Consumer Laptop SSD Drive Replacement

[Gödel]

My friend wants (me) to upgrade his old Win 7 laptop to Linux. My thought was to replace the hard drive with a new SSD, so he'd have the old Win drive as a backup.

I think he just needs a ½ TB drive.

What recommendations do any of you have for reliable brands/models for this relatively small size drive? TIA

In preliminary shopping, I've seen too many cases of early drive failures.

 

[ddrueding]

As you said old Win7 laptop, I'd assume it is a 2.5" drive with a SATA interface? That does limit things a bit, but there are good options out there. My first stop would be Samsung, probably the 870 Evo. In my experience SSDs are in general much more reliable than anything with moving parts, particularly those that have a responsible architecture (reasonable drive cache and thermal management design).

 

[Mercutio]

My favorite high endurance 2.5" drives are Intel S4510s, followed by Samsung 860 Pros. The 860 Pros are more or less impossible to find new, but the Intel drives are pretty easy to come by, which is one of the reason I like them as much as I do.

 

[Gödel]

Thanks, guys.

I'll have to verify, but I also assume his current drive is an SATA 2½" drive, and that there isn't an NVMe interface on his laptop.

I assume, too, that he doesn't need ≥1 TB; I don't think he has a lot of videos or other space-hogging files.

Intel is an interesting option; I was considering an Intel 670p NVMe drive (even though it's "only" Gen 3) for a cheapo Ryzen 5700g build I was dreaming of.

 

[jtr1962]

Seems like only a $20 to $30 difference between 500GB and 1 TB. I'd just go with 1TB. It's possible he may do stuff which needs more space later.

 

[Mercutio]

Aren't the 670p drives QLC NAND? Maybe not the best choice for a primary drive.

 

[sedrosken]

A Windows 7 machine likely isn't worth a whole lot of extra consideration as one has to wonder just how much of a lifespan it has left regardless. That said, I've had good results with Teamgroup drives -- they're nothing special, but the pricing is good and they're fast enough. Remember that this machine only has a SATA III interface if we're lucky -- it's far more likely it's limping along with SATA II if it launched with Win7, and in that case just about anything would saturate it at this point.

 

[Mercutio]

I had to service three Windows XP systems earlier in the week. They talk to commercial embroidery systems that don't have software that operates anything newer and won't virtualize worth a shit because of a USB security dongle, so they've just had their second whole system transfer.

As aggravating as it is, sometimes we have to hang on to old software. See also: the guy who is still paying me to check on his Netware system until the end of September when he retires.

Down side to Teamgroup drives: more or less none of them have any kind of write cache. They're still faster than mechanical drives but don't expect much.

 

[LunarMist]

I don't think any are reliable. I've had failures with WD and Samsung sSDs recently. The newer drives are mostly made like crap in the 2020s.

 

[LunarMist]

My favorite high endurance 2.5" drives are Intel S4510s, followed by Samsung 860 Pros. The 860 Pros are more or less impossible to find new, but the Intel drives are pretty easy to come by, which is one of the reason I like them as much as I do.

Even the 860 EVOs were quite good. My 500GB 870 EVO crapped out after a low TBW. Nobody knows why, but I think they are made with cheaper components since the 2020s. The WD Blue SA510 is QLC and so slow that the write speed drops to 200s MB/sec. after the SLC buffer; that is just terrible and then it died in less than a year.
The oldest reasonably large drive I have is the 2TB SATA 850 Pro, which was in use for many years. It was almost $900 back in Q4 2015. I currently have a 4TB Samsung 860 EVO with over 25,000 hours in my main machine in a secondary array and it is still working fine.
Unfortunately SATA SSDs are considered legacy products and the majority of the market is low end for replacements.
An exception is some of the NAS SATA III SSDS, which should be more reliable and very durable, but are mostly discontinued.

 

[Santilli]

DD set my desktop up with a Raid 0, using two Samsung 860 EVO. Worked great for what, 7 years? one of the drives died, but the other is still working and going strong.Using an old diskmark, speed is:
Reads:
1756
3781
1057
261.90
Writes
2112.73
2104.16
684.81
177.95

Suspect the true speed is the lower numbers, but the cache appears to be VERY fast.

 

[LunarMist]

Like most good SATA III SSDs, the 860 EVO can sustain about 500MB/sec. writes with large files. Over ~540MB/sec. is impossible due to the SATA III interface. Many benchmarks don't test the drive properly so be sure to make the run length 32GB or more. It's not the drive caching the writes, but the OS/RAM.

I still have a 4TB 860 EVO that has been in several main systems for many years. It's closing in on 30K hours, though not so many writes (98% IIRC). I also have a handful of 2TB 860 EVOs, which are too small for most practical use nowadays. It's too bad that Samsung never made an 8TB 860 EVO or 860 Pro.

 

[Santilli]

Running with 8 GB setting:
284,276,237, 21, Reads
254,265,615,173 writes