Choosing the right SSD...

The-Hive · Dec 9, 2021

@TheMystic I just had a look at thunderbolt 3 enclosures and the price is way more than I want to pay £100 + so that is just right for me

TheMystic · Dec 9, 2021

ThrashZone said:
Hi,
All of this has been about storage not os disks.

But either way you wouldn't want to put a os on a qvo either lol

I don't think it is as bad as you are making it out to be.

ThrashZone · Dec 9, 2021

Hi,
Beating a dead horse at this point but qvo is the hdd of ssd's and only three year warranty to top it off.

obelix · Dec 9, 2021

Today, it doesn't matter if you have ssd TLC or DLC, TBW is important because it keeps ssd correct or not. I have samsung ssd 840 1TB which serves for games and today 28 tb writing.
Today they are the best supporting M.2 PCI Express module up to
Gen4x4 (64 Gb / s) samsung ssd 980 pro 7200 MBR (sory)

ThrashZone · Dec 9, 2021

Hi,
Games are about the only data worth the expense of ssd storage
OS on a ssd is a no brainer

Videos/ movies/ t.v. series/ images/ office doc's all are perfectly suited for hdd's as long as they are at minimum 7200rmp which all of mine are and will stay on western digital black and work perfectly well.

The "hdd's are noisy" remarks is probably because it's a defective hdd all mine are silent.

DigitalGoat · Dec 9, 2021

There is a lot of perception snobbery concerning QLC drives I feel. I have an Intel 660p QLC 512Gb NVME OS drive.
Three years old, many wipes and re installs, many app installs, deletes ect, still 95% endurance left, 6 second boot times, perfectly fine as an OS drive, have never thought to myself "I wish this drive was faster".
At my current usage style it will wear out in approx 50 years, I'll be 106.... :)
For mass static storage HDDs are still currently unbeatable value no doubt, but even QLC SSDs have their place and in normal use are magnitudes faster than spinners.

ThrashZone · Dec 9, 2021

Hi,
I have mx100 that all are still at 99%
These are nearly 7 years old :zany:

obelix · Dec 9, 2021

I don't agree with you TrashZone games on ssd don't have to be fast 7200 Mb / s internet speed is important download and upload I had games installed on hdd 7200 MB / s and now on ssd 840 there is no difference in speed

Dru2 · Dec 9, 2021

TheMystic said:
Some tips to maximize SSD life:

1. Over provisioning: Leave 10% or more space unallocated for the system to use it for maintenance purposes.

2. Free space: SSDs begin to slow down just like HDDs when the disk is low on space. It is best to have 25% or more free space available in every partition you make. This not only increases performance, but also helps increase longevity.

I don't use overprovisioning cause I tend to keep drives below 60 percent capacity (70% max). This is where data management helps.

As for the rocket science, I keep it simple: I only buy Samsung SSD/NVMe drives. And only their top (pro) and mid-tier (EVO) drives.

That's me :)

pparks1 · Dec 9, 2021

DigitalGoat said:
There is a lot of perception snobbery concerning QLC drives I feel. I have an Intel 660p QLC 512Gb NVME OS drive.
Three years old, many wipes and re installs, many app installs, deletes ect, still 95% endurance left, 6 second boot times, perfectly fine as an OS drive, have never thought to myself "I wish this drive was faster".
At my current usage style it will wear out in approx 50 years, I'll be 106.... :)
For mass static storage HDDs are still currently unbeatable value no doubt, but even QLC SSDs have their place and in normal use are magnitudes faster than spinners.

Yeah, QLC drives can be just fine. As long as you aren't using them for high speed continuous writing, you probably won't notice much difference. It's only when you fully deplete the reserved nand blocks running as SLC that the performance really drops off. (and if you fill up the drive to near capacity, you won't have nearly as much SLC type nand blocks to work from, so the performance drop off will occur much sooner when drives are over 70% usage.) For the vast majority of their usage, they will certainly exceed the speed of spinners.

And while they will have a shorter lifespan, people always exaggerate how quickly their drives are going to die on them. I've got an 80GB SSD from around 2009 that's still working. People thought mine would be dead in 2-3 years back in the day and suggested I move all of my writes off the drive to keep its longevity as long as possible. At this point, it's the fact that the drive is only 80GB that's the issue.

pparks1 · Dec 9, 2021

obelix said:
I don't agree with you TrashZone games on ssd don't have to be fast 7200 Mb / s internet speed is important download and upload I had games installed on hdd 7200 MB / s and now on ssd 840 there is no difference in speed

I think he was saying 7200 RPM, not 7200 MB/s. I don't think for storage of things like video, music, documents and such that even being at 7200 RPM is a real necessity. If i want to listen to a 4 minute song of my F drive, it has 4 minutes to read all of the data....doesn't really matter if it's 75MB/sec, or 92MB/sec.

TheMystic · Dec 9, 2021

Dru2 said:
I don't use overprovisioning cause I tend to keep drives below 60 percent capacity (70% max). This is where data management helps.

As for the rocket science, I keep it simple: I only buy Samsung SSD/NVMe drives. And only their top (pro) and mid-tier (EVO) drives.

That's me :)

Both the points essentially refer to having free, unused space for the system to do its maintenance. Whichever way it is done, it is fine as long as there is sufficient free space.

As with brands, I tend to like having a little variety even if one is an absolute winner. :)

Dru2 · Dec 9, 2021

pparks1 said:
And while they will have a shorter lifespan, people always exaggerate how quickly their drives are going to die on them.

Yeah, I find the whole "shorter lifespan" argument nothing but fear mongering relying on a heavy dose of misunderstanding - what you do with the drive you. If you're one who is constantly moving terabytes of data around on a 24/7/365 basis, yeah, you'll probably wear out the drive fast.

For the other 99 percent (me included) who don't do the above, you'll likely to replace the drive before it nears wearing out. Also, not living on the edge of full capacity also helps.

With that, I always get a drive twice the size of the data I intend to store on it. Again, this is also where data management helps. Example, my OS drive is only 512gig because I don't keep photos, games, or music on it. Instead, I have dedicated drives for those items, and each of those drives are either 1 or 2TB in size. To keep the game drive from reaching 70 percent capacity, I don't install games no longer played.

Tip: If you've got Steam or Origin, you don't need to download all your games. Simply leave them on the server until needed. That frees up a lot of storage space for you. And again, archive files no longer needed. That's data management

My two cents :)

Dru2 · Dec 9, 2021

TheMystic said:
Both the points essentially refer to having free, unused space for the system to do its maintenance. Whichever way it is done, it is fine as long as there is sufficient free space.

Yep, that's what you quoted me as saying :)

TheMystic said:
As with brands, I tend to like having a little variety even if one is an absolute winner. :)

I tend to be brand loyal. I've only used Western Digital HDD drives (beginning with my first PC in 1998). only use Samsung SSD/NVMe drives, Corsair memory, Epson printers, AMD GPU's, Intel CPU's. My last five motherboards have all been Gigabyte (2010-2019).

I've been with all those brands for at least 9 (Samsung, Gigabyte) to 23 years (WD, Epson, Intel). ATI/AMD (video cards) for at least 20 :)

That's me.

yousaf465 · Dec 9, 2021

do we still have SLC in market?

pparks1 · Dec 9, 2021

I stick with certain brands too.
mobos: Gigabyte or Asus
memory: G.Skill
Power supplies: Seasonic
GPU: EVGA

For SSD/NVMe's, I've been really happy with Samsung, Western Digital and Intel. My son is running 2 x 1TB WD SN750's, I'm running 1 x 2TB WD SN850 and my wife is running a 1 x 1TB WD SN750. My daugher has 1 x 512GB Intel and 1 x 512GB Samsung. I did put a 2TB Sandisk Ultra into my machine to supplement my 2TB SN850 and it's for holding games. I went with Sandisk because it was the right price and since it's owned by WD, the same management software can be used for both my WD SN850 and the Sandisk 2TB.

For other scratch drives, I've got a Crucial 1TB NVMe in a 10Gbps external enclosure, I've got a 512GB Sandisk Ultra that I use as a test drive, and a 240GB PNY drive in an external USB 3 enclosure that I run my Raspberry Pi off from.

Never had any of my SSD's ever fail.

pparks1 · Dec 9, 2021

yousaf465 said:
do we still have SLC in market?

They exist, but they are usually in the enterprise space and cost 10x as much. For home use, effectively no...you aren't going to find an SLC.

NavyLCDR · Dec 9, 2021

TheMystic said:
Some tips to maximize SSD life:

1. Over provisioning: Leave 10% or more space unallocated for the system to use it for maintenance purposes.

2. Free space: SSDs begin to slow down just like HDDs when the disk is low on space. It is best to have 25% or more free space available in every partition you make. This not only increases performance, but also helps increase longevity.

If you are going to leave 25% free in every partition created there is absolutely no reason to leave an additional 10% unallocated for over provisioning. Empty space on the SSD is treated exactly the same by the controller regardless of partitioning. An empty cell is an empty cell. There are no partition boundaries on an SSD.

TheMystic · Dec 9, 2021

NavyLCDR said:
If you are going to leave 25% free in every partition created there is absolutely no reason to leave an additional 10% unallocated for over provisioning. Empty space on the SSD is treated exactly the same by the controller regardless of partitioning. An empty cell is an empty cell. There are no partition boundaries on an SSD.

Isn't that dependent on what the partition is used for?

On my T5, I have a total of 10 partitions, of which 8 are APFS+ or HFS+,1 is NTFS and 1 is exFAT. When I connect my T5 to my Windows laptop, the system sees only the last two partitions (NTFS & exFAT).

If these partitions are full, won't it hamper performance since none of the other partitions are visible and therefore it doesn't matter how full or empty they are?

Likewise, I have installed Windows in that NTFS partition. If I boot from it and lets say it is 90% full, won't it hamper performance?

In these cases, I think the SSD can make use of over-provisioning since the unallocated space is always accessible.

larc919 · Dec 9, 2021

TheMystic said:
Yes, HDD still have a place in the market, but mostly only for storage. It shouldn't be bought to install OS and run applications.

For storage only, I'll take a good HDD (WD Gold, etc.) over an SSD any day.

Choosing the right SSD...

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