I'm curious about how free space works on a partitioned SSD. I have a 1TB SSD with 750GB devoted to NTFS for Windows and 250GB for Ext4, which I use for Linux Mint. I plan to switch to Linux as my main OS eventually, but right now, it's just a side project. I've read that it's beneficial to keep about 10-20% of an SSD free for optimal performance and longevity. So, my question is: do I need to maintain free space on each partition, or can one partition being full be okay as long as the other has free space?
2 Answers
It’s somewhat of a common misconception that you need free space on every partition. You mainly want to ensure that the drive as a whole has some free space. While it’s good to have some room on each partition for performance reasons, it's more about the overall SSD health than the individual partitions. So, if one partition is full, that’s not ideal, but if another has enough free space, you should be fine!
It's a bit nuanced. Keeping free space on an SSD helps with wear leveling, but modern SSDs handle this quite efficiently, even with less free space. Ideally, having some free space helps with things like SLC caching, but you don’t strictly need it on each partition. Just ensure your overall SSD isn’t filled to the brim, as that can lead to slower performance and potential wear issues. Don't worry too much about one partition being full as long as you manage the overall space!
Thanks for clarifying that! I was a bit worried about running out of space on my Linux partition.
So, it’s mostly about the total free space on the drive rather than each individual partition? That makes sense!