Over Provisioning - basic Question?

[MGhee]

I'm on my first SSD (860 Evo), and about a month or so on a fresh install of Win8.1x64. I finally decided to update the firmware of my Samsung using the latest (v5.3.1) Magician software - all is well.

My question is a simple one, mostly looking for clarification. I decided to allocate 5% to over provisioning rather than 10%, no reason, using OP at all is really an experiment, seeing there's so much disagreement about its usefulness. I noticed the 5% (23GB) of the drive used is unallocated -->> when using part of the drive for this purpose - (OPing)...

* Is unallocated the recommended state for the set aside drive space?
* Samsung's Magician software prefers unallocated.

I'm not here to debate OP's usefulness, only whether the space remaining unallocated while used as OPing is cool. I ask because even the software throws out a vague sorta warning which made me think I might have done something wrong, or I needed to pick up where the software left off -- partition, format. I don't like the vague Note the software adds or seeing the unallocated space in disk management, but if it's supposed to be I'm cool with it. I'll reclaim it later if need be.

I may not have needed OP, my drive that died was 1TB, and after 4 years I still had 860 GB available. I mention this because some of the debate in the webosphere is that the free space on your drive acts like OP space - others strongly disagreed. I'm not smart enough to know who's correct, this is why I'm asking

TIA

 

[pbcopter]

Personally, I tend to go with what Samsung recommends. Whether or not just unused space has the same effect as unallocated space I can't say. Some say there is no need to have over-provisioning at all but I believe Samsung would not create a utility to set it, if not useful. Just my opinion.

 

[MGhee]

I agree pbcopter, I don't figure Samsung would waste their time on a useless piece of software if it wasn't necessary.

I still want to ask Samsung if a user doesn't fill up their drive and maintains 30 or 40 percent free space, is OP needed. My laptop came with a 1TB HDD and after nearly 4yrs i had IIRC 700+GBs free. This gets to my original question... can formatted drive space work just the same as unallocated space for OP purposes? If the answer is no then my free space I usually maintain matters not.