New SSD Fitted and Working

[ChrisHunt]

My new SSD has been fitted (Samsung 840 Pro at 256Gb) with 238Gb listed as usable - presume the remainder is the necessary headroom to avoid filling the thing to capacity. Fitting it was a bit of a faff but I used the Seagate Disk Wizard software (Acronis) to do the transfer and it completed without a hitch (phew!). What a tranformation - much quicker and I've managed to keep P3D on the SSD which brings real bonuses with load up times (startup and in "game").

Hardest job was getting the old C drive down to a size that would copy over - took a few days. Now of course comes the challenge of keeping the C drive down below the 238Gb limit - lots more housekeeping needed methinks.

Regards,
Chris

[rohan]

Chris,
if this drive is your new system disc, then you really need to keep the contents down to at most 70% to 75% of the available space, that is no more than 166Gb of the 238Gb you quoted. In fact, 60% to 65% is a better target for a system drive - for a purely data drive, the former figures are good. FYI, the difference between 238GB and 256GB is actually for internal drive management and is not available to your o/s or applications ...

[ChrisHunt]

Hi Rohan, usefully AnandTech did some tests featuring the Samsung 840 Pro that I now have and leaving 25% free seems to be about right leaving an effective capacity of 193Gb. Not as much as I had hoped but not as little as I had feared. Still - the requirement to ideally leave free a quite substantial amount of space should be highlighted with every purchase of an SSD. Link to Anandtech article for interested parties: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6489/playing-with-op

Regards,
Chris

[rohan]

... the requirement to ideally leave free a quite substantial amount of space should be highlighted with every purchase of an SSD...

Yes, that would be a good thing for the manufacturers to do, but this aspect of disc drive management is not confined to SSDs - it's based on the way all disc drives work under Windows (and indeed most, if not all, other operating systems). Then again, how many users actually read the technical documentation supplied with any drive ...

Hope the 840 works well for you,
Ro