Samsung 850 Pro SSD Endures 9100TB of Writes

Megalith

Megalith

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The Samsung 850 Pro SSD is rated for 150 terabytes of writes, yet recent testing has shown that some units can actually last up to 9100 TB of written data. There were a variety of other SSDs that took part in this trial, and all lasted longer than advertised – the designers and manufacturers of this stuff must be doing something right. I think the original article (payment required) is located here, for those versed in German.

The top batch became the SanDisk Extreme Pro and Samsung 850 Pro models; they all lasted a minimum of 2.2 petabytes. A normal office system writes between 10 and 35 GB per day. Even if you had a generous 40 GB per day, a nominal endurance of 70 TBW would be achieved after five years. Now if we extrapolate that data and take it to the Samsung SSD 850, that would be 60 times the guaranteed write performance of 150 TBW. At that average of 40 gigabyte daily usage (purely theoretical of course), that SSD would have lasted 623 years.
 
Just out of curiosity.. what actually happens once it reaches its limit...? Does it just stop saving and error out, or does it keep writing but nothing gets saved or what?
 
James Robinson said:
Just out of curiosity.. what actually happens once it reaches its limit...? Does it just stop saving and error out, or does it keep writing but nothing gets saved or what?
Click to expand...

Depends on the specific controller, which is true for both SSDs and HDDs. If the controller on-drive starts seeing a lot of errors during write-checks, it will throw errors to the OS.
 
Wow that's even more data than my OCZ Agility wrote before it failed. These are really nice SSDs.
 
Literally one of few things I always buy from samsung and actually trust is their SSDs.
 
I'm in the process of RMA'ing a Samsung 850 Pro. I really wonder if Samsung screwed themselves over on the warranty length of 10 years.

The flash cells in mine seemed to be fine after 38 terabytes written, but the drive controller was getting flaky and causing BSOD crashes. Unbelievable flash cell durability only gets you so far if the controller chips burn out...

(This is obviously just one anecdote, maybe I'm just really unlucky)
 
James Robinson said:
Just out of curiosity.. what actually happens once it reaches its limit...? Does it just stop saving and error out, or does it keep writing but nothing gets saved or what?
Click to expand...
My understanding is, one of two things are supposed to happen:

1- The drive goes on read only mode, so you can get your data.

2- The drive fails completely and takes your data with it.

The expected behavior is scenario 1.
 
I've been a huge fan of Samsungs SSD's ever since I first started using them.


I've been using use two striped 512GB Samsung 850 Pro drives in my server as ZFS L2arc (read cache) drives now for about a year and two months. They see constant heavy writes, and the wear leveling still has them at 92% remaining life. That's a taotal predicted lifespan of 14.5 years in this role.

I also have two mirrored 500GB Samsung 850 EVO drives I use as a datastore for my VM images, with several VM's writing to them 24/7, also for about a year and two months. Both of these have 95% remaining wear leveling life. Total predicted lifespan of 23 years in this role.

Then there's the one 1TB Samsing 850 EVO which I use to cache TV DVR recordings (recordings get written to the drive, and when it fills up, the oldest recordings are moved to my array of spinners). It's been doing this with heavy writes for also about a year and two months, with 96% remaining wear leveling life. 29 years of predicted total life span.

Prior to my two 512GB drives as cache devices, I used a pair of 128GB Samsung 850 Pro's in that role. They were there for about two years of heavy cache writes and then were repurposed, one as a swap drive for the server, and one as a live TV ring buffer (to allow for pausing, etc)

After three years of heavy abuse, the 128GB drive that was moved from Cache to live TV buffer a year and two months ago still has 84% remaining life, predicted to last 18.75 years. The one that was moved to swap duty is at 83%, predicted to last 17.5 years.

So, yes, very impressed with Samsung's drive endurance. It almost makes me completely forget all that SSD write endurance paranoia.

By contrast every OCZ Drive I ever owned (and I had a few) died before 2 years of age.
 
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So we just may be at the stage where endurance is no longer a question. As long as the ssd comes from a top tier company. It also means that taking a manufacturers dwpd numbers have meaning at the lower levels. Spend more and you should get a better longevity. Spend less and you may have to be concerned about it. Its another good test though. Glad that duration has exceeded manuf expectations as if intel - which is well known for underrating their parts - has made other rmanuf's keep up the quality. Good stuff.
 
I have a Samsung 840 Pro at 187 TB written and still going strong. No errors, no slowdowns, no weirdness at all. Colour me impressed.
 
grtitan said:
My understanding is, one of two things are supposed to happen:

1- The drive goes on read only mode, so you can get your data.

2- The drive fails completely and takes your data with it.

The expected behavior is scenario 1.
Click to expand...

normally 2 is what happens unfortunately

the 850 Pro does have some insane Write endurance and it keep on chugging until it fails suddenly without warning
 
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