I have a brand new Samsung T5 1Tb SSD, that I will use for back-up of files on my laptops, as well as main drive for photos and music collection. Before starting to use it, I did some searching/reading (it's my first external SSD), and I now have more questions than answers.
File system
Not really a question; after some reading I convinced myself that NTFS should be better than exFAT (out-of-the-box FS), so I will reformat the drive.
Alignment
This was something completely new for me. I understood that it is important but as I will create only a single partition, Windows 10 should take care of the necessary offset and that this is correctly applied ("offset divided by 4096 should be integer number").
Erase blocks
So I did the reading (great article from Extremetech), understand the importance of Erase blocks and Page sizes, but I am now wondering whether I practically have to take this into account when formatting my drive (cluster size)?
A SU article dealing with the same question, but the answer is not really clear to me.
NTFS Parameters
I know that many articles exist about deciding cluster size for HDD, and I understand the trade-offs between higher speed but more "lost" space by increasing the cluster size, but I would like to revisit the question specifically for SSD and 2021 context:
- Should the fact it is a SSD influence the cluster size?
- Does the fact that user files nowadays are so much larger than even a decade ago (multimedia files, but also other user files, like doc/ppt/xls) makes it better to ignore the recommended 4K and go for larger cluster size?
- As a side question, I do not understand why Microsoft's default/recommended cluster size for NTFS is 4K for drives up to 16Tb, but is already 32K for exFAT for drives as small as 256Mb.
- Should cluster size be influenced by the aforementioned SSD "erase block size", or has one nothing to do with the other ? And if so, where to find this information for my drive (this is apparently a closely guarded secret)?
This article of Serverfault asks a similar question, but it references an article that is not online anymore and does not give a clear answer.
Usage
I read something about enabling TRIM in Windows 10, but not sure whether his is only applicable for internal OS drives, or also for external drives? And if so, is this something I have to enable manually, or run occasionally (for wear leveling)?
Monitoring
Given it is an external SSD, is it recommended to monitor the health, or is this only relevant for internal SSDs that are used continuously by the OS and applications ? The fact that Samsung's own Magician software does only work with internal SSDs, and the software for the T5 is absolutely minimal (only for encryption and firmware updates?), makes me think it is not needed, but an expert opinion would be appreciated.
