Time for a newer/faster/bigger SSD/HDD. Which ones?

T

Tych-0

Gawd
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Jul 7, 2010
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So it's time for an upgrade. I was going to do a complete new rig, but I'm realizing that my not be quite necessary. What is necessary, is more space, and ideally improved speed over my current storage (sig rig).

I want at least a 400GB SSD(more would be better), and another 1TB or so for the HDD. Budget for the 2 drives is a flexible $500. Speed is important too me so I'm willing to spend more for extra performance, or more space. I'd go as far as $800 if it's especially impressive, and I'd be okay spending less if $500 is wasteful.

I'm mostly looking for performance in games that will likely be installed on both drives, and some storage/editing/production on the HDD.

I'd love to hear some informed suggestions. Thanks!
 
512GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD for about $470.

The HDD does not really matter. Just try to get one in a retail box...less likely it got banged up during handling that way.
 
This is what I got:

Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 480GB - $339

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226254


It will not win any awards being the fastest drive on the planet, but it isn't a slouch either. It's right in the middle with some of the cheapest $ per GB you'll find. Been running it for the past 4 months now solid and I can already say I'm a believer. Destroyed my triple RAID0 array without even trying.

You can't go wrong with the well known names, but you'll pay a lot more for what realistically will be a minuscule difference in the average real world consumer use.
 
Thanks for the replies everybody.

The Samsung 840 pro sounds like it's exactly what I'm looking for. Any advantage to going 2 x 256 as opposed to one 512?

The Western Digital RE 2TB SATA3 7200RPM 64MB sounds interesting to me, is it worth the $216 ncix is asking for it?
 
is it the RE version? not RE2/3/4? never bought from compuvest but they have it for 174
and the RE4 version can be had for under 200 as well

edit: RE is an "enterprise drive" so it carries a price premium, you may want to think about that when deciding how much % of your budget to allocate to the SSD and HDD
 
There is no advantage to going 2 256Gb over one 512Gb. In fact the advantage lies with the single higher capacity drive. Longer life and faster speeds.
 
Thanks, so 512GB Samsung 840 pro it is.

Just can't decide on the HDD. That was the RE version, I'm not finding a lot of good HDD comparisons out there. Are the RE4s faster? Longer life / more reliable?
 
I haven't read anything new yet say otherwise but did they fix or change something with greater than 256GB SSD's?
From what I read you get faster read/writes on 256GB and lower and the larger slightly slower.
 
In reviews I've read the 512GB 840s were the fastest actually.

I still haven't made this purchase yet. There isn't really many recent comparisons for hdds out there. Should I just grab another WD Black? Is there a quicker option available now?

Once I get the 840 pro I think I'm going to take the Revodrive out og my PC, think it's still worth much?
 
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Tych-0 said:
In reviews I've read the 512GB 840s were the fastest actually.

I still haven't made this purchase yet. There isn't really many recent comparisons for hdds out there. Should I just grab another WD Black? Is there a quicker option available now?

Once I get the 840 pro I think I'm going to take the Revodrive out og my PC, think it's still worth much?
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The 512GB 840 (Pro) is a great choice, for HD's I like at least 2TB (so cheap comparatively) but the new 3TB drives look good also. (WD vs. Seagate, see other threads).
 
Thanks, though I'm 10 pages deep in this forum right now and not finding any good comparisons on mechanical drives. Almost all the talk in this forum is about SSDs (which I've already chosen), NAS or RAID, niether of which I'm planning on using, though I'm certainly willing to try if the performance gain is worth it.

Nobody has any good up to date advice on a good mechical drive to purchase? I'm just looking for a nice speedy 2TB or 3TB drive to go with the 840 Pro. Is it just that there is no significant difference between the options availible for my purposes?
 
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If you have money to burn... you could go Samsung 840 pro 256gb for OS/Progams and Crucial M500 960gb for your desired 1tb storage.

Else i would go with Samsung 840 pro 512gb + WD Red 3tb for pure storage.
 
Tych-0 said:
Is it just that there is no significant difference between the options availible for my purposes?
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Yes, as I already said, it does not make much difference which HDD you get. Just try to choose one in a retail box so that it is less likely to arrive DOA or slightly damaged.
 
anandtech shows that ssd performance drops significantly when over ~75% full, so buy something with 25% more space than you will use in its lifetime. if you were thinking of using ~500gb of ssd space, I think a case can be made that the 960gb crucial m500 is the right drive because it will still perform well AND have extra space.

anand's new favorite drive is SanDisk Extreme II because it is the first one to be very consistent without caveats. if you have money to spend, only need ~400gb, and don't mind the risk of a new product, then I'd seriously consider this. you can skip the whole review and just look at the first graphic on this page, showing worst-case performance is very good on it compared to the samsung and crucial drives (and the crucial drive performs like the samsung, despite being half the speed when the drives are empty): http://anandtech.com/show/7006/sandisk-extreme-ii-review-480gb/3

Tych-0 said:
Nobody has any good up to date advice on a good mechical drive to purchase? I'm just looking for a nice speedy 2TB or 3TB drive to go with the 840 Pro. Is it just that there is no significant difference between the options availible for my purposes?
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if you are low on money, buy whatever is cheapest. if you are high on money, but whatever has a 5 year warranty and a confusing name, because it is an enterprise drive.

if you have good cooling and don't mind extra noise, it doesn't matter what drive you get. if you have poor cooling and DO mind extra noise, then the slower, lower power drives are better.

if you care about what is on your hard drive, having a second different one with a backup of your data is more important than which single drive it is, because all drives will fail.
 
bAMtan2 said:
anand's new favorite drive is SanDisk Extreme II because it is the first one to be very consistent without caveats. if you have money to spend, only need ~400gb, and don't mind the risk of a new product, then I'd seriously consider this. you can skip the whole review and just look at the first graphic on this page, showing worst-case performance is very good on it compared to the samsung and crucial drives (and the crucial drive performs like the samsung, despite being half the speed when the drives are empty): http://anandtech.com/show/7006/sandisk-extreme-ii-review-480gb/3
Click to expand...

Note that Anand's recommendations do not really apply to enthusiasts who know they will have a very heavy write workload. His recommendation is just for people who buy the SSD, do not overprovision it, and then hit it with a very heavy write workload with no OP (who does that???).

For an enthusiast, who knows how to overprovision and knows that he is going to have a very heavy write workload, then the best choice is probably still the Samsung 840 Pro (or the Corsair Neutron). If you compare the worst case write performance on overprovisioned SSDs in Anand's review, you see that the Samsung 840 Pro has a floor of about 25,000 IOPS, while the Extreme II's floor is about half that at 12,500 IOPS (the Corsair Neutron has the highest floor, about 29,000 IOPS).

It would also be interesting to see how the Samsung 840 Pro does on Anand's "Destroyer" test if it is overprovisioned down to 120/240/480GB like the Extreme II. It seems to me that the Samsung 840 Pro is more flexible -- if you don't have a very heavy write workload, just use it without OP and you get 7% extra capacity available. If you do have a very heavy write workload, then OP the Samsung and get better worst case performance than the Extreme II.
 
IIRC, the WD RE drives were designed as a cost conscious Raid Edition drive. Not meant to be used as a solo drive.
 
If you have the budget, go with the Samsung Pro 840 512GB. I just ordered one myself.
Otherwise, the Samsung (Non-Pro) 840 is more than decent.
 
His recommendation is just for people who buy the SSD, do not overprovision it, and then hit it with a very heavy write workload with no OP (who does that???).
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Exactly.

Just use a little common sense and never fill the drive above 75-80%.

Most desktop users should be looking at Random Read/Write Speeds shown here.

Go with anything except OCZ.
 
he said he wants over 400gb of space. no 25% overprovisioned drive qualifies except 960gb crucial m500
 
bAMtan2 said:
he said he wants over 400gb of space. no 25% overprovisioned drive qualifies except 960gb crucial m500
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You're right.

That 25% over provisioning number was kinda necessary when the GC wasn't so advanced and the drives were more expensive.

This caused people to use 90-95% of the disk space and then they wondered 'why is my SSD slower'.

Many didn't realize how SSDs work and many still don't but I wouldn't have a problem using 80% of the normal disk space without over provisioning.

I used to use it when I had my Intel 80GB version 1&2 in RAID but have stepped up to larger drives.

True over provisioning must be done when setting up the drive and the over provisioned partition must remain in RAW form.

PSSS...Just move the ancillary stuff to the storage drive. I assume that's what it's for?
 
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Old Hippie said:
True over provisioning must be done when setting up the drive and the over provisioned partition must remain in RAW form.
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Just wondering if you overprovision on your raid arrays now? if so when you format with windows do you create a partition there and equally on both drives?
 
bAMtan2 said:
he said he wants over 400gb of space. no 25% overprovisioned drive qualifies except 960gb crucial m500
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But he also did not say anything that indicates that he has a very heavy write workload.

Note that I do not use the words "very heavy" lightly. The kind of workload that needs OP is greater than 99% of consumers will have, probably greater than 99.9% of consumers. When I talk about a very heavy write workload, I am talking about writing multiple times the capacity of the SSD per day. Anand's consistency test writes hundreds of gigabytes in an hour. His "Destroyer" test writes 875GB in a short time. Only a tiny fraction of consumers will have workloads anywhere near that heavy.

For the vast majority of consumers, neither of those tests are relevant. And for the vast majority of consumers, no overprovisioning is necessary. And the Samsung 840 Pro ranks higher in most of the other tests that do not have such an unusually high write workload.

I suspect that Anand knows this, although I am not certain (sometimes he writes some ridiculous things). If he does know it, then perhaps he is just trying to influence the SSD makers to improve their worst case write performance. Which is not a bad thing, but is not important to the vast majority of SSD consumers.
 
i have a ocz vertex 4 256gb ssd for the os and apps;

for backup and the documents folders i have a 1.5tb hdd.
 
Great replies, thanks.

The Sandisk Extreme II sounds interesting.

I don't believe I have a heavy write load. I'm primarily looking for a speedy drive for everyday OS use, and for gaming. Perhaps the 840 pro is overkill or unnecessary for my use. I'm doing okay for money, so if there is decent performance to be had over the non-pro for a bit of extra money I'll spend it, but if it's basically pissing money away I'll happily save the cash and put it towards something else.

400GB wasn't an exact figure, I honestly didn't realize how few drives were available in this size or larger.
 
Abula said:
Just wondering if you overprovision on your raid arrays now? if so when you format with windows do you create a partition there and equally on both drives?
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I have a 3x256GB RAID0 setup and only use @ 60GBs so I have no use for over partitioning.

It's probably been @ 2 yrs since I've used the Intel RAID (I use LSI) so I'm not real sure but I think I created the array, partitioned my 20% free space, and just formatted the 80% partition.

Leaving the small partition unformatted is the trick that will cause it to be RAW and the drive will have more room to work.

However I thought I read that RAID0 can use TRIM with some Intel chipsets?

I dunno.
 
JoeComp said:
Anand's consistency test writes hundreds of gigabytes in an hour. His "Destroyer" test writes 875GB in a short time. Only a tiny fraction of consumers will have workloads anywhere near that heavy.

For the vast majority of consumers, neither of those tests are relevant. And for the vast majority of consumers, no overprovisioning is necessary. And the Samsung 840 Pro ranks higher in most of the other tests that do not have such an unusually high write workload.
Click to expand...

I'm with you there. I like anand's 2011 heavy test, specifically the "busy time" because I understand time better than speeds. In that one, the 840 pro shows its typical dominance: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7006/55358.png
 
Thanks for the reply.

Old Hippie said:
I have a 3x256GB RAID0 setup and only use @ 60GBs so I have no use for over partitioning.

It's probably been @ 2 yrs since I've used the Intel RAID (I use LSI) so I'm not real sure but I think I created the array, partitioned my 20% free space, and just formatted the 80% partition.

Leaving the small partition unformatted is the trick that will cause it to be RAW and the drive will have more room to work.
Click to expand...
Well my question was more in line if windows will partition equally on raid arrays, for example let says i have twin 840pro 256gb, and lets assume i only need 128gb, so im going to overprovision half of the array, 256gb, will windows and chipset equally do 128gb on each ssd?

Old Hippie said:
However I thought I read that RAID0 can use TRIM with some Intel chipsets?
Click to expand...
Yes trim does work in IVY and on Sandy modding bios/orom and matching it to intel rts version, i have MSI GT70One (ivy bridge based) and it works fine.
 
So I made my decisions. 512GB Samsung 840 Pro :D, and a Seagate Baracuda 3TB....and 2 GTX 780s

Just thought I'd say thanks for the discussion and the help deciding with the drives.
 
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