SSDs - State of the Product?

[jtr1962]

You keep talking about cheap SSDs, but I really need a link or some info on where one can actually buy them in 2024 or early 2025.

It's mostly commodity drives which you likely wouldn't be interested in buying. I saw prices as low as $35/TB last year before prices started going up. For example, these are all going for $45/TB:

https://www.newegg.com/team-group-2tb-ms30-sata/p/N82E16820331840?Item=N82E16820331840

https://www.newegg.com/team-group-2tb-qx-sata/p/N82E16820985044?Item=N82E16820985044

https://www.newegg.com/p/0D9-00ZF-00014?Item=9SIBDCSJJY6194

https://www.newegg.com/silicon-power-1tb-ace-a58/p/N82E16820301489?Item=9SIBDGPKBA4530

For a person who isn't writing much data they're probably fine. The sweet spot in terms of $/TB seems to be 2TB and 4TB right now.

 

[Mercutio]

So they are about $1500-2200, depending on supplier.

Yes, and I don't think that's unreasonable for storage at that density. The port is more valuable the bigger the connected drive happens to be and 16TB is an absurd amount of data even for 4k video editing needs.

 

[LunarMist]

It's mostly commodity drives which you likely wouldn't be interested in buying. I saw prices as low as $35/TB last year before prices started going up. For example, these are all going for $45/TB:

https://www.newegg.com/team-group-2tb-ms30-sata/p/N82E16820331840?Item=N82E16820331840

https://www.newegg.com/team-group-2tb-qx-sata/p/N82E16820985044?Item=N82E16820985044

https://www.newegg.com/p/0D9-00ZF-00014?Item=9SIBDCSJJY6194

https://www.newegg.com/silicon-power-1tb-ace-a58/p/N82E16820301489?Item=9SIBDGPKBA4530

For a person who isn't writing much data they're probably fine. The sweet spot in terms of $/TB seems to be 2TB and 4TB right now.

But you need to look at the TCO. A drive just sitting there on the table vs. being part of a system in some kind of storage pool. So it is worth paying more for larger drives to a point. No normal person would end up with such a Mickey mouse plan for 40TB of internal SSDs.

 

[Mercutio]

No normal person would end up with such a Mickey mouse plan for 40TB of internal SSDs

Where are you getting 40? Standard AM5 tops out at 3x m.2s and m.2 tops out at 8TB/drive.

Sure, you can get a 4x4xPCIe to m.2 HBA if your board happens to support lane bifurcation but that's not as widely implemented as anyone would like and when it is, different OEMs are picky about which slots and how they can be divided.

 

[LunarMist]

The X670E I have with four M.2 slots on the board and also six SATA ports. I also have an old-school 8-ported Falcone SAS/SATA III RAID 0/1 controller. There are currently 3x4TB BLACK and the single 970 Pro in M.2 and 3x4TB SATA III backing it. The plan was to get the 8TB BLACK to replace the 970 Pro and then add two more 4TB SATA III (that I already have) as the secondaries for those. I'd have to mount the drives into each other so there are no more drive letters than previously. It's all a royal PITA and a cringeworthy storage design. I will revisit this plan in March 2025.

 

[Mercutio]

The X670E I have with four M.2 slots on the board and also six SATA ports. I also have an old-school 8-ported Falcone SAS/SATA III RAID 0/1 controller. There are currently 3x4TB BLACK and the single 970 Pro in M.2 and 3x4TB SATA III backing it. The plan was to get the 8TB BLACK to replace the 970 Pro and then add two more 4TB SATA III (that I already have) as the secondaries for those. I'd have to mount the drives into each other so there are no more drive letters than previously.

There are two beautiful things that Windows has been able to do for a very long time that most users do not know:

Windows can use Directory Symbolic Links (filesystem-level shortcuts) and also Volume Mount Points (mount an entire drive or array as a directory) to lessen the need for drive letters. Windows does not have to assign either a drive letter or volume mount point to access a drive, although not having one or the other does make your life more difficult; you can still access a drive by its GUID if you want to be that obtuse.

To make my life easy on Windows file servers, my standard is to make a folder called C:\mnt and then a volume mount point named after the drive's label, e.g. Intel8TB-02-06-24. I then mklink /d c:\share\2023images c:\mnt\Intel8TB-02-06-24\2023images.

The idea here is that I can browse the entire filesystem on each drive or volume but I can also put folders inside my shared folder structure in exactly the spot I want them, and it's relatively straightforward to rebalance what goes on which drive or array if something starts to run out of space.

Any *nix OS can do these same things.

 

[LunarMist]

It would be crazy to use the GUID. Every time a drive is replaced/reformatted all the programs that used various drive letters would not find the data.

 

[Mercutio]

It would be crazy to use the GUID. Every time a drive is replaced/reformatted all the programs that used various drive letters would not find the data.

Yup.
I noticed ages ago that drives reserved for Windows Backup have a GUID but no other assignment and I've done it a couple other times to hide things from end users in the habit of messing up their PCs.

 

[Handruin]

Some more chonker sized storage news

WD Ultrastar DC HC690 32TB HDD and 128TB NVMe SSD Shown

We saw a 32TB WD Ultrastar DC HC690 hard drive and a 128TB or 122.88TB NVMe SSD running recently at FMS 2024

www.servethehome.com

 

[LunarMist]

The non-heat sinked 8TB SN850X is now at Amazon for a bit more than the retail price. I would not trust the Amazon with such a high priced product. It might end up in a neighbor's bush or something.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm seeing Backordered until December on the Adorama.
I don't know what to do now. All the other 8TB use that flamethrower of a PHISON E18 chipset.

 

[LunarMist]

I finally got the SSD and have been testing it today in AssBOX 4x4 8840U. There are several individual chips on the top and two large ones on the bottom. The SMART data only shows one temperature. Is that from the top, bottom or just the controller? Maybe the BICS 6 is better with power than the BICS 5 and runs cool enough.
There is pretty extensive review here: https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1...-ssd-the-new-king-of-high-capacity/index.html

 

[LunarMist]

I found one more from another source. The bare 8TB are hard to get for some reason. The ones for the playing Station are pentiful, probaqbly because they are not selling. Would it be mentally incorrect to get four of them? I need two more in that case.

 

[Mercutio]

They're regular NVMe by physical interface. I guess they might have Playstation friendly firmware on them. You might want to check on that.

Xbox drives well and truly piss me off. They're expensive and proprietary to the console and there's no other acceptable media for storing games on one. Last I looked, the biggest supported drives are only 2TB, which is exceptionally painful when Call of Duty for Xbox is a 200+ GB installation and it's an almost global expectation that everyone who plays Xbox online have it installed.

 

[LunarMist]

There is just "P" from what I read, but the heat stinks are not removable.

 

[LunarMist]

It's very strange. One has China and one Malaysia. The labels look different. I don't know how but could one possibly be illegitimate?

 

[LunarMist]

XBox is primitively equipped for storage if I understand correctly. The new models appear to have either 1TB or 2TB hard drives or 1TB SSDs.
I read somehwere that the Xbox is in third place after the Intendo and PlayStations.

 

[Mercutio]

XBox is primitively equipped for storage if I understand correctly. The new models appear to have either 1TB or 2TB hard drives or 1TB SSDs.
I read somehwere that the Xbox is in third place after the Intendo and PlayStations.

They're very weird hardware. The graphics are good, but they don't work with standard bluetooth audio for in-game headsets and only Seagate-proprietary drives are blessed for game install locations. You can plug in and use a SSD for media. You just can't install and run games on it. I can't believe there's no workaround for that, because the drives are stupidly expensive. Setting aside the storage thing, crippling bluetooth audio makes ZERO sense, but they did it anyway.

To the credit of Xbox, people who buy in to Microsoft's monthly Xbox online subscription, there's a massive library of games that can be played on either Xbox or Windows and that does kind of make up for it. I'm looking forward to having some real free time this week to actually try a Game Pass title I was about to spend $50 on, but it's free for me because my partner pay for Xbox monthly.

 

[LunarMist]

Despite the lack of largely SSDs you prefer MS to Sony?

 

[Mercutio]

I am an observer to these things, since I hate gamepads and information-poor interfaces that are common to console gaming.

Nintendo is overly litigious and actively refuses to sell huge portion of its game library on contemporary platforms because it apparently hates money and loves filing lawsuits, but in a wonderful example of the internet routing around damage, it turns out that every single title Nintendo has ever made to date works fine when emulated on a relatively contemporary PC or ARM device. There's a Switch around my house somewhere but it no longer gets used because we have an Ayn Odin now.

Sony has the least irritating hardware but there are mid-tower gaming PCs that are smaller and use less energy to operate than a PS5. Out of all the consoles, I'm aware that it's the one that's used the least, but for some reason there's one in my living room. The excuse used to be that Sony had a lot of exclusive software, but most of its games get ported to Windows after a while if not immediately. I believe Sony wants a subscription for online play or something, because no one ever seems to do that.

The Xbox gets used because of game pass and I think because they're more affordable than Sony. They're the thing everyone seems to have right now, even with higher accessory costs than Sony and IIRC higher costs to buy games than Windows has.

 

[LunarMist]

I don't understand the lamp thing, but I suspect you are not the target user.
XBox and APPLE users are of the same belief that you don't have much internal storage.
There are so many criminals and hackers out there I would expect the companies to use SaaS and other means to protect their property.

 

[LunarMist]

This was in another section, but I'm replying here due to SSD topic.

The list I saw for impacted models was the SN5000, 580 and 770. I'm assuming the 850 is in the clear, other than the questionable idea of using a WD drive for booting in the first place.

Due to only having the old-school X670e with other stuff on the PCIe lanes, SSD availability is limited to the four M.2 sockets, two are the PCIe 5 from the CPU and two are the PCIe 4 from the chipset (only half a heatsinker). The only practical organization I can think of is 3x 8TB in RAID 0, then the other 8TB partruition 400GB OS and the rest for data. (That 4th drive will be mounted in the same drive letter as you previously explained to do.) I know you have some weird personal issue with Sandisk/WD, but since it's not booting off of the array I can at least swap in a single SSD in case of failures. I've had no issues with the 4TB SN850X yet. Samsung is still living in the past with low-capacity and there are few other 8TB options, mostly Phison E18 and higher power drains like Corsairs or Sanbrent.

Currently I have 3x4TB SATA III SSDs as the backup synch target for the other SSDs, but it's not going to be feasible to have a second set of ~32TB internally. What software could I use to quickly make frequent incremental or differential backups of the changed data on the 32TB of SSDs? I don't want anything that is free or has a subscription and I backup C: using other software, so only need to do it by files.
Ideally I would mostly fire up NAS units on weekends to update the data on them and then delete the incremental/daily backups. I would probably keep the 3x4TB SATA array just to keep the speed decent.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not sure if you want file sync or backup software but for file sync, there's our good friend Robocopy.

robocopy sourcedir destinationdir /mot:5 /r:50 /w:10 /zb /j /sj /copyall

The reason we like Robocopy here is that we can resume incomplete copies and control many aspects of how the copy will run. /mot:5 says "If you see changes in this directory space, run this command again in 5 minutes." This can be useful if you don't mind it running all the time, but you can omit it and just run the sync on a schedule as well. You might also want to use the /mir switch if you want a mirror of the current folder state instead of just copying over new data without deleting anything (i.e. the sync destination can keep things that aren't on the source any longer).

xcopy sourcedir destinationdir /h/i/c/k/e/r/y/d
is also a good tool for one time one way folder copying since Robocopy has more command switches than any three other shell commands in Windows.

Syncthing and Resilio Sync are other good options in this space and both of them have NAS clients that work in this space and work very well.
In the past, I suggested AllWay Sync as a Windows application that could keep folders synchronized for less technical users.

Beyond that, Acronis is $40 a year now if you don't already have licenses. Macrium Reflect is free from OldVersion.com. You have options in that space if you want to use a traditional backup application on Windows, although you might need to do a little scripting to set up file rotations for your incremental or differential backups.

 

[LunarMist]

Is there a windows version of the Robot Copy? I disdain Acronis for several reasons.

Do you use any of these? I have the legit older version of SmartSync. Not sure if it works in Win 11 or not, but I'm on 10 still for now.

The Best File Synchronization Software

File synchronization software lets you update computer files in two or more locations at the same time.

www.backupreview.com

 

[Mercutio]

robocopy has been part of Windows since the days of NT my dude.

 

[LunarMist]

I meant if it has a natural Windows Gui. I made some BAT files in olden times and some other commander lines when I was messing around in other software, but in 2024 no thanks.

 

[Mercutio]

You could try FastCopy. I remember getting annoyed with it for some reason. Damned if I can remember why at this point.

 

[LunarMist]

I may have to delay until my drives are all straightened out in the 2025 updates. I have so little time to do so many things.

 

[LunarMist]

Would you put the three Malayans in RAID and use the Chinese SSD by itself?

 

[Mercutio]

Can you try typing that again?

 

[LunarMist]

My question is if I should create an array from three of the SSDs that are more exactly the same vs. the one that is different. The latter one looks very similar so I don't know if there is a meaningful difference and it doesn't matter. What do you do with various drives?

 

[Mercutio]

Since you're dealing with software or quasi-software RAID and RAID0 at that, I don't think using a non-identical drive matters all that much. You're going to lose data if the array craps out and it's not like you're going to be worried about rebuild time or firmware oddities in your use case.

 

[LunarMist]

Some time ago I tried the dynamics disk vs. the BIOS-level RAID 0 and it didn't help much.
The Storage Spaces was running poorly so I gave up on it. How do you aggregate the smallish SSDs (<30.72TB), hardware RAID 0?

 

[Mercutio]

Unless it's attached to a card with an actual CPU of its own on-board, it's software RAID, whether it's LVM or Intel RST on Windows.

 

[LunarMist]

I cannot use Intel RST on the AMD X670E or can I?

 

[Mercutio]

AMD calls it RAIDXpert or something on Windows.
I prefer using Storage Spaces to either of the above because I don't like dealing with the amount of nonsense involved in switching storage drivers on Windows (especially if you're trying to upgrade a PC with an Optane m.2 drive) but Storage Spaces isn't fully functional on desktop SKUs, not even the Windows for Workstations I use at home.

 

[LunarMist]

Were you able to get good RAID 0 speeds in Storage Spaces 10 Pro? It seemed to me that the software was slow for some reason. Can I continue to use Dynamics Disks and later imported into another computer with 11 if necessary?

 

[Mercutio]

I've never actually cared about RAID0 as a performance matter. I just did it to staple the capacity of a couple drives together.
Windows will recognize and re-assemble dynamic volumes on other computers if all their constituent parts are connected.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm not expecting improvements, but something is wrong if RAID 0 is worse than a single drive. I won't have a chance to figure it out until 2025 though.