What are some good manufacturers of SSDs? I'm looking at making a portable SSD for just basics and I've seen some pretty cheap Sandisk and Kingston drives. Also some WD Greens.
What would be the best for durability? I'm not too fussed by write speed and would just like an SSD that will last for a few years at least. So far I'm looking at a Sandisk Ultra 3D 120gb.
Samsung>Crucial>Everything else.
Are Samsung SSDs really that good? I'm willing to spend a little extra but I'd likely buy two drives. One is for fairly important stuff for work, the other would be just for crap I don't care about potentially losing. Would a Sandisk be okay for the potentially losing drive? My only requirement would be for it to last at least one year.
Nothing wrong with SanDisk, Kingston. They're fucking amazing for the price. I still have a SanDisk SSD from 2011 and a Kingston from 2012. I've also bought 5 or so of those 120GB Kindstons. You won't have any problems.
What ever you do, don't buy anything cheaper. Don't even think about shit like those Kingdian SSDs or random no name chink shit.
I wouldn't dream of that weird cheap no name shit. I've been using Sandisk USB sticks for years which have been pretty good on the whole, albeit with a few failures, but I did move a lot of information regularly that likely lead to them breaking.
So a Sandisk SSD would be fine for occasional moving of files but a fairly large amount of reading? Again, it only needs to last a year but I'd prefer it last quite a while.
Generally people like them, I had some for years and never had any single problem with them.
That being said, I also bought 2 Adata SSDs at some point, I think this was like 7 years ago and they still work perfectly.
Interesting. I keep hearing about SSD durability but it seems to vary wildly. I'd read about some SSDs like Crucial going bad after only a year of use.
What's the point when all SSDs safely go into read-only mode on failure
I have heard such stories to, but when you look at Amazon reviews let's say, it can happen to Samsung drives too.
Anyway I will not claim more expertise that I actually posess, just take it as one data point.
because when samsung goes into read only, it only stays that way till shutdown and then the drive is no longer readable, or at least that's how it use to go.
always assume there is no safety net either way.
but do they or is that just a meme
Any piece of hardware from any maker could die on day one. Unlucky (salty) buyers are usually the ones to moan about something the loudest. You mostly never hear from the millions of happy users.
Good point. I just haven't seen much mention of Sandisk SSDs anywhere, mostly I just see about the Samsung drives or WD Blue series, so it's been hard getting an idea about them when not many people talk about them.
Can data be deleted when they go into read only?
sandisk used some fucking god awful controllers back in the day and truly earned their bad reputation, kingston were/are less cheap but both are still bottom of the barrel of the more reputable named brands that have a history with flash memory
samsung pros and intel are top of the line
if you care about data integrity don't bother with brands that don't have a history of selling flash or were previously harddrive manufacturers (like wd), they might put out occasionally good drives and woo reviewers but it's not their bread and butter and it only takes one outsourced design for a major flaw to happen
technically no, but samsung on thr drives I mentioned required to be taken to a drive recovery place and paying 500-2000$ to read the data because after shutdown, the samsung refused to even be readable.
do not trust an end of life safety net to save you.
that said, as retarded as I use my drive, I have only written something like 40-60tb on it and its warrantied till 400, and good for nearly 2pb.
so long as you aren't using it 24/7 as a scratch disc and dealing in files several gb large, you should have no issue with end of life concerns.
Data is never deleted when a drive fails.
Unless:
- HDD arm crashes on the platter
- SSD fries due to faulty electronics/surge/bad PSU
when my kingston ssd hit write limit I was able to do ata secure erase, but I can't say how effective this was from a security standpoint
So what about Crucial then? They seem to be around the same price point as Sandisk but I've honestly never heard of them before.
they seem okay but I don't really have a strong opinion of them, they used to make a lot of cheaper ram back in the day
I wouldn't be moving large files on a regular basis or potentially at all. It would likely be used for a few hours a day for 7 days a week though.
just to clarify with this, I was able to 'secure erase' the drive and reading it back with dd confirmed it was zeroed but this could have been faked by the controller and I would have no way to tell
Sandisk have been the best bang for your buck for year. Ultra II's have been the best deals for many years and still are, but I think the new II's are 3D's.
i have all mushkin ram and 4 ssds and a 1tb ssd. never had any problems with any of it.
I'll get Samsung for my work files then, I can't afford to lose that shit.
What's the cheapest SSD that's decent then? I'm willing to go for something other than Sandisk and Kingston if they're that bad.
>but I think the new II's are 3D's.
apparently they are but have no idea what the 3D means.
>and dealing in files several gb large
large files aren't that bad for ssds, it's small files that cause excessive wear because you have to write a full page size (typically 4KiB but could be up to 16KiB) even if you only need to write a few bytes of data, large files will cause more writes but they'll also be 100% efficient writes
to clarify sandisk and kingston aren't the worst of the cheap brands, I'd probably opt for a kingston if I wanted something cheap
WD is pretty damn good, but stay away from the greens unless you're using them for storage.
Everything is 3D now, just the way it physically works for storage. I've been running multiple Ultra II's for years with no regrets, and I've got 2 of the bargain versions as well with no regrets.
if you are dealing with a scratch disc, where that several gb large file gets overwritten multiple times a minute potentially, yes it's worse than the small files.
Alot of people moved away from ram disc scratch discs to ssds because they are good enough.
>stay away from the greens unless you're using them for storage
Why exactly?
The files being read constantly won't be large exactly, they'll be something like 200-400mb and only go up to about 1gb. That said though it will only be used for a few hours a day.
Price difference isn't that great between the green and blue, you get a way better drive for only slightly more, WD kind fucked over greens, should be mass storage at a reasonable cost, but then blues would never sell.
kingston hyper x MLC for the win
Samsungs are definitely overkill if you just want file storage. WD blues are cheaper, have TBWs in the same ballpark, and have a three year warranty. There are even cheaper brands out there, just make sure you're not getting straight up garbage.
Btw look into how trimming is handled in the case of external SSDs. Hopefully winshit handles it automatically, otherwise good luck getting it to work. On linux you can most likely get away with running fstrim every once in a while or just write a script that mounts it with the discard option enabled (but it depends on the file system, I'm assuming ext4 here).
Meme. Trusting a drive to "safely go into read-only mode" is not a valid backup strategy.
Different types of SSDs store a different number of bits per cell (SLC = 1 bit, MLC = 2 bit, TLC = 3 bit, QLC = 4 bit). More bits per cell = cheaper per GB, but at the cost of lower write endurance. SLC drives aren't common because they cost too much. MLC drives are really high-end ones like the 970 pro. TLC used to suck dick but 3D/V-NAND (vertical NAND) fixed it. Most SSDs nowadays are 3D TLC, although Samsung has the nasty habit of calling their evo series drives MLC because they are technically "multi-level cell", but they really are 3D TLC drives. QLC is hot garbage, it's meant for some specific use cases in data centers where write endurance is not that important. I don't think there are any QLC consumer drives, although I'm sure the chinks will eventually try to flood the consumer market with them.
I still have an OCZ vertex 4 at 99% health
I thought the new intel 660p were QLC.
Funny because where I am, they are more expensive then the samsung evo 970s.
reads don't really hurt ssds, or, at least not nearly as much as writes. that said, any brand with a warranty they honor is going to give you about 400tb for a 250gb drive minimum
What companies make MLCs?
greens are fucken slow as an Operating System disc
but perfectly fine for storage
I think samsung pros are MLC.
I'm never buying or recommending Kingston again after they pulled that bait and switch with their budget SSDs
What would you get instead then? Budget SSD wise.
Samsung > seagate > sandisk/wd > kingston > crucial > *
Seagate make their own controllers since they bought lsi a few years back which have been very good. Sandisk got bought out by wd. Kingston make best price to performance drives that don't crap out in 4 months. Crucial are fairly stable. Mushkin is good but not available everywhere
Adata haven't failed me so far
Seems like I was wrong about QLC drives not being that common. It really shows that they are QLC though, evos are rated for three time the writes.
Samsung 970 pros are MLC but it's pretty much placebo for like twice the money.
I have high end Crucial that is MLC
Aren't all non SLC drives /technically/ MLC since MLC just stands for "multi level cell"?
>SLC
SLC stands for single level cell, did you mean TLC? In that case, you'd be right. 2-bit per cell SSDs should be called DLC or 2LC or something but for some reason we ended up with this retarded naming convention. Even wikipedia mentions this:
>Note that due to the convention, the name "multi-level cell" is sometimes used specifically to refer to the "two-level cell", which is slightly confusing.
That must've been way back in the day then, my main PC has some 24 TB of host writes on a 4+ year old Extreme II and it has been an absolute stalwart.
I said "non SLC" aka all non single layer drives are considered "MLC" by definition because they're "multi layered", including TLC and now QLC.
Who would seriously buy a QLC flash??
Yeah, sorry, I missed the "non" part.
If its that important to destroy the data, you shred the motherfucker.
look at this fucking retard giving out shitty advice
avoid all TLC shit and make sure it has a DRAM cache. Brand doesn't really matter aside from that since they all tend to use the same controllers.
Can someone tell me if pic related is MLC or TLC?
It's a liteon that I won in an ebay auction a couple months ago for like 10 bucks
I just bought a silicon power ssd did I fuck up
Lite-on's site doesn't list this model because it's from 2014, so I had to go on wayback machine. I did find the LCS drives there, but the number of bits per cell isn't listed.
Thanks user
I'll just assume it's TLC then.
I really don't have the budget to buy a 970 EVO at the moment.
I'm thinking of buying a Corsair MP300. How is it?
I have a portabel 500gb ssd from samsung. Can recommend
There's literally nothing wrong with TLC
*buys a QLC drive*
>if you care about data integrity don't bother with brands that don't have a history of selling flash or were previously harddrive manufacturers (like wd),
WD bought sandisk like 3 years ago
That makes more sense than the convention, but in practice MLC means 2 level cell
I won't trust anything Adata, I managed to broke them the access by creating 2 internal loads both broken in memory Don't ask how I don't remember
WTF are you saying?