SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

All right, thanks for clearing things up guys. I appreciate that.

I gotta say all these values are pretty confusing (4K, random, sequential, queue depth..), when running benchmarks I don't really know which value corresponds to my usage (i.e copying large amount of all sorts of files, pictures, videos, blender projects, music, soundbanks...), would that be 4K random ?

Going to test with the windows ISO when it finishes downloading, and going to look those thermal pads up !
Thanks again.

 

You're welcome

Here is some info so you can try understand the basic (Storage Devices FAQ) https://www.userbenchmark.com/Faq/What-is-4K-random-read-speed/28

A lot info on the web about the topic.

 

Sweet, thanks !

Just tested copying the Win10 ISO from a USB stick to the 970 Evo Plus, the speed was 130Mb/s. I will need to test between two SSDs as well, maybe the write speed will be slightly better.
I've also applied a very cheap thermal pad (that I had stored as part of an old ssd heatsink) on the Phoenix controller and temps are already much better (the max was 86°C versus 99°C without the pad), so I'll definitely buy the better Gelid Ultimate one : https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B0824ZMJLY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=A3OVN94OLIX1JJ&psc=1

Thanks for the advice on everything, take care guys.

EDIT :

I've seen that NAND likes to run hot, so apparently it wouldn't be good to put thermal pads on it.
If I only apply one little square pad to the controller though, do you think I should use a complete heat sink on top of that anyway ? Could I short my SSD with the metal heatsink touching the bare PCB ?

 

thats the idea, they will advertise the best number to make sales. though not completely all lies, the high sequential numbers do get used when needed.

 

Samsung PM9A1 2TB SSD which came with my XPS 13:




@tilleroftheearth @Papusan

 

Those two NAS boxes shouldn't be of same brand Sometimes a backup on the cheaper DWD's can be more appealing, LOOL

Western Digital MyCloud And MyBook Users Slammed By New Alarming 0-Day Security Flaw
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ts-and-incidents.816109/page-45#post-11104839

 

I have a simple question about SSDs lifespan:
As far as I know, SSDs wear out when you WRITE on them. However, if I always mount the SDD logical volume, as read-only, theoretically it will last forever, since read bytes don't count against TBW. I am right or there's more to it?

 

Nothing will last forever. If we look at MTBF, depending on the drive, we would be talking about a million hours, i.e. around 114 years

 

You would assume wrong.

SSDs wear out reading or writing.

Nothing lasts forever. Use them while you can, buy new (and have backups) as needed.

 

If I recall while drives are in use, well just being on being enough, the controller will monitor and refresh cells / rewrite the data as needed time to time.

Now if you just kept the drive in storage unpowered. Well depending on the ambient temps/time combination you could either retain data for days or a few years. Additionally on top of that SLC would fare the best and QLC the worst. So in this case life is still preserved from non use but data would be corrupted / lost.

There’s actually great white paper or article with nice charts I found a few years back on that online. I’ll try to post it if I can find it again, a bit more in depth than the one I linked a few pages back.

TLDR as the previous poster stated more simply, answer is no.

 

Powered off SSDs are supposed to keep their data safe for up to one year (once upon a time).

I wouldn't trust any current/consumer SSD to actually do so with my real data.

 

I expect @Paloseco want to use the ssd. Less harsh usage will help on the wear and tear, and this will reduce the chance for failure within the first 5 years. No need to hide the ssd in a drawer. If it fail it will fail (none know when it will hit you). Backup, again backup is the only solution to keep his data safe. The question if he want to use the ssd or put it in the drawer to extend the lifesspan. If you put it in the drawer this ssd will be as a backup for other ssd's/hdd he use.

 

What about Samsung SSD QLC?

 

I made the second point to specifically point out that even if you hid it away you’d be risking your data as well while preserving the drive . Just to cover another hypothetical that sometimes can come up.

Palesco same principles apply regardless of vendor. Depending on NAND manufacturer some may be better than others.

 

Sabrent Rocket Q4 2 TB Review techpowerup.com

 

Sorry if this question is not about SSDs, but don't know if there's specific thread for spinning drives.

1. What 8TB spinning/mechanical drive do you recommend for backup?
2. Maybe 3.5" rather than 2.5"?
3. Just the standalone disk with third-party USB to SATA interface or housing, or purchase the drive with its own branded enclosure, like "Western Digital My Book 8TB" or "WD 8TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive"? Of course I don't want anything from WD because had failures on the past, just asking.
4. Does 3.5" spinning drive require its own power supply, or can work off the USB 3.0 port directly?

 

there are probably no 2.5" past 5TB, seagate being the largest for 2.5" and those are 15mm height.

 

1. 3.5" WD Red NAS HDD is good (I'm happy with those).
2. 3.5" for backup.
3. Avoid everything that smells WD external backup solutions.
4. Yep. You can either buy a real NAS DiskStation from QNAP/Synology or docking box with external power for the HDD.

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More disgusting....
Patriot Admits to Swapping Parts on VPN100 SSD, Performance Unaffected tomshardware.com

One Redditor recently purchased one of Patriot's Viper VPN100 2TB SSDs, and much to his surprise, the drive arrived with Phison's E12S SSD controller and 512MB of DRAM. This certainly raised the alarm since the SSD not only utilizes a different SSD controller but also came with 1/4 the DRAM. For comparison, the original Viper VPN100 2TB used the Phison E12 SSD controller and had 2GB of DRAM.

In its statement, Patriot claims that the new E12S setup features the same endurance limits as the original E12 configuration "sans Chia mining." However, that doesn't seem to be the case. The original specification sheet had the VPN100 2TB at 3,115 TBW, while the new specification sheet reveals an endurance level of 900 TBW. We're following up for clarification.

 

What about Toshiba X300/P300/N300? The P300 use SMR instead of CMR.
Are there 8TB drives with PMR? The X300 has CMR.

So the X300 and N300 8TB have both CMR. Which one do you recommend? Any noticeable difference in read/write speeds?

Update: here found 2 fantastic review about both:

• Toshiba N300 8TB NAS Hard Drive Review
• Toshiba X300 8TB Desktop PC Hard Drive Review

The biggest difference between the two are the read/write speeds between up to 32KB file size, where the X300 is much faster. Above that they perform almost exactly the same. The N300 on the other hand comes ready to be operating 24/7 and has MTTF of 10^6 hours while the X300 has 6*10^5 (40% less). The N300 has operating power of 9W while the X300 is 10W, which in a year make 78.84 kWh and 87.6 kWh respectively.

Those are the Toshiba documents in pdf:

• Toshiba X300 Performance Internal Hard Drive
  
• Toshiba N300 NAS Internal Hard Drive

 

For backup? None. Use an online service.

 

HDs give you 240 MB/s read/write speeds. I don't have SUCH speedy internet connection, specially if you also only on cellular with data caps. Yes, you can go to a cafeteria to use WiFi and such but hey, for most people it's not that a big of a deal.

 

Just be careful with WD. They have instances where certain 7,200 RPM RED drives are classified/labeled as 5400 RPM, so some of those would give the noise and power draw of a 7200 RPM drive but performance of a 5400 RPM, so essentially worst of both worlds. When they got called out by a few sites WD claimed the labeling was to represent “performance class”.. Quite an annoyance for anyone that wanted a low noise/power draw drive for a NAS.

And no I’m not talking about the SMR/CMR mess this is aside from that.

 

Western Digital and Seagate are the worse. Had several of them fail on me. Purchase Toshiba only.

 

Read reviews as well failure rates for the different 3.5" HDDs.

Here is some info from WD https://www.extremetech.com/computi...-comes-clean-shares-which-hard-drives-use-smr

https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

Yep, up to the different people if they prefer trust on all others than themself, and let them take care of all your history. But be sure you won't be banned away from your backups.... And be sure you know what your storage you want to backup in the sky contain.

Because in case of doubt, a nice photo of your bathing children will block the Microsoft account - and that for a lifetime - practically a kick and you will fly into the digital Orkus and no longer exist.

Microsoft account lockouts and the OneDrive 'nude photos'
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...nd-announcements.826887/page-88#post-11086417

Nothing is 100% safe... Microsoft has backdoored its disk encryption. But it's nice to see that you have so big trust in all others

The web is flooded with similar info/warnings like this... https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/why-you-shouldnt-store-data-on-the-cloud/

https://solutionsreview.com/cloud-platforms/7-cloud-storage-security-risks-you-need-to-know-about/

In short... I do not want give away my home keys to strangers. Microsoft or other Cloud vendors doesn't matter.

But thats me.

 

Having a single HDD for backups is dumb, it does not protect the integrity of your data long term.
RAID system also kind of fail on this regard, only ZFS/BTFRS can protect data on the long term.
But even these systems aren't a good backup strategy, follow a 3-2-1 strategy and just find an online system that is secure and reliable and backup to there.

Backblaze is quite good.
You can also backup to your own Amazon S3 bucket if you have some technical skills.

 

Hey, don't spread lies on the internet. It's not certain that BitLocker has a backdoor unlock key (also know as master unlock key). What Windows does is upload your recovery key to your cloud account, which you can remove at any moment (at least for now). And if you are worried that they still keep a copy after deleting it, reinstall Windows offline or decrypt and recrypt offline with local account.
What you are implying with disk encryption backdoor is that they have a security flaw where they can decrypt anybody's drive on demand even if the computer has never been connected to the internet. This is not true, or at least it's not publicly confirmed. If somebody has information otherwise, PLEASE share.

 

Re-read the posts/links.

Why you think Microsoft is any different than etc Apple or other big companies? Once they have the key in their hands you are screwed. Pretty sure many put all their trust into let others have or save the key for their privacy.

And yeah, I have already posted that you can remove your recovery key to your cloud account in some older posts. But the average Joe don't know this/some will even burrie their head in the sand as the ostrich.


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Adata pulls Gammix S70 (Blade) firmware update after SSDs get bricked
By Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 08/10/2021 08:04 PM |

Adata recently updated the firmware on its XPG Gammix S70 SSDs. This patch should improve speed on disks that are over 50% full. While this appears to be true, version 3.2.9.1 raises a massive concern.

Read more

 

https://kbench.com/?q=node/223300

2tb p31 teased by Sk Hynix

e: its now listed on Amazon

 

Unsavory Flash Swap: Re-Testing Crucial’s P2 SSD After QLC Downgrade tomshardware.com

Crucial’s P2 now ships with QLC flash, making it a poor performer and an even worse value.


CRUCIAL P2 SSDSwitching to QLC-NAND massively reduces performance in practice

In the meantime, Crucial has switched from TLC to QLC NAND memory for the P2 SSD series. Without labeling, the performance drops significantly.

 

SSDs Continue to Outsell HDDs, Samsung Remains Top in Manufacturing & Sales

SSDs continue to dominate sales in the second quarter of 2021, showing signs of the end of an era of HDDs. In fact, the SSD industry shows an increase in shipping of the drives, from over 99.4 million units in 2021's first quarter, to currently 99.6 units.

 

WD BLUE SN550 #UPDATE#Notes on new versions with lower TLC write rates

There are indications of a new variant of the WD Blue SN550 SSD, whose write performance is significantly lower outside of SLC mode.


Yes, Samsung Is Swapping SSD Parts Too tomshardware.com | 26. Aug 2021

Component swap done right

 

Would still have preferred if they called it a 975 evo plus or something, but generally this should be an upgrade for most users

 

Anyone recommend a good 2280 sized SSD that's power efficient? Im getting a new laptop and I'll be upgrading the factory drive to at least 1TB but I don't want a battery guzzler.

 

Answering my own question. It seems the Hynix P31 is the way to go. The laptop Im looking at is a Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 6 with PCIe 4.0 and I'm leaning towards a Gen 3 SSD (Hynix P31). Wondering if Im being dumb here... help!

 

P31 is good performing yet power efficient drive and I don't think the "4K random read" performance is all that far from some of the newer 4.0 drives, you probably won't notice a difference in daliy use if at all, for things such as boot up speed, loading apps etc. So nothing wrong at all unless you really need the PCIE 4.0 bandwidth for some sequential dependent workload, even then sustaining speeds for large transfers would still be a problem due to heat. For those who really need those high sequential speeds, I feel the 4.0 drives make more sense on much bulkier laptops and desktops where you can actually have better cooling on the drives to better avail of the performance.

 

Beware! Chia Coin Miners Selling Used SSDs & HDDs As Brand New on Online Marketplaces As Coin Crashes

If you happen to stumble upon an SSD or HDD listed well below its price point on an online market place, then it's wise to double-check as Chia miners are offloading their hardware (mainly HDD and SSDs) at a loss as the coin continues to plummet in terms of its value.

Chia Coin's Plummeting Value Prompts Miners To Sell Used HDD and SSDs As Brand New On Online Marketplaces
As reported by VNExpress International, Crypto miners who had invested in Chia Coin have started to sell their hardware at losses and switch over to other crypto opportunities as the value of XCH or Chia Coin continues to fall.

 

Used storage devices make as much sense as used contraceptives. (To buy or to sell).

Do the right thing; source from a local reputable seller in your area and stay safe out there!

 

WD_BLACK SN 750 SE NVMe 1TB SSD Gives You a Free Copy of Battlefield 2042 [Costs $159.99] wccftech.com | Today Sept 27, 2021

If you want to give your PC a significant performance boost while also getting a free game code, then you have come to the right place. The WD_BLACK SN 750 SE 1TB SSD costs $159.99 on Amazon, and while that may appear expensive for most, you did not hear the entire story. With the purchase, you get a Battlefield 2042 game code, which you can activate when it officially releases, which is November 19 this year.

 

FAILURE RATES - Better statistics comparing HDD and SSD computerbase.de | Oct 4, 2021

The cloud provider Backblaze, known for its failure statistics for hard drives, has drawn a new and better comparison with SSDs.



In the case of the SSDs, there were 17 failures, which corresponds to an AFR of 1.05 percent. In the case of HDDs, 25 defects mean an AFR of 1.38 percent. The SSDs are still the clear leader in terms of failure rate, but the gap is no longer as great as in the previous comparison of old HDDs with newer SSDs.

 

Anyone that uses (no, uses), SSD's knows this fact. Trust no one, and nothing (with your data).

Still shaking my head at people that are stunned when their SSD's go belly up. And the SSD was their reason to not need to have a backup (at all). Sad.

 

Got a Western Digital My Cloud device? askwoody.com |Oct 15, 2021

Make sure that you know if you are supported or not – if you still plan to use these devices make sure they are NOT set to have remote/Internet access and are only accessible internal to your home network.

Support for your My Cloud device is changing
Western Digital continuously evaluates and improves our hardware, software, and services as security standards evolve. As a result, we’ve determined that it’s necessary to end support for prior generations of My Cloud OS, including My Cloud OS 3. You should act now to protect your content.

On April 15, 2022, support for prior generations of My Cloud OS, including My Cloud OS 3, will end. Your device isn’t compatible with critical security updates that are only available for My Cloud OS 5-compatible devices. As a result, you’ll only be able to access it locally. After April 15, 2022, your device will no longer receive remote access, security updates, or technical support. To help protect your content, we recommend that you back up your device, disconnect it from the internet, and protect it with a strong, unique password. Check out our recent My Cloud updates to learn more.

Thank you for being a long-time Western Digital customer. We understand that your content is important to you, and we appreciate that you trust us to help you preserve it. To show our appreciation, we’re sending you a 20% discount coupon in January 2022 that you can use toward an eligible device. Keep your eye out for another email from us with information about that discount.

Sincerely,
My Cloud Team

 

Exactly what the thinner and thinner laptop design need. A new major heat source.

Phison Talks Next-Gen PCIe Gen 5, Gen 6 & Gen 7 SSDs – Active Cooling Solutions, L4 Cache, New Interfaces, Up To 14W Gen 5 & 28W Gen 6 TDPs

As for thermals and power consumption, Phison states that they advise Gen 4 SSD makers to have a heatsink but for Gen 5, it is a must. There's also a likelihood that we might even see active fan-based cooling solutions for next-gen SSDs and that's due to the higher power requirements that result in more heat output. The Gen 5 SSDs are going to average in at around 14W TDP while Gen 6 SSDs are going to average in around 28W TDPs. Furthermore, it is reported that managing heat is a major challenge moving forward.

 

Your Next SSD Might Be Slower (Thanks to QLC Flash) HTG.COM

QLC Flash Is The Problem
Here’s the issue. Making SSDs is expensive, and few people want to pay $200 for a 512 GB SSD when you can get “2000 GB” mechanical hard drives for less than $50. Bigger capacities sell.

SSD manufacturers are increasing storage capacities while keeping costs down—but this is bad for performance and endurance. Large SSDs may be getting cheaper, but there’s a tradeoff for each leap in SSD technology. We’re currently seeing the rise of Quad Level Cell (QLC) SSDs, which can store 4 bits of information per memory cell. QLC hasn’t replaced standard SSDs completely, but a few drives using it have made their way to the market, and they’ve got problems.

Specifically, SSD manufacturers have to find a way to fit more space into the same sized NAND flash chips (the actual data-storing part of the SSD). Traditionally, this was done with a process node shrink, making the transistors inside the flash smaller. But as Moore’s Law slows down, you’ve got to get more creative.

 

Western Digital warns customers to update their My Cloud devices bleepingcomputer.com | Dec 19, 2021

Western Digital is urging customers to update their WD My Cloud devices to the latest available firmware to keep receiving security updates on My Cloud OS firmware reaching the end of support.

 

Intel Sells SSD Business And Dalian Fab To SK Hynix, Here's What Will Happen Next hothardware.com Dec 30, 2021

A deal that has been over a year in the making between Intel and SK Hynix has been consummated, at least for the initial portion. That being the first closing of the sale of Intel's NAND flash memory and solid state drive (SSD) business to SK Hynix for $7 billion, the companies announced....

 

New Malware Uses SSD Over-Provisioning to Bypass Security Measures
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ts-and-incidents.816109/page-48#post-11135057

Summary:
Thankfully, these attacks were created by researchers and were not discovered by an actual attack. However, an attack like this could very well happen, so hopefully, SSD manufacturers will start patching these security vulnerabilities quickly before someone gets a chance to exploit them.

 

Damn one of my old drives doesn't even support FW update i.e 850 Evo M.2

 

You are sure? Samsung Magician support Samsung SSD 850 EVO (2.5”, mSATA, M.2). But I expect there is 100 1000 times more chance you'll get infected other ways. Regarding these new security vulnerabilities... Not much to lose sleep of

 

850 EVO M.2 doesn't have FW upgrade feature and needs new drive batches from Samsung factory. Crucial on the other hand uses same FW across 2.5/M.2/mSATA.

 

Qnap: "Keep your NAS device away from the Internet to avoid ransomware" sweclockers.com

Having network storage exposed to the internet involves a risk of attack. Qnap is now raising a warning finger and urging all customers to review their NAS configuration...