500gb or 1tb m2. SSD Recommendation?

@yrekabakery found this one here from 2015 destoryer workload avg ~5.5 QD. this is lower than what i expected from few yrs prior, i was thinking around 6-8 QD.

 

?

 

I tested write speeds on a 970 2tb with writing 750gb, it only dropped down to 750-850mb write speeds. At the start it would write around 1.2gb/s.
The 660p 2tb that I had would drop down to less than 100mb/s. I'm not saying the 660p's are bad but they would slow down much more. The 660p are pretty good drives for most people.

 

Hey all. I will probably get a m.2 ssd now. It shows like 45gb free of 231gb at the moment. Feels strange because months ago it was like 47gb free... then went to like 20gb free then after the windows 1903 update, it went to like 43gb free... then 40gb free... but recently went to 45gb free? Anyone know how this happens?


Im looking at amazon and it seems the samsung 970 evo ssd m.2 1tb is sold out now. But they have the 500gb available. The more i think of it... 500gb is probably more than enough right? Again 6 months ago, i had like 47gb free of 231gb free on my 2.5 inch samsung 250gb sata ssd. I used up maybe 7gb in 6 months at the most.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BN217QG/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=A2L77EE7U53NWQ&psc=1



What other legit sites besides amazon sell this samsung 970 evo ssd 1tb m.2?



Thoughts on this one?

samsung 860 evo ssd 1tb? But it seems to be sata which is slower than the one above?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07822Z77M/ref=dp_cerb_3


Or pay more for the samsung 970 evo plus 1tb m.2 ssd? Since they have this available?

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-...63HBH1J1S181&refRID=JT8EARS563HBH1J1S181&th=1

 

You're probably losing disk space with all the windows updates because windows is not deleting it's ability to roll back to the previous update. You can use disk clean up in windows to "Clean Up System Files" (click on that button in disk clean up) - that will probably give you Gigabytes of space back.

 

I just got a lenovo ideapad flex pro and have no clue what a good disk speed is heres my results any pointers would help

https://imgur.com/dTSlCjo

 

@JRE84, you're good.

It would only be better with a 1TB or larger drive.

 

ok cool thanks alot wasn't sure

 

What are you trying to accomplish with an SSD? If your a casual user who doesnt do anything in particular, go for a 660p/665p intel and save yourself money. If you do large write files at a time, SN750 if your friend and can sustain 1200 to 1500mb/s with 500gb+ files. If you want fastest for the famous q1t1, ex950 is it. 970 is the best for Overall but doesnt excel at anything in particular except support if thats want you really want.

 

660P is QLC which is just gross. SX8200 is basically a 970 in terms of performance but between it and the EX950 in price.
https://ssd.borecraft.com/SSD_Buying_Guide.pdf

Here's a really good budgeting chart.

 

With better Phison E12 controller based TLC drives like the "Inland Premium" at similar prices and sometimes lower for the 1TB (Sometimes as low as $99.99) compared to the 660P, the 660P isn't really much of a value. The 660P is much worse as the drive fills over time (I'm not talking about sustained which the 660P obviously will also be worse at once you hit the QLC), as it uses the dated Silicon Motion controller, putting aside the fact that it's using QLC NAND. No reason to pay more for an SSD with a worse controller and NAND....

 

Hey all. So I will be ordering a new 1tb m.2 ssd this week.


So when looking at all these, I feel like it basically comes down to either of these two?



Samsung 970 EVO $185

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-...hild=1&keywords=m.2+ssd&qid=1600527543&sr=8-5


WD Black SN750 $165
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M64QXMN/ref=twister_B08GFLBM1R?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1



Avoid the cheaper 1tb ssds that cost like $120 and under like the WD WD Blue 3D and Crucial right?


I will also want to clone my ssd as well... my current 2.5 inch samsung sata ssd to the new 1tb m.2 ssd.



Now from what i read online, the wd black sn750 is very good or just as good as the samsung 970 evo? But are both of them exactly the same? Because i read the samsung is a bit faster?


The last thing I want to do is pay 20 dollars less and i have issues with it with the WD Black one and I thought getting samsung is always the best even if you pay more right?

 

Right now the recently released SK Hynix P31 is probably actually the best overall TLC based PCIE 3.0 drive (The WD Black and 970 EVO are also TLC) and as a bonus even cheaper compared to those two plus better power draw characteristics as well.

https://www.amazon.com/SK-hynix-Gol...tb&qid=1600529139&sprefix=sk+hynix+p31&sr=8-3

AnandTech Review:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16012/the-sk-hynix-gold-p31-ssd-review

Compared to the WD, Samsung is better at maintaining performance/lower latency as the drive fills and the WD Black had an issue previously with going into idle causing greater power draw, not sure if that was fixed in later firmwares.

TLDR: Buy the SK Hynix!

Also try to avoid the Silicon Motion controller based drives like the XPG (Adata) SX8200, HP EX900 ones they are relatively worse compared to Samsungs or Phison E12 based drives when putting aside empty drive tests you actually look at performance/latency as the drive fills.

Also as for recommendations of putting extra OP on the SSDs, the controllers already use unused space as OP, no need to worry about that for regular use unless you’re benchmarking, lots of sequential transfers or have certain workflows/enterprise stuff in general that would actually notice the decrease in performance as the drive fills. For gaming or regular use you won’t notice much difference if any, coming from experience with numerous drives. Write Amplification would go up but the drive would likely still last you way longer than you’d probably keep it.

 

Hi. I googled the sk hynix... never heard of it. Well it seems to be around $147 total compared to around $183 for the samsung 870 evo so like $35 less. I checked the reviews and its pretty good.


Okay so if money isn't an option... I mean its not really a big deal since the samsung evo is around $185 and the WD Black is around $163 and this one is around $147... i don't want it where me paying $20 or $40 less would mean more issues later on. So based on that, would you say fine just pay a premium for the samsung 870 evo?


I would be mainly using it for online poker, web browsing, music etc.


So based on this and what you described, either go with the one you described sk hynix or the samsung 870 evo? The one you say to avoid... adata and hp ex900... yea those i saw many negative reviews of.

Why is the WD Blue so cheap though at around $115 for the 1tb one? That should be avoided as well right? I read lot of negative reviews that it went bad or its slow? Now that is kind of making me not want to get the WD Black 750 because its the same brand... do you think that is foolish?


Also the sk hynix, since you say its pretty new... wouldn't you say that is something one might want to avoid as well since samsung has a reputation of being very good?

 

It’s not some no name off brand don’t worry, Sk Hynix is one of the main NAND manufacturers along side Micron (Crucial), Samsung, Toshiba (WD controls the flash division), Intel. The likes of HP, Corsair, Sabrent, SPG (Adata) etc all buy Flash from these guys for their SSDs and are just integrators/rebranders making neither their own controller or Flash. Common controller makers are Samsung (own SSDs), Marvell, Phison, Silicon Motion and some others. Pretty sure SK Hynix is using an in-house controller on the P31.

I have yet to hear anything negative about the Sk Hynix model so far.

 

Hey, did not know that... when i heard the brand i just thought i never heard of it and it wasn't a good idea.


I looked through the reviews on amazon and only like 1-2 negative reviews on the m.2 nvme ssd from sk hynix which is good. I see tons of reviews on their 2.5 inch ssd... but i can't get that because i want the bigger battery on my laptop.


So in my situation and wanting a 1tb m.2 ssd... either pay more for the samsung 970 evo or go with the Sk Hynix for like $35 less right? Its around $183 for samsung and $147 or so for the Sk Hynix.

 

The Hynix is still better overall better and battery life too as it’s got lower power draw.

 

OP'ing is not for high 'scores' in benchmarking. It's the 'cost' of allowing today's SSD's to get them set up to deliver as much as they can, reliably, for the highest sustained-over-time storage performance possible.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...on-cache-question.834122/page-2#post-11046598

 

The average user won’t notice the difference for every day use, I already mentioned you’d take a hit in performance/endurance in my post, looks like you didn’t read past “benchmarking”...

The average user need not do stuff like 20-25% OP... And yes I’ve seen performance charts/endurance and Write Amplification at various OP levels etc long back, infact AnandTech had more in depth charts than that link you provided... so yes I am more than aware.

Again as I said before unless you have workloads you’d notice the difference in it’s not too much to worry about for the average user or gamer in the real world...

 

You lay all the eggs in hit on performance/endurance. I would at least add in 10% OP above factory reserved space if you have a tendency to fill up your ssds. Near full disks will worn out faster. Not ideal if you tend to have your hardware over several years.

And from what I have seen... People will use up all remaining ssd capacity instead for move some of it back on a old slow HDD or run to the shop and buy a bigger one

 

Wearing out faster due to WA, and I already addressed/mentioned that. I agree depends how long you will keep it but most of the good drives will last many years, 5-10% extra seems reasonable and you are right a lot of people may fill the drive rather than get something else, however 20-25% would be excessive for the average user...

 

I never said anything about the 'average' user. Read my post again for who it is meant for.

But nothing prevents average users from getting the best out of their SSD's either. Just a little OP'ing is never a sad thing, in fact, the 'built-in' OP'ing (if the SSD has any at all) is only there to protect the manufacturer from excessive warranty claims. Yeah, that's how effective it is.

 

My mistake if I mistook your intentions, it seemed you happened to ignore everything after the word benchmark and proceeded to reiterate what was already known in regards to extra OP, no one here is disagreeing on that, I was implying context also matters...

I clearly stated it depends on user type and workload, I also mentioned benchmarking as some get carried away by synthetics over real world use and make decisions like how much to OP based workloads that may not apply to them at the cost losing significant space for little to no perceptible gain for their use cases.

WD themselves for example state what I said about default OP and the average user, then proceeded to talk about benefits of extra OP, context/use case matters:
https://blog.westerndigital.com/why-overprovision-an-ssd/

“It has to be understood that almost all SSDs already contain a small amount of overprovisioning, generally around 7% above the stated capacity. This is needed for general data management and housekeeping of the drive itself. Most standard users will find this sufficient.” -WD

Now coming to your “if any at all” comment in regards to OP, practically every single consumer/enterprise SSD I have ever seen or heard of has inherent OP; around 6.8%-13% of the advertised space being reserved and in some enterprise drives even more depending on model, (in some cases as actual extra flash in some enterprise drives).

The conversion difference between gibibytes to gigabytes is used as the default non user visible OP. A 256 GB drive has 256 Gibibytes (~275 Gigabytes) of actual Flash but user space is advertised in 256 Gigabytes (same as the ~238 Gibibytes you see in Windows, that remaining, 18-19 GB is the OP). Similar with a 240 Gigabyte drive it has 256 Gibibytes of space but even more reserved OP (~13%)... and so on. On a 960 GB MyDigital BPX for example it already has 13% OP.

 

Okay so based on this either get the samsung 970 evo or the hynix then correct? Again I will be getting a 1tb one. Also someone on another forum mentioned they would be a bit careful with the
hynix m.2 nvme because only they ship it directly as oppose to the 2.5 inch one they have which amazon ships. Thoughts on that? The m.2 nvme doesn't have anywhere close to as much reviews as the 2.5 inch one but i will be getting a m.2 nvme. Thanks.

 

Inherent OP'ing and/or conversion differences mean little to the OP'ing we can apply to the SSD's ourselves.

As I stated above, OP'ing isn't a given, depending on the SSD model. But whatever OP'ing is included is there only to satisfy warranty/performance claims ('up to' speeds). This isn't good enough for me and many others that depend on reliable storage subsystem performance (sustained, over time).

Relying on the built-in OP is like relying on Walmart tires on your sports car. Unless you're simply willing to put up with an underperforming chassis and/or a few weekends of 'fun' before you burn through those tires/nand chips, not OP'ing an SSD is like painting flames on an old Nova SS to make it look fast and then believing it is.

When an O/S is installed on an SSD and programs, data and services are expected from it (such as 'cloud' hooks keeping data synced/coordinated, etc.), those 'up to' speeds get quickly lost in the normal workflows of a typically used system. Free space and 'unallocated space' are not the same things either. Neither is a common belief that SSD's don't need to be defragged too.

Doing bm's and getting 'scores' from an SSD that isn't used as a boot drive with data and programs on it won't/can't show this. But the increased snappiness of a platform is immediately apparent when extra OP'ing is performed. Especially to those users who have used the SSD for a while and then allow their SSD to be OP'd as I recommended to them.

Not everyone can appreciate or notice the extra responsiveness OP'ing can make. But they would be mistaken to ignore the reliability/dependability and longevity improvement aspects of doing so if their DATA was important to them.

 

With the bigger battery installed, will you care if the performance is higher but battery life worse? If won't care about worse battery life, then buy the Samsung 970 EVO Plus.

If you do care for battery life, buy the Hynix instead. If you go by reviews but want to spend less, then buy the Adata SXG8200 Pro instead.

The above are the most important considerations here.

 

I’d personally still get the Hynix it’s a better drive with better battery life. Otherwise take a look at a Phison E12 based drive like the Sabrent Rocket or the Inland Premium ($120) it’s a MicroCenter brand. The SM based drives are better battery wise than the E12s but relatively worse wake/latency and performance consistency wise as the drive fills which an average user would probably not notice between the three..

As for tiller, once again no one is arguing against benefits OP, just that it needs context... The average user does not need 20-30% OP, you clearly are not an average user and neither am I, however I’m not trying to extrapolate my use case on to the average computer user making them throw away large areas of space for little perceptible gain for them. Even with high WA the good drives will last many years..As for OP vs Free Space yeah they’re different but for the average user it doesn’t make much difference.

Throwing links makes no difference when I already stated I’ve read enough about OP and relation to WA/Endurance and performance, AnandTech, Intel, Samsung etc all have pretty in depth slides/articles... we don’t disagree on the technical aspects, however it’s the context that I disagree with you on and I keep saying this. The WD article was pretty much doing the same....

 

Hey. Well of course I want the battery life to be good. The thing is I mentioned this earlier. I have my laptop plugged in almost 100% of the time as I use it inside my apartment and have it connected to 2 external monitors and an external keyboard. The only reason why I want a bigger battery in my dell xps 15 9550 is because if i have a power outage... which does happen where im located from time to time... then I want to have a good amount of battery on it when using just the laptop. Note... I do have 2 dell powerbanks as a backup... so i want my laptop to have a strong battery as well in case.


But overall, yea i want the bigger battery just in general... i mean who wouldn't.


So the battery is only going to affect me in those rare times when power goes out or I use it while on battery which is rare.


For some reason, the brand name just bothers me because there isn't much talk about it. Yes i know you all say don't worry about that. But isn't one concern though most of the reviews is for the hynix 2.5 inch ssd though and not the m.2 nvme? That is a bit of the concern here since almost all those greats reviews is the 2.5 inch one.


The thing is it costing about $35 cheaper... for some reason I feel like i would regret it such as why didn't i pay the premium price for the samsung 970 evo.


Now if both of these samsung 970 evo and the hynix were exact price, would you all agree to go with the samsung then?

 

I’d still go for the Hynix if both were close in pricing, it’s a superior product overall performance and battery wise...

Will you notice a difference in real use performance wise? Probably not, but the battery life you may.

AnandTech review:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16012/the-sk-hynix-gold-p31-ssd-review/7

 

Is that review for the 2.5 inch sk hynix or the nvme though?


Also is there article that shows the power consumption for the different nvme ssds now? example samsung evo 970, wd black 750, sk hynix etc? Someone mentioned it uses 30% less power consumption than the wd750 in another forum. That seems way too much. So the samsung evo 970 uses the most power consumption? Someone else said this.


So if a laptop gets you 3 hours on battery with samsung 970 evo... it would get almost 4 hours or more with the hynix?

 

It’s the NVMe review. No you probably wont gain that much battery life because the SSD is not the only component, the battery life also depends on how power hungry the other components are as well. I think TomsHardware or TechPowerUP showed the Hynix had I think nearly 2x the sequential transfer rate/per watt efficiency as the 970 EVO. Normal use battery life gain is not going to be as drastic as you assumed in your post but will be decent/noticeable, maybe +15-20 mins on top of your normal 3 hrs is my guess.

 

@Drew1 since you've taken over a year to make up your mind on this, can you explain how you use your notebook? What workloads/workflows do you expect from it when it is plugged in and when it is on battery power when the AC is out?

Post #76 is still all that matters at this point, but if you are expecting to use your notebook on battery power in the same way as on AC power, then the Hynix makes the most sense.

If however, you want the highest performance period, with a hit of a few minutes to an hour or more on battery life (depending on what you're doing with it), then the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is the drive you want.

Question. Why are you still deciding on this a year later?

 

I have always prefered Samsung ssd's. And have always bougth the Pro drives (MLC nand). Not so much up into Hynix. I know Dell love to use this brand because of their Cheap in-prices. Same for Toshiba's ssds. And Dell don't go for high quality. Cheap in and expensive out.

How about drivers? I think they have to rely on Microsoft for this. And not so sure how good they are at push out firmware updates if this is needed. Rely on Microsoft is a bad thing in my books.

https://www.win-raid.com/t29f25-Recommended-AHCI-RAID-and-NVMe-Drivers.html

I will continue stay with what I have bought in the past (se above). Reliable, top performance, driver updates and firmware if needed. + ok warranty...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xps-17-owners-lounge.833204/page-44#post-11047232

 

Hi. Main purpose is use it for online poker which is what I do. I will use it plugged in battery and with external monitors like I do now.


I rarely would use it on battery power unplugged... it would be when i have a power outage when playing online poker and i would only use the laptop and can't use the monitors. I just will rarely use my laptop unplugged. I also rarely take it outsdie.


Why do you all keep mentioning the samsung 970 evo pro plus? I am looking at the samsung 970 evo only. Is that a big deal versus the plus?


I procrastinate a lot. But the thing was last year, I still had decent space left on my hard drive, like almost 50gb or a bit less. Now to half of that and a bit less.


But you say it could be an hour more though with the hynix versus the samsung evo 970? That would be huge.

 

Okay so maybe +15-20 mins on top of your normal 3 hrs is my guess. Well that is still something but definitely not that much. I thought it could be like maybe close to an hour more or something... if that was the case... then i would go with the hynix.


But assuming same price, you would take samsung evo 970 or hynix? For me, the price isn't that big of an issue. I just want an ssd that will last a long time and reliable. Thus a one tb one would last a long time to fill up... I don't think it would even get close to filled up so thats why im going with a one tb one regardless.

 

I would personally get the S31 (EDIT: meant P31, S31 is the SATA drive) if battery is a key consideration but otherwise either is fine just go with whichever you’re comfortable with. If you want a Samsung, the EVO Plus is priced close to the EVO the last time I checked so I’d get that as it’s a better drive in terms of sustained performance.

Also just use the default Microsoft nvme drivers don’t bother with Samsung drivers, little gain with potential for a mess, their 2.1 drivers for example would cause system lockup’s in certain conditions like Hyper-V use, latest drivers aren’t buggy but keep it simple.

Well papusan most of my Dell’s came with various Samsung drives ranging from PM951 to PM961 and one or two came with Toshiba SGX drives. I wouldn’t say they necessarily love to use Hynix, they use a mix of drives, but true the OEM Hynixes were kinda mediocre. Even Asus, Lenovo and others use them honestly ie some of the Y540s I’ve seen had the SK hynix BC501 ... Here’s one: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Gaming...nt-and-much-worse-than-the-review/m-p/4618012

The P31 is not those drives though.

 

I wouldn't be looking at the S31, the better option is the SK Hynix Gold P31 M.2 NVMe SSD instead.

See:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sk-hynix-gold-p31-m2-nvme-ssd-review

BTW, there is no Samsung 970 EVO Pro Plus, just a Samsung 970 EVO Plus.

With the bigger battery in your notebook (84Wh or 97Wh?) the computer should last about 7.5 hours before it needs to be charged. The P31 M.2 SSD should extend that by at least 40 minutes and possibly an hour.

With your off AC runtime requirements, the SK Hynix Gold P31 M.2 1TB drive is the one to buy.

 

I meant the P31 lol, confusion there with the SATA model the S31.. my apologies.

Yeah if you did change the battery, the life would also scale in regards to SSD.

 

@Drew1 Hynix Gold P31 lacks SED aka co-processor for full drive encryption.

 

What? Can anyone else confirm this? I will be 100% using bitlocker to put a pin/password for it like I do right now.

 

Can others confirm the hynix gold nvme won't be able to do encryption? I use bitlocker so this would be a big issue for me.

 

You find it easy with a google search

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/sk-hynix-gold-p31-m2-nvme-ssd-review

 

Okay to confirm... that means I won't be able to use bitlocker? Is that correct? It says 256 bit encryption but there is other types as well?


If so... then I will go with the samsung evo 970 then. I mean... I never heard of anything like how a hard drive cannot do encryption?


I mean, this is like completely something I never heard of and someone just mentioned this to me.

 

If the ssd doesn’t have hardware self-encryption, BitLocker implements software encryption (software-based encryption).

Edit. For yoo
A beginner's guide to BitLocker, Windows' built-in encryption tool Pcworld.com

As a reminder... Performance takes a hit, but data will be protected by software, not hardware.

 

Hey. Well I do have bitlocker on at the moment. So there might be issues with the sk hynix with bitlocker? Or it will have problems? Again someone said it doesn't have 256 bit encryption... so does that mean the sk hynix is useless for me then? I almost bought it yesterday and then im reading that post from someone right now.

 

Read... No hardware encryption means you have to rely on software-based encryption. Read the links I posted above.


SK hynix’s Gold P31 features S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, secure erase capability, Trim support, and can fall into multiple low power states, however, it lacks a security feature many competitors have - AES 256-bit hardware encryption. Though most students, gamers, and home office users don’t need such security, there are still many business users who require it.

 

Bitlocker is software based encryption right? I been using bitlocker for over a year... someone helped me with the instructions a while back where now i turn on laptop and then i have to type in pin every time when it starts.


But what exactly is the aes 256 bit hardware encryption exactly?

 

Do you not know how to use Google?

 

https://www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-ssd/overview-hardware-encryption has the most layman explanation I could find

Googling also turned up links like

https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/you-cant-trust-bitlocker-to-encrypt-your-ssd-on-windows-10

Using Bitlocker will no longer default to the SSD's encryption, so it might not matter if you are using it. My best guess is that on a modern CPU, Bitlocker shouldn't have a major performance impact as compared to using an SSD's encryption

 

@Drew1 Take a look at SK Hynix SSD site and their FAQ's which says it has AES-256.
https://ssd.skhynix.com/GoldP31.html
FAQs https://skhynix.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/folders/48000658600#faq_title
Maybe @tilleroftheearth can shed some light regarding various encrypted drives such as always-on SED, on-demand Drive Encryption and Microsoft e-drive used in Enterprise class SSD(SATA/U.2/M.2 NVMe client).
Then again, some drives also supports AES-256 XTS with faster ARM chips for on-the-fly encrypt/decrypt with highest level of security at the expense of drive speeds.