SSDs - State of the Product?

[Chewy509]

My wife and I are anti-samsung simple for the piss-poor service, not because of their products (well, Samsung makes good hardware, but can't write software for shit - so some of their products should be avoided).

So basically, their RMA system gave you the wrong address to ship to, and now you have to pay for shipping again... Well, ship the drive to the correct address (if you get it back) and also include an invoice for the first shipping (as this was their stuff up) for re-imbursement of shipping to an incorrect address they supplied. If they fail to acknowledge the invoice, a claim to small-claims court in your area should get your money back...

 

[Mercutio]

The CSR has made it clear that they're going to make it right if I get the drive to someone who works for Samsung, but that depends on at least two other people doing the right thing.

Having an employee spend basically an entire work day on a $150 bad drive doesn't make a lot of financial sense though. I don't know why they can't just send a refurbished drive and let it go.

 

[Howell]

Sucky situation.
You have in the past shipped products to Samsung at an address that you can tell now has no relation to Samsung? Bizarre.

 

[thomas20]

Learned a lot from here. Thank you guys:-D for sharing your knowledge..

 

[snowhiker]

Anandtech tests the Crucial M550.

 

[LunarMist]

It was tested at SR as well. I was hoping for 2TB by now.

 

[snowhiker]

It was tested at SR as well. I was hoping for 2TB by now.

Yep! StorageReview test here.

I haven't visited that site since before Eugene sold it off. How would you rate to overall quality of the SR of today Vs. "Eugene Days"?

 

[Santilli]

Yep! StorageReview test here.

I haven't visited that site since before Eugene sold it off. How would you rate to overall quality of the SR of today Vs. "Eugene Days"?

We all loved Eugene. He was the reason this site exists....
ROFL....

 

[Mercutio]

I finally found an SSD that's failing gracefully. It's a three year old Corsair Force 3, sitting at about 20% health according to SMART data. It's giving errors on (most) writes but the whole disk has absolutely no read errors.

Also, I've been able to buy 240GB SSDs for under $100 all week. I know that's only a psychological boundary, but it's worth noting for the record here on SF.

 

[sedrosken]

About how long can one expect an SSD to last in somewhat normal use?

 

[Santilli]

Storagereview has a review of an SSD that is warrantied for 10 years.

I've never had one fail, going on 6-7 years now?

gs

 

[P5-133XL]

A very long time. See: http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php/10083-TR-s-SSD-endurance-test

Warranties mean nothing in regards to real reliability or the quality of the product. They are merely a insurance policy built into the price the consumer pays.

 

[Bozo]

I have had one fail. It was in the first 48 hours of use. All the other SSDs I have installed have been running for a few years now.

 

[P5-133XL]

Samsung 850 Pro with 40nm 3D NAND Looks very promising.

 

[Handruin]

That does look very good. It's screaming for SATAexpress.

 

[jtr1962]

The part I'm finding interesting is Samsung's roadmap for VNAND. It sounds like they plan to increase chip capacity by a factor of 8 over what they have now by 2017. Presumably, that means drive size will scale by a factor of 8 at more or less the same price points. Assuming mechanical drives somehow reach ~2 TB per platter by 2017, and a single platter drive doesn't increase in costs, you'll have ~$75 2 TB mechanical drives by 2017. Now look at the prices for the 850 Pro series. A 256GB drive has a suggested retail price of $200. Assuming the size scales by a factor of 8 by 2017 that implies 2TB for ~$200. Chances are good Samsung will have VNAND in lower-priced models by then, so we could be looking at 2TB SSDs for roughly the same price as many 250 GB SSDs are now, perhaps in the $140 range. While still not at price parity with mechanical disks (and this is assuming mechanical disks double in density without increasing in price which may or may not happen), we're within shouting distance. I think I can say with confidence that SSDs will reach price parity with mechanical disks sometime before 2020. They may well do so by 2017 or thereabouts. They'll certainly exceed mechanical disk size before then. As things stand now, it looks like Samsung easily has enough room left in the case to make a 2TB or even 3TB 2.5" SSD. I would guess for now the economics are against it but that won't be the case when chip capacity goes up by a factor of 8.

The other nice thing about VNAND is the increased reliability due to the larger process node. Obviously eventually VNAND will hit limits of its own, mainly based on how many layers can be made, but I think we're a long way from that.

 

[Stereodude]

Samsung 850 Pro with 40nm 3D NAND Looks very promising.

It certainly does.

 

[LunarMist]

It certainly does.

Why is there no 2TB model? There seems to be enough space judging by the 1TB.

 

[jtr1962]

Why is there no 2TB model? There seems to be enough space judging by the 1TB.

Economics would be my guess, not lack of space. SSDs are still primarily used for smaller fast boot drives rather than bulk storage. Granted, they're starting to reach large enough sizes at low enough prices to be the only drive in a system if a person doesn't need more than a few hundred GB. However, there are few users who would want a fast boot drive and would need to store 2TB of programs or other stuff where speed might be a benefit. There are even fewer who would be willing to pay the >$1000 a 2TB SSD would cost in order to do that. SSDs only seem to be viable for non-enterprise users at $500 or under price points. Right now that points to 1TB or smaller capacities. However, if VNAND scales as Samsung plans, we should see 8 to 10 TB SSDs in 2017 or thereabouts for around what a 1TB SSD costs nowadays. That would certainly be a big market.

 

[LunarMist]

The 850pro is 700 something, far more than the Evo or Crucial 1TB drives.

 

[P5-133XL]

New technology tax combined with supply and demand ...

 

[snowhiker]

Would you even notice the improvement over an 840pro? Wheres our 512 GB bootable PCIe SSD thats "reasonably" priced?

 

[LunarMist]

Would you even notice the improvement over an 840pro? Wheres our 512 GB bootable PCIe SSD thats "reasonably" priced?

That won't exactly fit in a laptop.

 

[LunarMist]

Is the M550 the 1TB SSD of choice <$500 for laptop/USB 3.0/PSD?

 

[LunarMist]

Is the M550 the 1TB SSD of choice <$500 for laptop/USB 3.0/PSD?

Well I have one now. Interestingly enough the capacity is 1024BG, which is larger than any 1TB drive I've used. I hope there are sufficient spare sectors, but assume it is still more reliable than the TLC Samsung SSD.

 

[LiamC]

Apologies if this has been posted. I was wondering about the sense in putting an SSD in my sons Q9550/Asus P5Q Turbo - seeing as it's only SATA II equipped. It does make a noticeable improvement.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-sata-3gbps,3469.html

 

[LunarMist]

Apologies if this has been posted. I was wondering about the sense in putting an SSD in my sons Q9550/Asus P5Q Turbo - seeing as it's only SATA II equipped. It does make a noticeable improvement.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-sata-3gbps,3469.html

If the question is whether SATA 2.0 has a major negative effect on performance, it doesn't really.

 

[Mercutio]

There's not very much subjective difference between a C2D Celeron and a Haswell i7 if both have the same amount of RAM and a decent SSD. At least not until you want to play a game or watch some HD video.

 

[LiamC]

Shouldn't a decent GPU even take that bottleneck away? In my HTPC I've got a Radeon 5670 and C2D e8400 and it rarely gets over 10% cpu. Mostly 720p though.

 

[Mercutio]

It should and it does. Those C2D systems could still have years left in them.

 

[Bozo]

SSD endurance test update.

 

[snowhiker]

SSD endurance test update.

"The SSD Endurance Experiment: Two freaking petabytes"

Link here.

 

[LunarMist]

"The SSD Endurance Experiment: Two freaking petabytes"

Link here.

At this point how meaningful are the results? Many of those SSDs are no longer manufactured.

 

[Chewy509]

I wouldn't be worried about the no longer manufactured part, but the fact that many current SSDs use flash of smaller feature size which results in flash that has less PE cycles overall. Would a modern SSD that's using TLC based flash with a lowly 1,000 PE cycle count fair as well as the models in the test?

 

[time]

The Samsung 840 drive in the endurance test is a TLC drive and I was under the impression that all TLC was only rated for 1,000 PE cycles.

It did ridiculously well and has made me seriously consider the new 1TB TLC drives from Samsung.

 

[Mercutio]

You could also buy a drive from a company that doesn't require a court order to get a drive replaced when they fuck up your RMA.

 

[Handruin]

The Samsung 840 drive in the endurance test is a TLC drive and I was under the impression that all TLC was only rated for 1,000 PE cycles.

It did ridiculously well and has made me seriously consider the new 1TB TLC drives from Samsung.

Samsung must believe their new 850 pro will last. They have a 10 year warranty.

 

[Handruin]

You could also buy a drive from a company that doesn't require a court order to get a drive replaced when they fuck up your RMA.

Is that written on the product description now?

 

[LunarMist]

You could also buy a drive from a company that doesn't require a court order to get a drive replaced when they fuck up your RMA.

Did you ever receive a replacement? I'm not sure about the newer Samsung drives. It seems there is some fancy footwork allowing for short bursts of speed to the faux MLC/SLC but that some users complain of slowdowns if 600GB are written continuously for example.

 

[CougTek]

The Samsung 840 drive in the endurance test is a TLC drive and I was under the impression that all TLC was only rated for 1,000 PE cycles.

It did ridiculously well and has made me seriously consider the new 1TB TLC drives from Samsung.

There are two Samsung 840 SSD in the review : one EVO and one Pro. The Pro version is still working after 2PTBW, but the EVO crapped out at ~700TBW IIRC. The Pro version doesn't use TLC chips, but the EVO does.

I strongly considers the Samsung 850 Pro, but I wouldn't buy an EVO model, even though it would probably last very long for my typical usage pattern. I hesitate between the Samsung 850 Pro and the Samsung 845DC Pro. I can get the 800GB version of the latter for ~1100$CDN. The 850 Pro is about two third as fast as the 845DC Pro, but it's also less than two third the price (about half during promos).