SSD and Over Provisioning

[spirits247]

I'm trying to understand best practices for SSD drives and it's hard to find a definite guide using Google.

So I'm left with a few questions considering an ALREADY USED SSD (not factory fresh).

1) Do I need to secure erase a drive first before partitioning a drive smaller to allow for over provisioning benefits? OR....

... 2) will Windows 7 install disk and TRIM operations handle that for me by simply creating a smaller partition than the max size of the SSD and selecting quick format?

3) Does secure erase remove any HPA areas of an SSD (damn you Gigabyte motherboards!)? Or will I have to use a HPA tool?

Thanks for the advice guys!

 

[wazza300]

to restore the ssd to factory fresh performance then always secure erase it,windows should handle the rest

 

[spirits247]

To be safe, I secure erased the drive using the manufacturers utility then made a smaller partition using the Windows 7 install disk.

Secure erase did not remove the hidden HPA made to backup the motherboards bios. I had to use good old DOS with HDAT2 to remove it. I think newer gigabyte boards have this disabled by default thank goodness. The older board I have in one of my PC's just dumps a HPA on any drive it boots from without asking.

 

[unleashed]

This is what Samsung say re over provisioning:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18454557