is also no built in default OP enabled. At least not on Samsung drives. Sandisk i think implement it as a hidden partition on their drives.

The world generally recommends 7-10% of the total drive volume to be saved for OP. I say 10% minimum if you want a healthy SSD that will last and deliver good write speeds and TRIM capabilities.

My advice is to actively alter the OP partition as you use the drive, starting with as much as you can spare (50% of the drive to begin with) and reduce it as you use the space, to a minimum of 10%. This can be done in the Samsung Magician software or in Disk Management/Disk Part etc. This will give you the greatest performance and endurance.

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  • It’s not a partition like the ones you create when installing an OS by the way. It’s simply a part of the disk that is inaccessible from the outside. Only the SSD itself can use this memory.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Jun 30, 2015 at 8:42
  • Yes, thanks for clearing that up. It is simply unallocated space.
    – Ctrl-alt-dlt
    Commented Jun 30, 2015 at 9:25

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