Amazon: 1TB Crucial M550 SSD $330

Tempting....If I didn't just buy a 32" monitor....
 
I'm in the market for a 1tb SSD and I'm curious:

At a $50 discount for the M550 vs the EVO 850 (330 vs. 380), is the extra performance and warranty worth it? I'm inclined to believe the real-world performance doesn't justify the extra cost, but I'm certainly no expert on SSDs.
 
I've went at length on this in other topics, but generally I find that SSD warranties are nearly worthless. Not by coincidence either. The manufacturers try to make them that way. Read the fine print regarding their expected endurance.

As for real world performance, I highly doubt there would be much difference... but then again I don't have two to compare. You'd have to ask around. You're also going with experimental tech when you go with the EVO. Look at how well that went with the last one. Shrug.



I'm kinda saving up money for a house (technically I'm fine either way, but the more for the initial payment the better), so I'm abstaining from purchasing this. It's an absolutely excellent deal, though. Just ever so slightly slower than a 850 Evo but made with proven, durable MLC.
 
I'm in the market for a 1tb SSD and I'm curious:

At a $50 discount for the M550 vs the EVO 850 (330 vs. 380), is the extra performance and warranty worth it? I'm inclined to believe the real-world performance doesn't justify the extra cost, but I'm certainly no expert on SSDs.

Crucial uses MLC vs TLC for the sammy, which has had issues in the past and seems to get slower over time, it also has a shorter life cycle. The M550 also has other features such as powerloss protection etc etc that the sammy does not.
 
Is the M550 a big upgrade over the M500?

In all the benchmarks the M550 shows to be a good deal faster, real life however, much much less so, which is common with almost all SSDs these days.
 
Kinda bummed I missed out on this yesterday. I hope this goes back on sale again soon.
 
Kinda bummed I missed out on this yesterday. I hope this goes back on sale again soon.

You'll probably get the chance one way or another. Seems like the bottom is starting to fall out on SSD prices.

I picked up a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB the other day from NewEgg for $170, so although it's not 1TB all in one place, the price is nearly the same on a per GB basis.

Anyway, these deals seem to be coming up more frequently and everyone who's ever made flash or DRAM seems to be in the game now, so it's probably time for a price war leading to a SSD manufacturer shakeout.
 
You'll probably get the chance one way or another. Seems like the bottom is starting to fall out on SSD prices.

I picked up a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB the other day from NewEgg for $170, so although it's not 1TB all in one place, the price is nearly the same on a per GB basis.

Anyway, these deals seem to be coming up more frequently and everyone who's ever made flash or DRAM seems to be in the game now, so it's probably time for a price war leading to a SSD manufacturer shakeout.

I hope so. I want to put my frequently played Steam games on a 2TB RAID0 SSD array sooo badly. It was tempting to pick up 2 of these but after purchasing two GTX 980s and a 48" 4K monitor, I managed to contain myself...this time.

But I hope what you say is true; would be really nice to see 1TB drives to hit the $250 mark this year.
 
RAID0 adds latency to SSDs tho..

Hmm, how much? Did not know that. It's been a while since I've fooled with RAID outside of an enterprise environment (well, aside from my Synology NAS boxes).

TBH I would definitely prefer a single 2TB drive, but at this rate I'm not sure when we will see one.
 
For me I wouldn't buy another M550 no matter how cheap it is. I loved the M500, bought a ton of them since they were the first Self Encrypting Drive I could get my hands on, was excited for the faster and slightly bigger M550, but I have had so many of them die it's not even funny. The M550 Warranty replacement they sent me literally died on the first restore from backup.
(12 1TB drives ordered 7 bad, 1 bad twice)


I have yet to call them and send it back. The Samsung 850 has been working great so far.


Yes, my storage costs way more than the server they are going into for work, but man that box can do the SQL. :p


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
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For me I wouldn't buy another M550 no matter how cheap it is. I loved the M500, bought a ton of them since they were the first Self Encrypting Drive I could get my hands on, was excited for the faster and slightly bigger M550, but I have had so many of them die it's not even funny. The M550 Warranty replacement they sent me literally died on the first restore from backup.
(12 1TB drives ordered 7 bad, 1 bad twice)


I have yet to call them and send it back. The Samsung 850 has been working great so far.


Yes, my storage costs way more than the server they are going into for work, but man that box can do the SQL. :p


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Thanx!

I missed this deal by a few hours and ended up getting 2 Samsung 850 Pro's for a lot more and was moaning about missing this deal!
 
LOL

I remember setting up very high end MicroNet RAID systems in the mid 90's for pre-press people and after spending 5 grand the "uber performance" they saw was 6-8 MB/Sec :)
 
I bit thanks I like the power loss protection crucial is still one of the most reliable ssd on the market
 
For me I wouldn't buy another M550 no matter how cheap it is. I loved the M500, bought a ton of them since they were the first Self Encrypting Drive I could get my hands on, was excited for the faster and slightly bigger M550, but I have had so many of them die it's not even funny. The M550 Warranty replacement they sent me literally died on the first restore from backup.
(12 1TB drives ordered 7 bad, 1 bad twice)


I have yet to call them and send it back. The Samsung 850 has been working great so far.


Yes, my storage costs way more than the server they are going into for work, but man that box can do the SQL. :p


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

If this was for work(self-employed or otherwise) and I MUST use SSD instead of sticking with hella slow HDD, I'd spend the extra money for enterprise level SSD instead of gambling with my work. Then again that's just me and I'm still using HDD for my laptop with the importatn data on it. Of course still got an Intel enterprise SSD just sitting there waiting to be installed too..
 
Too bad it's over $400 now.. I'm predicting sub-$300 for this little monster by summertime. :cool:
 
they had the M500 960GB for $299 the other day, bought one for a clients new laptop.
 
For me I wouldn't buy another M550 no matter how cheap it is. I loved the M500, bought a ton of them since they were the first Self Encrypting Drive I could get my hands on, was excited for the faster and slightly bigger M550, but I have had so many of them die it's not even funny. The M550 Warranty replacement they sent me literally died on the first restore from backup.
(12 1TB drives ordered 7 bad, 1 bad twice)


I have yet to call them and send it back. The Samsung 850 has been working great so far.


Yes, my storage costs way more than the server they are going into for work, but man that box can do the SQL. :p


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Maybe that was just with the 1TB variant? I have the 512GB M550 that was on sale at one point for like $160 or $170 and it works great. I use it for my steam drive, and I have an 850 pro for my windows/system drive. As far as speed I think all newer SSD are pretty much at the limit of SATA bandwidth unless you want to compare synthetics which are not generally noticeable in the real world scenarios. Bring on the cheap m.2 PCIEx4 ssd!
 
If this was for work(self-employed or otherwise) and I MUST use SSD instead of sticking with hella slow HDD, I'd spend the extra money for enterprise level SSD instead of gambling with my work. Then again that's just me and I'm still using HDD for my laptop with the importatn data on it. Of course still got an Intel enterprise SSD just sitting there waiting to be installed too..

The machine that this is used for is literally wiped and rebuilt every week with a new database load. It's not worth the extra money, when I can just replace the drives. Normally I would go enterprise SSD and PCI SSD at that, but for this load, it doesn't make sense...


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
The machine that this is used for is literally wiped and rebuilt every week with a new database load. It's not worth the extra money, when I can just replace the drives. Normally I would go enterprise SSD and PCI SSD at that, but for this load, it doesn't make sense...


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Oh in that case yeah definitely makes sense to just go with the cheaper option and speed being much more important than reliability it sounds like.
 
M550 is an update to the older M500, so mainly just speed. But at the current price, there's no way the M550 is worth the extra $145. When it was $330, well that was different...
 
I'm in the market for a 1tb SSD and I'm curious:

At a $50 discount for the M550 vs the EVO 850 (330 vs. 380), is the extra performance and warranty worth it? I'm inclined to believe the real-world performance doesn't justify the extra cost, but I'm certainly no expert on SSDs.

I have a wide array of SSD's spanning across 3 or 4 different systems and I really can't tell the difference between any of my SATA 3 SSD's. I do notice my older SATA 2 ones are slower of course, but even those are a joy to use over even the fastest HDDs. This is one area of hardware where I don't at all mind snagging an outgoing generation for a good price vs paying a premium for the latest and greatest. For me, they're fast enough now that capacity that won't break the bank becomes more of a priority.
 
Ugh! So bummed I missed this!

Looking at the [H]otDeals part of this forum has seriously been dangerous
 
At this point all my internal drives are ssd. I'm to the point of wanting to upgrade at least one of my external drives. Can anyone recommend a usb 3 external enclosure that has been tested to provide high performance with ssds?
 
At this point all my internal drives are ssd. I'm to the point of wanting to upgrade at least one of my external drives. Can anyone recommend a usb 3 external enclosure that has been tested to provide high performance with ssds?

Sure thing. This one fares pretty well and has a very modest price tag, to boot.
 
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