isn't that only true if you not using win 7? I thought with TRIM and win 7, no space was reserved.
1. reserved space is done in firmware and has nothing to do with the OS.
2. the way TRIM works is actually the same as making all free space equivalent to reserve space. Without TRIM things are much worse, but TRIM can't help you if you filled up the drive and there is no reserve.
The space on an SSD can be classified as one of those four:
1. Used space
2. Free space (space that at one point contained data, that has since been deleted without the knowledge of the SSD)
3. Reserve space (space that the SSD knows to be free)
4. Neverused space (space that never contained data, since last secure erase; this only exists for a very very short time, a few day to weeks after purchase)
However, SSDs cannot handle what I described to be "free space".
Without trim, the drive thinks all free space is used space.
With trim, the drive considers all free space to be reserve space.
GC scans the drive when idle for a known file system (NTFS and FAT) and identifies free space so it can be used as reserve.
So, if you have a 60GB drive (that is actually 64GB with 4GB reserved), you format it, put files on it, and it is now got 20GB of used space and 40GB of "free space". With TRIM that is considered 20GB of used space and 44GB of reserve. Without TRIM this is considered 60GB of "used space" and 4GB of reserve. A huge difference.
If you actually had 0 reserved and filling it up, TRIM will be unable to help, at all.
Interesting, I guess the same doesnt hold true for normal HDD's? I looked at the specs for various corsair force drives and they all seem to have the same write speed regardless of size.. Is SandForce still the best controller or is there something newer and better now?
Actually, a normal HDD that gets above 85% full cannot be defragged, suffers from severe fragmentation and subsequent performance loss, and suffers from performance loss due to writing at the inner rings of the drive (which are about 1/3 the speed of the outer edge of the drive). Spindle disks are written (typically) from outer edge inwards to maximize their speed.
So its a similar issue, for completely different reasons... oh and Spindle HDDs DO have reserved space... if sectors fail they are remapped to the reserves.
Amusingly, the causes for such similarities are completely unrelated and different. its just a total coincidence