500GB Samsung 840 SSD for $300. Your reaction?

The Egg has it today.

Just in order to prevent any heart attacks: this is of course the TLC based 840, not the 840 Pro!

What's stronger, the lure of the money or the caution about a new and untested technology?

Inquiring minds want to know...

EDIT: I feel like an idiot, the poll should of course say $0.60/ GB...
Looks like I can't fix it unfortunately.

 

Still in two minds about it. With tax, it ends up being $330 for me. If it were $300 flat, I'd probably bite. As always, you should have backups regardless of whether you use SLC, MLC, TLC NAND SSD or traditional HDD. Even if you have backups, it'll be mighty annoying to have the laptop out of commission due to component failure.

With reported failures of review samples on several tech sites, I'd be wary of buying both the TLC Samsung 840 and MLC Samsung 840 Pro at the moment.

 

Really? Even for the (pricey) 840 Pro? Do you remember where you read that?

 

A Crucial 512GB M4 is over £300 here so a drive for around $300 is something I would definitely give a go as long as the returns service was ok as I use an SSD for the OS, applications, games etc. and keep the rest on a separate drive so if the SSD fails it's not too big an issue.

On the other hand, I wouldn't buy a hard drive just because it was cheap - in fact I'd pay more for one likely to be reliable, while I do regularly back up a data drive failure is more of a problem for me.

John

 

AnandTech, TechSpot

AnandTech killed their two 840 Pro samples so I'm not sure if the site TechSpot is referring to is AnandTech or someone else. I realize retail models are supposed to be unaffected by the aforementioned firmware bug but better safe than sorry.

 

I've heard personal stories from others stating that Samsung has a great return warranty policy including quick replacement and return shipping (I've never had to use it fortunately as my drives have been operating fine so far). This is good news if the said drive(s) were to fail under the warranty period and original ownership. It would hurt them to release a faulty drive from the get go but its not unexpected in some products and eventually they'd have to fix the issue at hand.

 

Even with a great and quick return/replacement policy; the DATA is not covered (or, more specifically, 'recovered' for you in the event of premature death).

I know: nobody covers DATA. But that is little consolation if a drive is known to die.

Waiting is the best policy here.



(Until this issue is proven to be fixed - Anandtech will let us know 'soon').

 

Waiting can't hurt, but if you need/want and can afford it, you can have it.

 

Sorry, but you're missing the point: if the $$$ was all that was in the way of getting this drive, I'd agree with your assessment.

The issue here is that these SSD's just die - along with your data. Doesn't matter how much $$$ you have/give - it won't take that issue away.

 

I'm waiting for a 500GB SSD for my desktop to come down to $150 or so. Then I'll buy one.

 

Getting a large SSD for near half price certainly is tempting. However it appears that they are too new for anyone to have a long good experience yet.

Early adopters simply have to take on that risk. Make sure you are getting it from Amazon or Newegg not some reseller and you should be good to go. They will take care of a DOA and Samsung doesn't have OCZs reputation so if it is a warranty problem than it gets fixed that way.

Additionally you can back up every two days or so for a couple of weeks or months....whatever you desire.

Perry

 

Might not be an issue for some. For folks using it purely for OS+apps+games or have a good back-up system in place, having it fail would just be an inconvenience. If it wasn't such a big hassle replacing drives in my laptop (need to remove keyboard, etc), I would've taken the chance.