generally just wondering if the whole “leave 20% open” thing still applies, because for me that would be like 800gb lol. here is my ssd info
NAME SIZE FSTYPE TYPE MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1 3.6T disk
├─nvme0n1p1 1G vfat part /efi
└─nvme0n1p2 3.6T ext4 part /
/dev/nvme0n1 /dev/ng0n1 24035A801101 WD_BLACK SN850X 4000GB 0x1 4.00 TB / 4.00 TB 512 B + 0 B 624361WD
Leave open like in “don’t partition”? I’ve never heard of that in my life.
Using your partition to a 100% will probably slow things down, but you can still delete some files if you need to. Better have the space available than not.
In “real” practice – Do not go under 10% - 15% to 20% is recommended. I follow 10% & really limit the read/write as much as possible. It all depends on what you are using it for—long-term storage 10% for sure – everything else, really look towards the 15~20%.
The biggest thing you can do to minimize wear on SSDs is to reduce read/write, Repetive writing from Web Browsers can be offloaded to a slower, older drive. Make sure Trim is enabled. Keep your system “clean”.
More info:
https://wiki.debian.org/SSDOptimization
By this, do you mean an unallocated space for overprovisioning?
If so, most modern SSDs are designed with built-in overprovisioning. Manufacturers typically reserve a percentage of the total capacity (often around 7-10%) for internal management tasks, such as wear leveling and garbage collection. This means that even if a user partitions the drive fully, the firmware manages some space internally for these functions.
There doesn’t seem to be a need for setting aside an unallocated space since the SSD’s firmware can effectively utilize any unused space, whether it’s unallocated or simply free space within a partition.
So, it seems to be generally sufficient to ensure that the SSD has some free space available rather than strictly unallocated space.
While this is true, it bears underlining that for most modern drives and most use-cases, the drive’s endurance is sufficient that it is completely useless to worry about it.
My system with a Samsung SSD 980 2tb is 2.5 years old; I have EOS, updated weekly on average, and Windows (very rarely used; once every few months). I use the system daily for several hours; I do web browsing, programming, LaTeX, gaming, and some minor video recording.
smartctl:
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 10%
Percentage Used: 1%
Data Units Read: 44 310 092 [22,6 TB]
Data Units Written: 29 960 163 [15,3 TB]
The drive is rated for 1200TB written. I have used 1/80th of that. At the current rate, in that respect the drive will last for about 200 years. (edit: I have a secondary drive for some tasks; let’s say 100 years if I did everything on that one).
Unless you do intensive 4K video editing or stuff like that, wear levelling is a complete non-issue.