SSDs - State of the Product?

LunarMist

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I see that the price for the 512GB Samsung 830 in $ is about the same as the capacity in GB. Is there any drive better and more reliable than the Samsung today?
 

Mercutio

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I don't know that Intel is more reliable. Intel DOES have really fast RMA turnaround. For someone like Lunar the fact is that a drive failure would just be a reason to go buy another drive anyway so it probably doesn't matter as much for him.
 

LunarMist

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I don't know that Intel is more reliable. Intel DOES have really fast RMA turnaround. For someone like Lunar the fact is that a drive failure would just be a reason to go buy another drive anyway so it probably doesn't matter as much for him.

I would probably use the boot drive for ~1000 hours assuming the notebook lasts until 2016-2017. Most likely I would change it out in a year or so. The main thing is that I can't afford to suffer from BSOD or other nightmare in the field. I would probably destroy the drive if it were not wipeable.
 

LunarMist

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Well it should last a good long while if it is anything like the previous Japanese notebooks. I Have two from 2008 and even one from 2003 that still work fine. The oldest one has a dead battery, but that is to be expected.
 

LunarMist

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That's one of the factors with SSDs. Once you reach the point that you can't write to the drive, out comes the drills/hammers to destroy the drive. (Since erasure requires a write cycle).

If the drive supports encryption it only requires a small portion to be overwritten, not every data cell.
 

CougTek

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Oh wow. I'm really tired I guess. Different instead of difference. See you all tomorrow morning, after a good long night sleep.
 

LunarMist

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Oh wow. I'm really tired I guess. Different instead of difference. See you all tomorrow morning, after a good long night sleep.

Your English is quite good, so there is no reason to fuss over a word or two. :)
 

Handruin

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Is there something going on with the Samsung 830 256GB drives? I've had one on my wish list for a while and the price has always been somewhere around $180-$200. Now it's $365 at Amazon? Newegg is still around $200...just curious if it may be due to the 840 replacing it and supplies are running low. Is the 840 Pro a worthy replacement of it?
 

Mercutio

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The overall impression I have is that among the top-tier vendors, pretty much every SSD is fast enough for pretty much every normal sort of workload.
Or at least that I can't really tell a subjective difference between say an Intel 330, a Samsung 820 and an OCZ Agility 3.
 

Bozo

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I am beginning to wonder about Amazon. In early November I was looking at a cold brew coffee pot. It was $26.00 on Amazon. Tuesday I went to order it and it was $48.99. Seems after Thanksgiving the prices on Amazon went up.
I bought the coffee pot else where for $23.00
 

Handruin

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I prefer 830 even though the 840 is faster. I question the 840's potential longevity. It may be long enough for consumer use but 830 is going to be better and is fast enough.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand

Thanks for the link. Interesting though that they estimate a workload of 10GiB/day would give a significant lifespan of roughly 70 years. I've never really thought of how much data transfers over my storage in a given day but even at tripple that estimate, I think I'd be more than OK. Even more so given that article and those estimates are based on the TLC 840 where as I was more interested in the MLC 840 pro. From what I've read, the MLC should have an even better life span given the nature of the architecture. I agree with your concern though which is why I originally was watching the Samsung 830 vs the 840 or even 840 pro. If the prices are going to be rising and the inventory to soon be gone on the 830, then maybe I should grab the two I've been wanting from newegg.
 

Handruin

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The overall impression I have is that among the top-tier vendors, pretty much every SSD is fast enough for pretty much every normal sort of workload.
Or at least that I can't really tell a subjective difference between say an Intel 330, a Samsung 820 and an OCZ Agility 3.

I don't have much to compare with except my basic spindle drives and the one Crucial M4 in my laptop which is extremely fast so far. I was leaning towards the 830 as I've read much praise for it in both performance and reliability. it seems like the drive to have over the others.
 

ddrueding

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I agree with Merc that from any HDD to any SSD is a considerable improvement, but SSD to SSD is far harder to tell. I doubt I could do it in a proper double-blind test.

Just went from hardcore PCIe SSD to Vertex 4 in my workstation and can't tell at all.
 

Mercutio

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TigerDirect has an OCZ Vertex 3 480GB drive for $280 after rebate right now. I'm not going to link because I don't think OCZ Drives should be purchased, but historically OCZ has been a leader in terms of its pricing. I would not be at all surprised if we start seeing $.50/GB ~500GB SSDs by the end of Q1 2013.
 

LunarMist

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I think they will continue to decrease, especially with the increasing popularity of TKC.
 

jtr1962

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I would not be at all surprised if we start seeing $.50/GB ~500GB SSDs by the end of Q1 2013.
I agree here. That would put SSDs at roughly ten times the price per GB of mechanical drives. Even better, it puts ~200GB SSDs right around the $100 price point. This is about the most your average buyer is willing to pay for a hard drive. 200GB is a large enough size for many people to use as their only storage. Back when all you could get for $100 was maybe 32 GB, SSDs still needed to be supplemented by mechanical drives for bulk storage. $0.50 per GB should be the price point at which we see mass adoption of SSDs. That in turn should result in further price drops. I wouldn't be surprised to see us at $0.25 per GB by the end of 2013. Helping SSDs along also is the fact that none of today's mechanical drives seem all that reliable, at least the ones priced at $100 or less.
 

LunarMist

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I want higher capacity SSDs. I have only 2.5TB of now and would like to double or triple that next year.
 

Bozo

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I buy a lot of refurbed items. My motherboard (ASUS P8B WS) was a refurb. I believe it had the chip replaced that would stop recognizing the SATA ports after X hours. Paid less than $150.00 for it.
The savings allowed me to buy the Xeon CPU I wanted, and more memory.
I have 4 WD Raptors that are refurbed.
Years ago I bought a refurbed Supermicro motherboard. It has to be 8 years old by now and is in it's third system.
I believe that refurbed componates are tested more rigorously than new parts.
I only buy refurbs for my home systems.
 

Striker

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Bozo, that's always been my belief as well.
Usually refurbs go through more thorough testing that a brand new item.
Besides, with electronics, you're generally going to see any problems pretty early on.
 

MaxBurn

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While I generally agree refurbs are a good bet I don't think OCZ is.
 

Stereodude

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I'm okay with some refurb products, but an SSD (or anything else with a finite lifespan) wouldn't be one of them. How do you know how much wear the flash chips have on them unless the manufacturer explicitly guarantees all units have fresh flash chips, or have a max usage of like 5%. Adding in the OCZ factor and well... :tdown:
 

MaxBurn

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One odd thing I noticed last I updated my intel G2 drive was it reset the wear usage counter. I think I got it down to 98% but after the flash it reset to 99 or 100% or so. Don't know if that was an adjustment or if it actually cleared the counter.
 
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