These fast, fast m.2 drives... not so much.

[mackerel]

My SSDs eliminated themselves recently. 2 died in the last two weeks ...

I saw that post. I've only ever had two SSDs totally die on me. One no name brand, and one Sandisk which was replaced under warranty. Both were sudden death, not endurance related. More worryingly, I've had cases of bit rot on low end branded e.g. WD Green, Kingston A400. The symptom was on a system that was working fine for around a year, I'd start to see slowdowns on read access, getting worse over time. If left I get file corruption. Surface scanners report problems. Nothing reported by drive SMART. A full disk wipe restores full functionality, but then there is concern it may return. I got rid of those SSDs since.

A new generation of DRAM-less SSD is great. Some are not far from the best PCIe 4.0 SSD. I have Predator GM7 2TB SSD in my gaming PC right now, and most benchmarks are at about Samsung 980 Pro level. At the same time, the SSD keeps ~45°C.

I don't see that one on sale in UK. The 980 Pro is over 2 years old now, and it is great there are cheaper alternatives. I love the 980 Pro, but I bought it early on when it was much more expensive. Even at today's pricing it is on the upper end of SSDs, per capacity. For a recent laptop upgrade I went with Kingston Fury Renegade. It's 980 Pro performance class but enough cheaper to be interesting.

 

[Woomack]

I saw that post. I've only ever had two SSDs totally die on me. One no name brand, and one Sandisk which was replaced under warranty. Both were sudden death, not endurance related. More worryingly, I've had cases of bit rot on low end branded e.g. WD Green, Kingston A400. The symptom was on a system that was working fine for around a year, I'd start to see slowdowns on read access, getting worse over time. If left I get file corruption. Surface scanners report problems. Nothing reported by drive SMART. A full disk wipe restores full functionality, but then there is concern it may return. I got rid of those SSDs since.

I have one more SSD which for now I'm using for tests, but I don't trust it. I have additional OS images so it's still fine.
SSDs usually die instantly, without anything in SMART logs. I don't remember if I had any SMART error on SSD.

I don't see that one on sale in UK. The 980 Pro is over 2 years old now, and it is great there are cheaper alternatives. I love the 980 Pro, but I bought it early on when it was much more expensive. Even at today's pricing it is on the upper end of SSDs, per capacity. For a recent laptop upgrade I went with Kingston Fury Renegade. It's 980 Pro performance class but enough cheaper to be interesting.

The GM7 is hard to find. I had a review sample and I haven't seen it in any stores since then. I also know that this SSD will be improved once fast controllers will be available. It's a bit weird that they release so good SSD and you can't buy it. I wanted to buy 1-2 more, but it's impossible to find them anywhere. My marketing contact said it will be available soon... it was three months ago.

I had problems with a double-sided Samsung 980 Pro at work. Literally both working in RAID1 died almost the same time. We exchanged them with 2x Kingston KC3000 (the same as Renegade, but with a different label). Both Samsungs were replaced by support with a newer batch which is single-sided, and both work great since then, but in 2 different laptops.
My brother has the KC3000 in this PC and I have the Renegade SSD in one of the test rigs. Both are working fine. I only dislike how Kingston puts warranty stickers on the version with a heatsink, and you can make that mistake and buy it for a laptop or a motherboard with its own large heatsink. No way to install it later without losing the warranty.

 

[mackerel]

I had problems with a double-sided Samsung 980 Pro at work. Literally both working in RAID1 died almost the same time.

There was a bad firmware release for a time which meant they died prematurely. Maybe it was in that batch and not updated past it.

 

[Woomack]

There was a bad firmware release for a time which meant they died prematurely. Maybe it was in that batch and not updated past it.

It was probably firmware, but support didn't confirm anything. They replaced both SSD without questions. Samsung later changed the design to a single-sided PCB, which is much more laptop-friendly.
I guess I will be forced to buy 1-2 SSD soon. I'm not sure what as everything I like is not available or too expensive.