Cheapest SSDs that you would recommend?

[dejo]

right on Joe- a bad ssd is still a nice ssd these days

 

[c627627]

?
If I may say, and I hope you forgive me, a bad automobile is also a good way to get across the prairie vs. riding a mule....
But a choice of an automobile will affect its longevity when compared to other cars.


Samsung has 5 years vs ADATA's 3 years of warranty.
I am having the same discussion with Anand's people and the pattern is the same there as it is here as it is when I researched it before posting. There is a lot of talk about how meaningless Mean Time Between Failure numbers are, and a lot of talk about what TLC is, and not enough talk about what really matters, direct comparisons between actual example drives, in the example of this discussion the MLC Toshiba and the 3D TLC ADATA and also comparing Samsung 850 EVO to ADATA's 3D TLC.


Virtually no one here today buys SLC, which has a program read/write life expectation between 90,000 and 100,000 cycles per cell.
MLC has around 10,000 per cell.
TLC has 3,000 to 5,000 cycles per cell.

3,000 TLC vs 100,000 SLC - that's just 3%...

I wonder what 3D TLC numbers are, I can't seem to find them?

 

[EarthDog]

I suppose I just am not terribly concerned with what is under the hood to this level since knowing it yields little more knowledge of the reliability.

That said, I did a quick search and found an interesting article talking about SSD endurance myths. It also touches on, though not 'officially', the write cycles for 3D technology.

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

Pioneers of 3D flash SSD design say that raw 3D nand flash endurance is better.

How much better?

3x to 4x better than 2D at the same line geometries - Dave Merry founder of industrial SSD company FMJ Storage told me in March 2014 - based on his early access characterization research.

Part of 3D nand's better endurance is due to more expensive substrate (insulating) materials. But another factor - explained by Samsung in 2015 - is that the different design of charge trap (compared to floating point) works with a lower write pulse voltage.

And the takeaway...

If you're a consumer you don't have to worry about the internals of endurance management - because most new SSDs are good enough (if they're used in the right applications environment).

Though i fear that link likely opened more rabbit holes for you...

EDIT: More - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/21/flash_dead_end_is_deferred_by_tlc_and_3d/

and finally... : http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

 

[wingman99]

I would go with Samsung they have low return rate statistics. I have two SSD Samsung's 840 also 850 and there working with no problems.

 

[Shiozaki]

I'm always buying up the cheap adata 120gb ssds on newegg, them do the trick upgrading older rigs and for cheap boot drives.

 

[c627627]

How much are they when they go on sale and which models are you buying?

 

[Shiozaki]

The adata premier sp550, but holy crap the price has shot up to 50$, they were half that last time I bought some.

Ived used alot of silicon power slim s55 drives, at 38$ I'd go with them now

 

[c627627]

256GB ADATA is now $54.99 after rebate with new code EMCFGFJ57 good through the middle of next week:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820215016

 

[wingman99]

Every thing I do is loaded into system memory including windows, so storage does not hinder the processor.

 

[c627627]

The big picture is, I put my mom & dads two identical laptops with two identical Windows images next to each other. One had the SSD drive in, the other mechanical.
I pressed the power button on both at the same time.

As you watch the real life differences, you immediately realize how much of a bargain a $50 SSD investment makes for every computer system.

But I post to say that a brand new rebate on the 3D SSD is out and expires on January 4, 2017.

 

[wingman99]

I only load windows into memory once in a great while. Hear are my load time.

I did it with a stopwatch and each test I did 4 times.

All test were from system bootup.

HDD Raptor AHCI
PC startup push button 50 seconds to active.

crysis 3 startup 1:07 minute.

crysis 3 loading multiplayer map 41 seconds.

BF3 loading origin and web browser 44 seconds.

BF3 loading multiplayer map 1:40 minute.

Battlefield: Bad Company loading multiplayer map 19 seconds.

Samsung 840 EVO SSD AHCI
PC startup push button 30 seconds to active.

crysis 3 startup 46 seconds.

crysis 3 loading multiplayer map 25 seconds.

BF3 loading origin and web browser 14 seconds.

BF3 loading multiplayer map 37 seconds.

 

[c627627]

Regular family members boot into windows to do regular stuff, email, web browsing, music, photos and similar and for them, it's a night & day difference between SSD and mechanical, let alone someone like us...

There's really no need for anyone who can afford $50 to still be using mechanical.

By the way, USB slim DVD drives are $9.98 after rebate today and tomorrow
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135256
[If you want to still keep mechanical HD in and SSD in]

 

[Eren24]

The big picture is, I put my mom & dads two identical laptops with two identical Windows images next to each other. One had the SSD drive in, the other mechanical.
I pressed the power button on both at the same time.

As you watch the real life differences, you immediately realize how much of a bargain a $50 SSD investment makes for every computer system.

But I post to say that a brand new rebate on the 3D SSD is out and expires on January 4, 2017.

I think I might consider now buying a SSD for my laptop. They said I have a problem over my hard drive and recommend me to buy SSD but it’s a little bit pricey that a disk type. Thank you!

 

[TheCheat]

?
If I may say, and I hope you forgive me, a bad automobile is also a good way to get across the prairie vs. riding a mule....
But a choice of an automobile will affect its longevity when compared to other cars.


Samsung has 5 years vs ADATA's 3 years of warranty.
I am having the same discussion with Anand's people and the pattern is the same there as it is here as it is when I researched it before posting. There is a lot of talk about how meaningless Mean Time Between Failure numbers are, and a lot of talk about what TLC is, and not enough talk about what really matters, direct comparisons between actual example drives, in the example of this discussion the MLC Toshiba and the 3D TLC ADATA and also comparing Samsung 850 EVO to ADATA's 3D TLC.


Virtually no one here today buys SLC, which has a program read/write life expectation between 90,000 and 100,000 cycles per cell.
MLC has around 10,000 per cell.
TLC has 3,000 to 5,000 cycles per cell.

3,000 TLC vs 100,000 SLC - that's just 3%...

I wonder what 3D TLC numbers are, I can't seem to find them?

Kristian Vättö talks about the endurance of 3D TLC Nand on the third fourth page of his review of the 850 evo series.

LINK

 

[c627627]

I think it's actually on page four and I am having trouble understanding what the numeric value is when it comes to 3D TLC vs TLC.

 

[TheCheat]

I think it's actually on page four and I am having trouble understanding what the numeric value is when it comes to 3D TLC vs TLC.

I knew I had read a more in depth review of how Nand works... same author, different article-- this should explain everything:

LINK

 

[c627627]

That 2014 article also is not clear about answering the simple question about what the numbers are for 3D TLC, in relation to numbers we already know for SLC, MLC and TLC.

Virtually no one here today buys SLC, which has a program read/write life expectation between 90,000 and 100,000 cycles per cell.
MLC has around 10,000 per cell.
TLC has 3,000 to 5,000 cycles per cell.

I wonder what 3D TLC numbers are, I can't seem to find them?


Yes we know about realistic real life expectations, etc. but just from the math standpoint, it's pretty incredible that we can't find a reference table that simply lists relatable numbers for 3D TLC vs. the other three we already know about. I mean there's no question that buying 3D TLC is better than TLC, but it would be nice to know the numbers for 3D TLC.

 

[dejo]

as the lithography shrinks- so do the p/e cycles. some of the early MLC nand was rated at 10000 cycles but as the transistors shrank into the 20nm's so did the p/e cycles to a rated 5000. I would guess that is one were to purchase an SLC drive with todays capacities the p/e cycles would be substantially lower than that originally rated 100k cycles

 

[c627627]

okay SLC is very (very) expensive. We are not buying SLC, most of us.

When they said MLC had a write life expectation of "10,000 cycles per cell"... and then they said that TLC was at "3,000 to 5,000" cycles per cell expectation... would you say that at the time we had a reasonable conclusion that the relationship b/w MLC and TLC was that MLC was expected to last two to three times longer?

3,000 to 5,000 vs. 10,000.
Does it matter if it was two or three times? The big picture is we got a general idea.

So why no relative numbers (like that) between TLC and 3D TLC?

 

[dejo]

I will agree with your conclusion there.
I would also guess that they dont wanna scare peoples off with a low number. And would also say that the numbers really dont matter as much as writes as a gb/tb/pb number