Samsung 840 Series TLC 250GB SSD Review @ [H]

$229 is not a good deal. Get it around $179 if you can find it. I got mine for $169 when it first came out.
 
I am getting mine tomorrow since I figured, with Sata 2 , I cannot really take advantage of the the Pro speed.
 
How long will my (your) SSD last?

Well, that's a question that a lot of us have on our minds when buying an SSD. There's really no concrete real-world numbers in terms of actual amounts of Terabytes written to the SSD.

Well... the guys over at one of the many hardware enthusiast web sites (sadly, not HardOCP) is putting this to the test, in this case... it's the guys over at TweakTown.

They are testing a Samsung 840 (non-Pro) Series 250 GB SSD from opening the package to SSD death.

Last update they posted indicates that they have written a total of 100 TBs to the drive and it's still chugging along. They will update the article with various milestone updates, the last milestone was 100 TB. They will continue to update the article until the SSD dies. They are using Anvil's Storage Utilities to perform the test.

Samsung 840 SSD Storage Endurance Testing - TLC to the End

Personally, I did some fuzzy math here.

My SSD has been online for 694 hours.
694 hours / 24 hours = 28.9166 days

I have written so far 556 GBs to the drive in those 694 hours.

So for the sake of this math, I'm going to say that in the average month I'm going to write about 700 GBs per month.

100 TB = 102,400 GB

102400 GB / 700 GB per month = 146.2857142857143 months (or 146.29 months)

146.29 months / 12 months (1 year) = 12.19 years

So, if an SSD can sustain 100 TB according to the test so far, which we can't say is the limit since the SSD hasn't died yet under TweakTown's test, we can therefore say that an average Samsung 840 Series 250 GB SSD will last anywhere from 10 to 12 years with a sustained write of an average of 700 GBs per month.

Or, if you do an average of 800 GBs per month... that's going to be the following math.

102400 GB / 800 GB per month = 128 months = 10.66 years.

So that means... an average of 9 to 10 years of life.

Most SSDs, even the lowly Samsung 840 Series (non-Pro) is going to last the average consumer, even us geeks, longer than we will ever want to keep that SSD around. Chances are, that SSD will end up in the recycling pile in exchange for a higher capacity SSD long before it's dead.
 
trparky said:
How long will my (your) SSD last?

Well, that's a question that a lot of us have on our minds when buying an SSD. There's really no concrete real-world numbers in terms of actual amounts of Terabytes written to the SSD.

Well... the guys over at one of the many hardware enthusiast web sites (sadly, not HardOCP) is putting this to the test, in this case... it's the guys over at TweakTown.

They are testing a Samsung 840 (non-Pro) Series 250 GB SSD from opening the package to SSD death.

Last update they posted indicates that they have written a total of 100 TBs to the drive and it's still chugging along. They will update the article with various milestone updates, the last milestone was 100 TB. They will continue to update the article until the SSD dies. They are using Anvil's Storage Utilities to perform the test.

Samsung 840 SSD Storage Endurance Testing - TLC to the End

Personally, I did some fuzzy math here.

My SSD has been online for 694 hours.
694 hours / 24 hours = 28.9166 days

I have written so far 556 GBs to the drive in those 694 hours.

So for the sake of this math, I'm going to say that in the average month I'm going to write about 700 GBs per month.

100 TB = 102,400 GB

102400 GB / 700 GB per month = 146.2857142857143 months (or 146.29 months)

146.29 months / 12 months (1 year) = 12.19 years

So, if an SSD can sustain 100 TB according to the test so far, which we can't say is the limit since the SSD hasn't died yet under TweakTown's test, we can therefore say that an average Samsung 840 Series 250 GB SSD will last anywhere from 10 to 12 years with a sustained write of an average of 700 GBs per month.

Or, if you do an average of 800 GBs per month... that's going to be the following math.

102400 GB / 800 GB per month = 128 months = 10.66 years.

So that means... an average of 9 to 10 years of life.

Most SSDs, even the lowly Samsung 840 Series (non-Pro) is going to last the average consumer, even us geeks, longer than we will ever want to keep that SSD around. Chances are, that SSD will end up in the recycling pile in exchange for a higher capacity SSD long before it's dead.
Click to expand...


I think this deserves to be reposted.

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1039634032&postcount=10

While I agree and think its cool what they are doing/have done over there at xtremesystems, the results don't really tell the whole story accuaretly. JoeComp's post states that very clearly while even providing the engineering spec for flash memory. Running retention time down to zero is really stretching it out if you ask me. You would have stopped using those drives long before they "died".
 
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The problem is that data retention needs to be taken into consideration.
The endurance specifications are designed to show when the data will remain on the device after one year of a power off state.
Continual testing does not take this into consideration, since there is no power off time. Some of the testers have lost data with as little as a few minutes of power off time after they have endured these workloads.
TLC will have this problem more prevalently, it suffers more leakage, thus will fail even quicker after power off.
For users who use SSDs in the future as they age past the intended lifespan, especially with the low endurance types of NAND, they will suffer far more data degradation and general instability. Upon power up some data might be gone here and there, resulting on multiple re-instals, etc.
The newer types of NAND are not nearly as resilient as some of those tested, and even those can be extremely misleading results.
 
I agree, the higher capacity TLC SSDs should be more than enough for most people :) It is only at very low capacity that users should be concerned.
 
player-x said:
This standard 840 with TLC, I just do not trust it in the long term, specially for heavy use.

The m4 is a good alternative.
The 840 Pro is still too expensive, and hardly any faster than the m4 in practice.

NAND cell's function as capacitors the more electrons you for a certain value in a cell stops the more reliable it is.

1 bit SLC has two statuses on or off
2 bit MLC has four statuses on, two intermediate positions or off
4 bit TLC has eight statuses on six between positions or off

A SLC cell has 100 electrons for 1 bit.
Ware MLC you have 25 electrons for 2 bits
But whit TLC you only have 12.5 electrons for 4 bits

TLC for me is something I for one have no confidence in, for the long term, and with one or two process that shrinks the number of electrons decrease even more, TLC is something that might not even be reliable / possible to use.
Read here LSI talks about future flash and its problems.

Maybe the problem is in practice not so bad, especially for a HTPC or other light use, your properly save, as long as he does not get used for things like Torrent downloads, but I would not risk it, and i just buy a m4 instead!
Click to expand...

Some of this is not correct.

SLC = 1 bit/cell = 2^1 statuses (2)
MLC = 2 bit/cell = 2^2 statuses (4)
TLC = 3 bit/cell = 2^3 statuses (8)

for 4 bit/cell NAND it would be 2^4 statuses which would be 16
 
I just installed a 250 gig in my gaming rig today (got it off Newegg for $159.) The write speeds are nothing special, but the read speeds are fantastic for the price. From a dead stop, I get to the Windows 7 login screen in ~16 seconds. General use programs like VLC and Word load almost instantaneously, and Explorer navigation is double-quick.

Definitely a good buy.
 
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