suggest a ssd!

So I'm upgrading my current build and I'm going from a slow 5400rpm HDD to a ssd I'm looking at maybe a 120gb ssd for ~$50 perhaps? I was going to grab the Samsung 850 250gb for $99 but it just jumped to $119.

850 EVO

I would suggest 250GB

Go with the largest drive you can afford. I'll toss out the Intel 730 series, the 480g is a great drive.

Intel 730, all the way! Also, avoid the Samsung 840, 840 EVO, 850, and 850 EVO. There is a problem with the 840 and the 840 evo, and it looks like it's the TLC nand. Since the 850 and the 850 EVO are TLC nand (though stacked vertically), I was be super hesitant to entrust my data and productivity to these drives.

http://techreport.com/review/27727/some-840-evos-still-vulnerable-to-read-speed-slowdowns

Arbiter Odie said:

Intel 730, all the way! Also, avoid the Samsung 840, 840 EVO, 850, and 850 EVO. There is a problem with the 840 and the 840 evo, and it looks like it's the TLC nand. Since the 850 and the 850 EVO are TLC nand (though stacked vertically), I was be super hesitant to entrust my data and productivity to these drives.

http://techreport.com/review/27727/some-840-evos-still-vulnerable-to-read-speed-slowdowns

Click to expand...

ALL SSDs are subject to slowing as the drive fills, FYI

There's a lot more to it than just filling the drive though...in fact, not sure that has anything to do with it.

I thought this was resolved with firmware...I also thought this did not affect the 850, ascompared to the 840, because it uses the stacked/3d nand among other differences. There is no fix for the 850 on their site either.

Arbiter Odie said:

Intel 730, all the way! Also, avoid the Samsung 840, 840 EVO, 850, and 850 EVO. There is a problem with the 840 and the 840 evo, and it looks like it's the TLC nand. Since the 850 and the 850 EVO are TLC nand (though stacked vertically), I was be super hesitant to entrust my data and productivity to these drives.

http://techreport.com/review/27727/some-840-evos-still-vulnerable-to-read-speed-slowdowns

Click to expand...

It's interesting that the article is about the 840evo, yet you tell us here that 840, 840evo, 850, and 850evo are all affected.

At this time, on the samsung website for these drives, there is not a 'fix' for the 850, and the 850 is made completely different with the 3D NAND. NOt sure on the controller though or if the 3D NAND would make it immune either.

I had read several articles about the 840 slowing over time (I should really start bookmarking these articles for future reference), but not a single one about the 850 Series. I'll be honest, I thought about buying an d850 this week with the prices they were at. I just had to throw Intel out there cause it seems like no one likes them on this forum but it might just be my perception. I'll stick with my original comment though, get the largest you can afford, they fill up fast if your not careful, and if you go above that 90% ( I try and stick with less than 80% usage) point they do slow, albeit still faster than a HDD.

These 3 pages are a great read, 1, 2 and 3. They might be a bit old and aren't indicative of the results a standard user would get, but they do show some interesting information about reliability.

I like Intel SSDs, but they aren't cost effective.

^ true, but I love finding them on sale, still not as inexpensive as the rest, but they are much more attainable when they are on sale.

cw823 said:

It's interesting that the article is about the 840evo, yet you tell us here that 840, 840evo, 850, and 850evo are all affected.

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cw823, I only have so much time to track down links, my life is busy sometimes. You guys know I don't post trash or make stuff up

http://techreport.com/news/27286/samsung-working-to-fix-slowdowns-on-840-series-ssd

This basically says that the 840 probably has the same problem. Which makes it look like it's a problem specific to the TLC NAND in these drives. That's why I quickly did a rundown of the situation in my above post. I said I'm leary about the 850 drives, there are no current documented problems. I'm worried because they are still using TLC NAND, albeit integrated into their VNAND dies. So, I wouldn't buy these, though the Pro ones are probably a-okay.

Also ED, the firmware fix didn't work. The article I linked in the first post is talking about post-fix drive performance, hence the title of the article. Also, here are some users are still having the problem.

On techreport. Near the bottom of the page.
http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=96590&start=30

On overclock.net. This page marks the start of people finding they still have the problem.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1538101/tr-some-840-evos-still-vulnerable-to-read-speed-slowdowns/80

I have read through that entire overclock.net thread, I have been following it since it first started, and same in other reports that have spun off that thread.

The only tools that accurately reflect what is happening with the Samsung 840 EVO is Filebench or SSD.readspeed. As they are the only tools which show the speed each file is read from the SSD along with date of the file. Older files on the samsung 840 evo are being read at speeds as slow as 40 mb/s. newer files at 500 mb/s. Has nothing to do with drive being full, has to do with older stored files are read very slowly.

The only drive so far to have this proven defect is the 840 evo. There are people with 850 evo, even some that have review samples when they first came out, and have files old enough to have the problem, but so far the problem does not exist on the 850 evo. Doesnt prove the negative, but so far hasnt effected the 850.

The thread linked below will show that seven 840 evos that were properly tested, have this issue, though lot more have same issue, just less thorough testing. 3 samsung 840 pros were tested, none have the problem. 3 samsung 850 pros were tested, none have the problem. Senn, the storage editor of the site, has his 850 evo since came out, his and 2 others on the site are not affected. Many others havent had 850 long enough to know. All you can really say is the samsung 840 pro, 850 evo/pro have not been affected to date. In fact so far this is exclusive to 840 evo, which makes one think it is a firmware issue. All other SSDS properly tested (not with HD tune at 64 kb which shows something unrelated to evo issues), have been unaffected.

edit: one other point, samsung 840 pro uses mlc nand, but again it looks more like a firmware bug, that is what samsung is saying.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1512915/...es-benchmarks-needed-to-confirm-affected-ssds

Has there ever been any issues like this with Crucial and Intel drives?

5 crucial drives were properly tested, none have the issues, add my 2 that I tested with correct tools makes 7 tested no issues. 6 intel drives tested with correct tools, 9 counting mine, and none have the issue. My crucial m500 960gb drive has files as old as 1100 days, and those files are read at the exact same speed as 5 day old files, ie all at 380 mb/s which is the average combined speed of small/large files on my drive.

Here is pic of my crucial m500 which a snapshot of days old vs mb/s read speed, my 988 days vs 2 days all at same 380ish mb/s speed:



Here is a pic of an affected 840 evo from oc.net from link below, notice all the files being read at 35 mb/s that are 308 days old, that is left side with print. then look at the graph on the right, you can see files less than 25-30 weeks old being read at an avg of 350 or so mb/s, and the speed just keeps declining with age. On my crucial, the slowest speed of my files are over 250 mb/s, 98% are at over 350mb/s.

http://cdn.overclock.net/5/51/51480a65_2014-09-1610.31.49TestresultsforG.png


And another samsung evo, files less than 30 weeks read better, those over 30 weeks, speeds decline to 20-40 mb/s, ie may as well get a hard drive.
http://cdn.overclock.net/1/13/131df3d8_2014-09-2110.27.49ResultsforC.png

I have no problems with Crucial. I had 4x M4 and now MX100. All were working without issues and Crucial support is great. I also have Plextor, Patriot and Samsung 840 Pro. No visible problems with them but except Crucials, I'm using all other drives for benching so as long as they're working, they're good.

I have used and liked the toshiba q series pro as well, and they are nice drives. They just feel as though the case isnt as nice as some. I would buy again though. I have in use the Samsung 840evo's as well, mine all seem to be fine on the "old data". I have ran the updated firmware.
For value, its hard to beat the OCZ Arc100 drives as well

Anandtech got a response from samsung regarding the 840 evo slowdown:

In October, Samsung released a tool to address a slowdown in 840 EVO Sequential Read speeds reported by a small number of users after not using their drive for an extended period of time. This tool effectively and immediately returned the drive’s performance to normal levels. We understand that some users are experiencing the slowdown again. While we continue to look into the issue, Samsung will release an updated version of the Samsung SSD Magician software in March that will include a performance restoration tool.

As a reminder, the original 840 EVO performance degradation issue was a result of a combination of NAND cell charge decay and NAND management algorithm issues. While NAND cell charge decay is a normal part of NAND operation, it was something Samsung’s more complex TLC NAND was more sensitive to. Meanwhile Samsung’s algorithms, when faced with this decay, erroneously went into an aggressive read-retry state, which is ultimately what lead to the drop in read performance. Samsung’s fix in turn addressed their NAND management algorithm, and at least at the time was thought to be a permanent fix for the issue.

These more recent performance issues and now Samsung’s statement make it clear that the issue is unfortunately not as fixed as Samsung initially thought it would be. At this point Samsung isn’t saying what the root cause of this latest issue is, but it’s likely that this is a continuation of the original issue. In any case the upshot is that Samsung believes the issue can be corrected, however given the last fix it’s not clear whether this next fix will be any more a permanent fix than the last one.

Click to expand...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8997/...0-evo-performance-another-fix-is-in-the-works

On another note...intels new 750 ssd is supposed to be coming out soon, and should be first consumer nvme drive ie first one with substantially faster 4k read/writes and should be bootable via m2. That will be my next OS drive...im just sticking with intel in near future.

hmm, 750 series M2, should be an interesting Boot drive, where do I sign up?

Back to OP's original question....For the most part, any current model SSD (not some 2 year old drive still on retail shelves) will serve you just fine. I'd recommend getting a 250GB drive minimum and other than that get whatever one you can find for about $0.3X /GB. That would be a very good price and I see a decent drive priced at that point pretty much once a week. There will definitely be a difference between a top of the line 850 pro drive and a mainstream MX100, but you won't see it for 99% of the things you do on a computer. Especially since you are coming from a 5400 RPM hdd. The differences would be measured in fractions of a second and all will be orders of magnitude faster than what you are used to.

Unless you have very specific needs for a top end, fastest drive you can buy (and it's a safe assumption you don't or you would already own an SSD), you are just wasting money by spending more.