Question: Each block on a SSD has a finite number of writes. This is mitigated on modern drives by “spreading” the writes around as you use the drive.
I’m wondering if you partition a SSD into several partitions (a Mac using Boot Camp, for example) if this measure is defeated somewhat – can the writes be spread across the entire drive? ?Or are they contained strictly within the partition boundaries? ?Any SSD controller engineers here :)?
Answer: It shouldn’t matter. The drive doesn’t know about partitions or file systems. It deals with blocks of pages, with a giant map of which “disk sectors” are in which pages. It will cycle through all the available blocks, whether writing the same sectors over and over, or writing to never-used sectors. (When “overwriting” a sector, it then knows that old page is now available.)