PS3 Ideal free space on hdd question

SiegfreedOs

SiegfreedOs

Member
after looking on pc forums about the topic of free space the suggested idea is about 10% of the total hdd size,does this parameter affect the ps3 as well and if not how much free space i must maintain on my hdd to avoid any kind of poblem.
 
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To know whether it applies, the exact implementation of the file system must be known (not just the fact it's encrypted UFS2), and there's no exact percentage or absolute size - it's just a rule of thumb (modern filesystem implementations prefer to space files across the partition to avoid fragmentation; of course if there's not enough contiguous free space, splitting the file is the only option - but note how it's not directly the total free space you can easily check)
 
PS3 using swap file with constant size, and games caching data on different partition. There is no need to more than 10MiB of free space left if You have such needs (but of course this depend on how much data You will create (saves, trophies etc. etc.)).

And besides PS3. On Windows or Linux You also do not need any more free space than for system databases/cache and applications cache. There is no such things like "suggested free space around 10%" (this must be calculated by yourself, depending of usage).
 
Kind of off topic but related, I read that when using SSDs on hardware that does not support TRIM, for example on PS3 or in a RAID set up. If you do want to use it anyway, you can if the garbage collection is good, and you only use approx 70% of the drive. I might get a cheap SSD like 240GB for €20 and do some tests with only using it up to 50% capacity or something. .
 
@DeViL303 Current firmwares doing sector allocation on the fly on low level. In very very basic example: let's say that addresses from 0x0 to 0x1000 are first sector in LBA system, but later can be i.e from 1000 to 2000 other place because fw remapped (based of block usage count). For high layers like BIOS or UEFI, and of course operating systems, LBA i.e 1 is the same, because they don't have access to such low level of this kind of devices and only fw of this SSD know what addresses are exposed as specific LBA address. That's the reason why free space on current SSD free space doesn't really matter (only matter in speed aspects because clean blocks are 1 not 0, so two cycles must be make to erase data). I hope I didn't mislead something. ^^"

In consequence of it, the only way to make real full format is launch secure erase mode (so it is possible situation when You have clean (only zeroes) SSD but in reality it is not all blocks are clear because not all are fully exposing to LBA). BTW. ;)

At least this is how NAND flash devices works (SSD, eMMC, pendrives, memory cards etc.). I don't know if the same applied for 3D X-Point (marketing name: Optane, but not those HDD with cache on 3DXP but fully 3DXP mass storages).
 
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Berion said:
@DeViL303 Current firmwares doing sector allocation on the fly on low level. In very very basic example: let's say that addresses from 0x0 to 0x1000 are first sector in LBA system, but later can be i.e from 1000 to 2000 other place because fw remapped (based of block usage count). For high layers like BIOS or UEFI, and of course operating systems, LBA i.e 1 is the same, because they don't have access to such low level of this kind of devices and only fw of this SSD know what addresses are exposed as specific LBA address. That's the reason why free space on current SSD free space doesn't really matter (only matter in speed aspects because clean blocks are 1 not 0, so two cycles must be make to erase data). I hope I didn't mislead something. ^^"

In consequence of it, the only way to make real full format is launch secure erase mode (so it is possible situation when You have clean (only zeroes) SSD but in reality it is not all blocks are clear because not all are fully exposing to LBA). BTW. ;)

At least this is how NAND flash devices works (SSD, eMMC, pendrives, memory cards etc.). I don't know if the same applied for 3D X-Point (marketing name: Optane, but not those HDD with cache on 3DXP but fully 3DXP mass storages).
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Yeah I don't really understand any of it. was just reading some articles about it and they seemed to say it can work without TRIM. I might be wrong but that is why I thought it was not recommended to use a SSD in PS3? (I know you can not get full speed benefits in PS3 but apart from that.)


This kind of thing I had been reading:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/how-to-prevent-ssd-degradation-without-trim.516319/

random guy said:
I personally use two Intels 160GB in RAID, and was previously using two Samsungs 256GB in RAID, so basically, I never got TRIM to work for me so far. Take it for what it's worth, I never did, and never will fill them over 50% if I can, and for sure, never shall go over 67%. In both cases, I've been able to maintain pretty much my initial performances, WITHOUT TRIM.
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I was just thinking the same approach might work in ps3.
 
I just recently got a PS3 with a replaced 500GB HDD, at first boot I only had 410GB of free memory, while the system shows the maximum capacity as 465GB.
It seems that the PS3 already set a percentage of you memory for use with other functions, so as said you can fill that up.
 
Kennerc said:
I just recently got a PS3 with a replaced 500GB HDD, at first boot I only had 410GB of free memory, while the system shows the maximum capacity as 465GB.
It seems that the PS3 already set a percentage of you memory for use with other functions, so as said you can fill that up.
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That's normal... HDD vendors use a misleading trick: they measure the HDD capacity in Gigabytes, not in Gibibytes like PS3 or WIndows do, to magnify the real capacity.

1 Gibibyte = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes = 1,073,741,824
1 Gigabyte = 1000 x 1000 x 1000 bytes = 1,000,000,000

So, a HDD of 500 GB (Gigabytes) is approximately 500,000,000,000 bytes (500 x 1000,000,000 bytes), probably less because they use rounding too.

500 GB = 500 x 1,000,000,000 = 500,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 465.66 GiB (Gibibytes)

The other missing 55GB (465 - 410) is approximately 12% reserved by Sony for "performance reasons", partitions and other internal stuff.

Check this tutorial if you want to recover up to 8% of that missing space.
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/t...l-space-on-the-ps3-internal-hard-drive.20773/
 
aldostools said:
That's normal... HDD vendors use a misleading trick: they measure the HDD capacity in Gigabytes, not in Gibibytes like PS3 or WIndows do, to magnify the real capacity.

1 Gibibyte = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes = 1,073,741,824
1 Gigabyte = 1000 x 1000 x 1000 bytes = 1,000,000,000

So, a HDD of 500 GB (Gigabytes) is approximately 500,000,000,000 bytes (500 x 1000,000,000 bytes), probably less because they use rounding too.

500 GB = 500 x 1,000,000,000 = 500,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 465.66 GiB (Gibibytes)

The other missing 55GB (465 - 410) is approximately 12% reserved by Sony for "performance reasons", partitions and other internal stuff.

Check this tutorial if you want to recover up to 8% of that missing space.
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/t...l-space-on-the-ps3-internal-hard-drive.20773/
Click to expand...

Thanks, I knew about the reason behind the difference in nominal/real capacity, and I had assumed that the extra 40 GB missing were due to system reasons, and I rather not mess with it.

I already seen a difference in performance in ripped games that also have install files, and messing even more with the HDD could result in more issues.

On an unrelated note, are you the developer of Webman mod? If so, big Kudos to you, I'm new to the scene but I don't see myself replacing webman with any other backup manager, since it launch straight from XMB, and has full FTP support, I do most of my "FTPing" when my kids are watching youtube/Netflix.
Just a question though, I play only PS3 games, and I have disabled the category options, since it added an extra step which wasn't used in my case, but is there a way to create custom categories? So i can separate the Kids games from the more mature ones?

Sorry for bad "engrish".
 
Kennerc said:
Thanks, I knew about the reason behind the difference in nominal/real capacity, and I had assumed that the extra 40 GB missing were due to system reasons, and I rather not mess with it.

I already seen a difference in performance in ripped games that also have install files, and messing even more with the HDD could result in more issues.

On an unrelated note, are you the developer of Webman mod? If so, big Kudos to you, I'm new to the scene but I don't see myself replacing webman with any other backup manager, since it launch straight from XMB, and has full FTP support, I do most of my "FTPing" when my kids are watching youtube/Netflix.
Just a question though, I play only PS3 games, and I have disabled the category options, since it added an extra step which wasn't used in my case, but is there a way to create custom categories? So i can separate the Kids games from the more mature ones?

Sorry for bad "engrish".
Click to expand...

yes, @aldostools is the dev behind webman mod. you can create albums (at least in the games' category) to distinguish games.
 
pinky said:
yes, @aldostools is the dev behind webman mod. you can create albums (at least in the games' category) to distinguish games.
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The albums are only for PSN games right? The games into the "My games" Folder, which is the Webmanmod folder where the backups are, doesn't allow for custom folders, the only option is to separate for system, which in my case isn't worth since I only use PS3 games.
Again, I could be wrong.
 
Kennerc said:
The albums are only for PSN games right? The games into the "My games" Folder, which is the Webmanmod folder where the backups are, doesn't allow for custom folders, the only option is to separate for system, which in my case isn't worth since I only use PS3 games.
Again, I could be wrong.
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you can use the webman classics tool availble on this site that give you the ability to create shortcuts of non-psn games on xmb so you can categorize then,the only downside is that it dont offer direct boot but other than that is a fantastic way to organize all your games on xmb.
 
DeViL303 said:
I might be wrong but that is why I thought it was not recommended to use a SSD in PS3? (I know you can not get full speed benefits in PS3 but apart from that.)
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Ultimately, trim is just "a recommendation" to the drive's controller about which sectors to privilege to avoid read-modify-erase-write, and while not ideal to do without, it's not required (it doesn't even have to erase the sectors immediately - you can check with linux's hdparm -I if it says "deterministic read 00 after trim" or not)

It's true that you don't gain much in continuous performance (some are even clearly not optimized for SATA 1 speeds), but when you need to cut on seek times... there's no alternative (so definitely get one for your PS2!)

So-called overprovisioning is also not directly useful (the drive firmwares don't actively try to find and understand partition tables... yet - they simply know that a logical sector hasn't currently been written to since it was last trimmed)
 
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