Willing to move to 2TB

C

carlmart

Gawd
Joined
Sep 17, 2006
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At this moment I C: run both desktop and laptop from Samsungs 1Tb SSD.

But on the laptop at least I'm thinking of moving up to a 2Tb SSD.

Prices are reasonable and it would allow me more free space on that disk, which now averages less than 20%.

The brands and models I'm considering are the SAMSUNG 860 EVO 2TB and the WD Blue 3D NAND 2TB.

My concern now is about some comments I have found compalining that Samsung got less strict in product quality or even fake units around with much worst specs.

So first: what about those models I listed?

And second: are SSDs getting worst?
 
Buy from verified sellers. If the price looks too good to be true, then it is. No, SSDs are not getting worse. You'll find both bad and good reviews from every manufacturer on the planet. If you are worried about loosing data, get a backup drive.
 
carlmart said:
Which is which?

Amazon can be considered a verified reseller?
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The WD Blue 3D is TLC.

Depending on which version of the Samsung you get, it's TLC also. The EVO is TLC, but I think they have a new one coming out EVO-Q or something which is QLC (I don't remember the exact name of it as it was maybe a month ago I read an article about it).
 
QLC is not exactly an improvement in the SSD area. Only price_per_GB-wise but at the moment this is disputable, at least for Samsung.
QLC can sustain as low as 80MB/s write for lower-capacity models which is about 3 times worse than TLC. The cache helps some but...
While TLC was still Ok and acceptable compared to MLC, now QLC would be all but compelling to me and most people willing to fit one as their boot or working drive.
 
Thanks. At the moment I'm undecided between those Samsung and WD models.

Any of them would be the C: on my laptop, and I think they are reliable and fast enough to be so.
 
Still, Samsung has an edge in my SSD list over all others if prices is not a factor or are close enough.
 
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I also only use Samsung SSDs personally, although we've been testing some cheap PNY SATA SSDs at the office lately and haven't run into any issues. WD drives are probably fine given that I haven't seen any negative reports or reviews about their models, but since the tech was originally Sandisk it gives me pause after having 3 out of 4 Sandisk SSDs I've used die without warning.
 
I've had SSD's from all sorts of brands. The only one that gave me trouble was OCZ Vector 2s.
 
My first SSD was one of those, a 120GB Vertex2. When it died it was fascinating since it didn't go right away. The first thing I noticed is that the network adapter stopped working, then the Windows Control Panel started losing icons and C:\Windows\System32 files disappeared gradually in real-time. I RMA'd it right before OCZ got bought by Toshiba, and sold the replacement with the caveat that the Vertex3 they sent me was a RMA unit and probably not any more reliable than the 2 that killed itself. IIRC OCZ used absolute garbage-tier flash in those things that no other vendor would touch.
 
fullvietFX said:
I've had SSD's from all sorts of brands. The only one that gave me trouble was OCZ Vector 2s.
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Same. I am an aerial surveyor, and my equipment collects vast amounts of data that is initially stored on SATA SSDs.

I've tried many brands, and only ever had problems with OCZ and Intel ones.

In the case of OCZ, I had one that wore out after just a few full cycles. It still sorta works, but is pretty flaky, and can't write anywhere near fast enough to be useful for surveying. In the case of the Intel ones, I eventually wore them out after filling them up and wiping them hundreds of times. They still work, but again, can't write fast enough to be usable in my LIDAR scanner. I think we got our money's worth out of the Intel ones, but I wouldn't trust the OCZ ones with data I couldn't replace.

I like the Samsung 860 Pros the best. I have several that I've used the hell out of, and they don't seem to degrade. Corsair's higher end ones used to be pretty good too, but it's been a couple of years since I got any new ones of those. I suspect they're mostly Samsung inside anyway, though.
 
Same with sandisk failing (1 dead after 20 seconds formatted other 2 failed the same after 6 months and went into half read only mode witch was lucky as most ssds typically fail dead)

WD might not be using the same model sandisk that failed (think it was sandisk ultra plus)
 
grumperfish said:
WD drives are probably fine given that I haven't seen any negative reports or reviews about their models, but since the tech was originally Sandisk it gives me pause after having 3 out of 4 Sandisk SSDs I've used die without warning.
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You mean that WD bought Sandisk and/or is using their SSD technology?
 
WD bought SanDisk. I doubt they're still using the same controllers, or at least not with a ton of extra validation.
 
Well, now the question is if it's worth it pay about twice the money in an MLC Samsung, intead of a TLC one.
 
carlmart said:
Well, now the question is if it's worth it pay about twice the money in an MLC Samsung, intead of a TLC one.
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Probably not, unless you have some specific workload that merits the higher endurance, and/or maybe if you're expecting to consistently be doing large transfers where MLC often is better able to keep up once the cache fills (fun fact I never noticed before: for a given capacity the 2.5" version of the 860 Evo has more cache than the m.2/mSATA versions). Transfer rates and IOPS between the two are close enough to not be a factor.

But it's probably a moot question unless you have a larger or older laptop that accepts 2.5" drives. The 860 Pro isn't available in m.2 (or mSATA FWIW).

And don't be fooled by the spec sheets listing the 860 Evo as 3-bit MLC. That's just some way to weasel around calling it TLC.
 
I didn't know more recent laptops didn't accept 2.5" drives anymore. I do not like that m2 format.

As I live by the sea, all air-exposed circuits might oxidate. It happened on some of my 3.5" drives. The SSD being encased is a very good thing, I think.

Let's hope the M2 doesn't become the standard for SSDs.

One very good thing about my Asus GA-Z97X mobo is that the parts are all painted and protected from air-contact.
 
M.2 is going to be more common as everyone wants thinner laptops. As long as they're using NVME or mSATA this doesn't really cause any issues, except for mSATA being more expensive than 2.5" drives currently. I needed to buy a mSATA 860 EVO for my laptop in November as it doesn't have a 2.5" slot, and it was about the same price as my 970 EVO for the desktop (maybe 30% more expensive than the 2.5" model at the time). SSD prices are expected to drop further this year at least.
 
carlmart said:
I didn't know more recent laptops didn't accept 2.5" drives anymore. I do not like that m2 format.

As I live by the sea, all air-exposed circuits might oxidate. It happened on some of my 3.5" drives. The SSD being encased is a very good thing, I think.

Let's hope the M2 doesn't become the standard for SSDs.

One very good thing about my Asus GA-Z97X mobo is that the parts are all painted and protected from air-contact.
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Too late, at least for desktop/laptop systems. It's pretty much mostly m.2 going forward, especially as laptops get thinner, and NVMe becomes more prevalent as u.2 (and that abomination SATA express) never took hold in the consumer space.

But an m.2 card is no more exposed than the mainboard it's attached to. Shouldn't be an issue.

I was surprised to see the 860 Pro isn't available in m.2 (guess Samsung sees no market for it).
 
carlmart said:
I didn't know more recent laptops didn't accept 2.5" drives anymore. I do not like that m2 format.

As I live by the sea, all air-exposed circuits might oxidate. It happened on some of my 3.5" drives. The SSD being encased is a very good thing, I think.

Let's hope the M2 doesn't become the standard for SSDs.

One very good thing about my Asus GA-Z97X mobo is that the parts are all painted and protected from air-contact.
Click to expand...

If you open the case of nearly all computers, most of the parts are exposed. Memory for example. Hard drive might be safe, but some other vital thing would potentially be susceptible.

I wouldn't worry about it. The chips are encased in plastic. The solder has tin. And most commercially made PCB's have some type of epoxy coating. Otherwise chock it up to the sacrifice of living in a beautiful environment ^_^
 
Some days ago, a friend of mine was telling me about the faster read/write speed of m2 SSDs.

In fact I did check on that, and it's really 6x faster than standard SSDs. Are we talking about a difference that we will perceive somehow or something to be considered for certain circumstances?

How about m2's life span? I already know they are more expensive. How do you connect an m2 board?
 
There's a slight speed difference when working with large, contiguous files, and Windows will usually boot a bit faster than with a standard SSD. The difference is extremely minor though, and nothing for desktop users really takes advantage of the extra speed right now - so if you have a decent 2.5" SSD already you don't need to throw it away just yet. My 970 boots up a couple seconds faster (in the rare event I need to reboot) than the 860 it replaced. On Windows 7 I had a lockscreen script to fully load startup applications before actually logging in, but with the NVME drive I haven't bothered as everything loads fast enough that I don't notice a difference when rebooting. This is the only difference I've really noticed, although part of that could be due to switching to a faster CPU and Windows 10.

NVME drive lifespan should be comparable or somewhat better than same-tier 2.5" SSDs. It's still a little early to tell. M.2 boards are usually built flush to motherboards, and sometimes you can use PCI-E to M.2 adapters if the board supports it. M.2 is the form-factor, and can support NVME or SATA drives depending on board and/or port support. Due to PCI-E lane limits, most boards will disable a couple SATA lanes when connecting M.2 drives, or (like my board) they'll let you use 1 of the M.2 slots with a NMVE drive without disabling any ports. If I used a SATA M.2 drive in the same slot, or if I used the 2nd port on the board then it would disable SATA connectors.
 
carlmart said:
Some days ago, a friend of mine was telling me about the faster read/write speed of m2 SSDs.

In fact I did check on that, and it's really 6x faster than standard SSDs. Are we talking about a difference that we will perceive somehow or something to be considered for certain circumstances?

How about m2's life span? I already know they are more expensive. How do you connect an m2 board?
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m.2 is a form-factor and physical interface, not a storage protocol. m.2 supports PCIe, SATA, USB, etc. Whether a drive is faster depends on the storage protocol used, and has nothing (well... see below) to do with the form-factor of the device.

On paper and in artificial benchmarks, the throughput of a NVMe SSD (only available as m.2 in the consumer space, which is where some of the confusion comes in) will be faster than any SATA SSD (m.2, mSATA, or 2.5"). Real-life, however, the difference is virtually nil.

If you're comparing a given make/model of SATA SSD, the form factor is irrelevant and you'll see no difference in performance even in artificial benchmarks. There are exceptions, however, such as the 860 Evo having more cache available to the 2.5" model (as I noted upthread). If anything, in that particular instance, the 2.5" model will probably be a slightly better benchmark performer than the m.2/mSATA versions.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
...On paper and in artificial benchmarks, the throughput of a NVMe SSD (only available as m.2 in the consumer space, which is where some of the confusion comes in) will be faster than any SATA SSD (m.2, mSATA, or 2.5"). Real-life, however, the difference is virtually nil.
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While I agree with this statement way more than I disagree, in fairness there are situations where the NVMe advantages are actually noticeable to the user: very large sequential transfers, and large queue depths. I can demonstrate a difference running my DBMS handoff test suite against NVMe vs SATA, the former runs a bit quicker, maybe as much as 1/3 faster for certain things.

That's hardly a normal PC user situation, and most casual users, gamers, and business computing users will never notice the paper difference between the two interfaces. Heck, I ran a Mac Pro for a while with an NVMe drive and SATA II SSD's, and you could barely tell the difference there, even though SATA II is half the speed of SATA III.
 
pitingres said:
While I agree with this statement way more than I disagree, in fairness there are situations where the NVMe advantages are actually noticeable to the user: very large sequential transfers, and large queue depths. I can demonstrate a difference running my DBMS handoff test suite against NVMe vs SATA, the former runs a bit quicker, maybe as much as 1/3 faster for certain things.

That's hardly a normal PC user situation, and most casual users, gamers, and business computing users will never notice the paper difference between the two interfaces. Heck, I ran a Mac Pro for a while with an NVMe drive and SATA II SSD's, and you could barely tell the difference there, even though SATA II is half the speed of SATA III.
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Oh, certainly. Were someone looking to do some moderate-to-heavy work with databases, A/V production, virtual machines, complicated compiles, etc., NVMe is the way to go. The extra spent upfront is far outweighed by the time savings.

I just hate seeing people blow huge (well, not as huge these days but still) bucks on NVMe SSDs thinking they'll see the same revolution witnessed when SATA SSDs became widespread, only to come away disappointed that nothing's really changed. All the reviews that breathlessly regurgitate manufacturer copy and put out reviews with near-meaningless artificial benchmarks that most consumers can't accurately interpret certainly doesn't help (and those YouTube channels being fed free product and other kickbacks are the worst).
 
carlmart said:
You mean that WD bought Sandisk and/or is using their SSD technology?
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Yup. I was working for SanDisk at the time, because SanDisk bought my prior employer, Fusion-io.

grumperfish said:
WD bought SanDisk. I doubt they're still using the same controllers, or at least not with a ton of extra validation.
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For any sata/sas drives, WD is still using the SMART/Pliant controllers. The NVME stuff is from their HGST acquisition from IBM.
 
Oh, good to know. I had gotten burned by some Z and X model SATA drives so I was being overly cautious. Their NVME prices have been great lately so I'll keep those in mind for our office.
 
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