Most reliable SSD released in the last 5 years?

[fleshconsumed]

Crucial MX200 is such an SSD. A fair price, fair performance but decent protections: RAID5 bitcorrection + power-safe capacitors enough to prevent interrupting a concurrent write operation. Most consumer grade SSDs do not have such protections and may be decently reliable if they have stable firmware, but continue to bear a design flaw by not being protected against known risks, just because you consumers don't know shit about this stuff and continue to buy inferior crap to save a few dollars. You betray your own interests by doing so.

Pretty sure Crucial does not have power loss protection.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9258/crucial-mx200-250gb-500gb-1tb-ssd-review

I think Intel drives are the only ones that do.

 

[CiPHER]

I am pretty sure they do. Crucial M500, M550, M600, MX100 and MX200 have power-safe capacitors. The Crucial BX100 with Silicon Motion controller does not have power-safe capacitors.

Intel 320 has enough capacitors to protect the 192KiB internal SRAM buffercache - the DRAM chip is not used for buffercache but only to cache the mapping tables. The Intel S3500 and S3700 have equivalent protection as the Crucials: not enough to protect the entire DRAM buffercache but enough to protect the mapping tables. Samsung does not use capacitors but instead relies on a software protection: journalled mapping tables. This presents a risk when Samsung SSDs are used for complex storage such as RAID arrays and ZFS setups, but work very well when used as simple storage such as a desktop drive which they are typically used for.

Anand doesn't understand power-loss protection. They only recently came to the conclusion that the point of power-safe capacitors was not to protect recent writes in the DRAM chip from being lost, but to protect the mapping tables which are crucial to prevent corruption on an SSD.

This is only one of many errors in the articles on this site and of many others. Remember when Anand wrote Sandforce reviews and used unpatched IOmeter? They did not even know about the deduplication feature and thus their reviews did not tally at all with real-life performance.

I would like to explain it to you and others. But only if you want to.

 

[Elixer]

I am pretty sure they do. Crucial M500, M550, M600, MX100 and MX200 have power-safe capacitors. The Crucial BX100 with Silicon Motion controller does not have power-safe capacitors.
...

Anand doesn't understand power-loss protection. They only recently came to the conclusion that the point of power-safe capacitors was not to protect recent writes in the DRAM chip from being lost, but to protect the mapping tables which are crucial to prevent corruption on an SSD.

This is only one of many errors in the articles on this site and of many others. Remember when Anand wrote Sandforce reviews and used unpatched IOmeter? They did not even know about the deduplication feature and thus their reviews did not tally at all with real-life performance.

I would like to explain it to you and others. But only if you want to.

This was covered in this thread, http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2401856 where we talk about power-loss protection.
I think the sandforce deduplication feature was also discussed, but, I don't recall the thread at this time.

If you have new info.. sure, post it.

 

[R0H1T]

Pretty sure Crucial does not have power loss protection.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9258/crucial-mx200-250gb-500gb-1tb-ssd-review

I think Intel drives are the only ones that do.

Nope, only Intel's enterprise drive have that as a feature, like other business class drives from Sandisk, Samsung et al.

 

[CiPHER]

This was covered in this thread, http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2401856 where we talk about power-loss protection.
I think the sandforce deduplication feature was also discussed, but, I don't recall the thread at this time.

If you have new info.. sure, post it.

Thanks, i will have a look at it this evening.

Nope, only Intel's enterprise drive have that as a feature, like other business class drives from Sandisk, Samsung et al.

Why are you guys so ill informed? If you use the ark, then why not check the Intel 320 as well, since this is a consumer-grade SSD and not an enterprise-grade SSD.

http://ark.intel.com/products/56563/Intel-SSD-320-Series-120GB-2_5in-SATA-3Gbs-25nm-MLC

Besides, the yellow-coloured capacitors can clearly be seen on pictures of its internals.

This is one of the most important aspects SSDs actually differ among each other - besides the price. The performance aspects are pretty much the same as they are inherent to NAND. But on aspects of data protection and price there is variation. Why not focus on these areas? It would make much more sense to me. Especially those who post on techfora such as these.

 

[R0H1T]

Thanks, i will have a look at it this evening.


Why are you guys so ill informed? If you use the ark, then why not check the Intel 320 as well, since this is a consumer-grade SSD and not an enterprise-grade SSD.

http://ark.intel.com/products/56563/Intel-SSD-320-Series-120GB-2_5in-SATA-3Gbs-25nm-MLC

Besides, the yellow-coloured capacitors can clearly be seen on pictures of its internals.

This is one of the most important aspects SSDs actually differ among each other - besides the price. The performance aspects are pretty much the same as they are inherent to NAND. But on aspects of data protection and price there is variation. Why not focus on these areas? It would make much more sense to me. Especially those who post on techfora such as these.

Really how about you tell us what End-to-End Data Protection stands for & it's utility in real world conditions, not to mention that the 320 is EOL & a 3Gbps (previous gen) SATA II drive

 

[R0H1T]

Just to add, the OP's requirement seems (at least) a little odd to me; slow SSD, no warranty & nothing to say what he'll use it for.
Yeah, unless I'm in real need of an SSD, with a very tight budget, I fail to see what he'd do with that since all modern SSD's are pretty reliable IMO.

 

[John Connor]

I have a 60 GB G.Skill Sniper SSD in this laptop and it was bought on ebay. It's been at 100% health since about four years ago. Now just about two months ago it's 98% health, but still ticking. I'm going to buy a new SSD soon though. Point is no matter what brand you get some can be a lemon and some aren't. I even bought my first 120 GB Sandforce based Adata SSD about four years ago and it's still ticking. I even had it in XP Pro 64! That had no TRIM command capability.


http://imgur.com/gVHDDZ6

 

[CiPHER]

Really how about you tell us what End-to-End Data Protection stands for & it's utility in real world conditions, not to mention that the 320 is EOL & a 3Gbps (previous gen) SATA II drive

What about End-to-End Data Protection? Just the SSD alone cannot provide this; it means the entire chain from provider to consumer is protected - usually by ECC or Parity protection.

Whether the Intel 320 is not produced any longer or whether it is a SATA/300 drive, is not relevant. The topic is about the most reliable SSD released in the last 5 years - not the fastest or most recent. The Intel 320 fits this requirement the best of all consumer-grade SSDs i am fairly sure.

Not to mention the Intel 320 can still be bought at some places, just because it has such a proven track record it is still a very good choice for many tasks. The latency is very low because this SSD has SRAM buffercache instead of DRAM buffercache which most modern SSDs use. But its sequential write performance is particularly low, even for a SATA/300 SSD.

But maybe as you know, SSDs feel so fast not because their sequential speeds are 2 to 3 times as fast as HDDs, but because their random read performance is 100 to 1000 times higher than HDDs. The irony is the lowest number of 20MB/s blocking random read performance is the prime reason SSDs feel so snappy compared to harddrives. The highest numbers are not all that important, especially not the write performance - at least not for typical workloads SSDs are used for. Benchmarks distort this because they throw a shitload of writes that does not tally with real-life scenario's. Who writes 1GB/s to his SSDs regularly? That is crazy.

 

[Cerb]

Really how about you tell us what End-to-End Data Protection stands for & it's utility in real world conditions, not to mention that the 320 is EOL & a 3Gbps (previous gen) SATA II drive

Intel 730, anyone? Same protection as its server-class brothers, it has.

In any case, protection beyond what is offered by SLC-mode tricks and Micron's at-rest protection are going to be lipstick on a pig for desktop or mobile.

My answer for the OP: a client-side-encrypted cloud backup setup, plus a local backup drive (of a different make and model). IE, you're asking to get burned by trusting a single drive of any kind from any maker.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Intel 730, anyone? Same protection as its server-class brothers, it has.

I had thought that I had read somewhere, that the review units sent to sites when the 730 was introduced, had power-backup capacitors, but that the mass-production version now being sold, lacks them.

http://www.servethehome.com/intel-730-480gb-ssd-power-capacitors-present-retail/

http://techreport.com/review/26086/intel-730-series-solid-state-drive-reviewed

 

[R0H1T]

Intel 730, anyone? Same protection as its server-class brothers, it has.

In any case, protection beyond what is offered by SLC-mode tricks and Micron's at-rest protection are going to be lipstick on a pig for desktop or mobile.

My answer for the OP: a client-side-encrypted cloud backup setup, plus a local backup drive (of a different make and model). IE, you're asking to get burned by trusting a single drive of any kind from any maker.

Basically this, as is evidenced on the drive's ark page ~

I had thought that I had read somewhere, that the review units sent to sites when the 730 was introduced, had power-backup capacitors, but that the mass-production version now being sold, lacks them.

Also from the link VirtualLarry posted we have ~

As noted by an earlier poster in this thread, Intel does not claim full power-loss protection as a feature for this drive in any of their marketing materials or support documents.

When I queried Intel on the matter, the reply I received stated, “As per our website, Power Loss Data Protection has not been implemented for this SSD family.”

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...iscussion-thread-240gb-480gb.4235/#post-35869

As for the OP, like you & others have said most high(er) end consumer SSD's are solidly reliable, if there's documented evidence to suggest that a given model is more reliable than any other then by all means anyone can post it here. Thus, in the meantime I'd say the likes of Sandisk Extreme series, Samsung's Pro models, Intel 730 et al are good candidates for whatever the OP is looking for.

 

[StinkyPinky]

IMO Intel.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Intels G1, followed by G2, followed by G3. These have proven to be extremely reliable. Micron/Crucial series have also proven quite reliable.

I still have an original X25-M G1 80GB with 12.17TB written and 51616 power on hours. 56% wearout indicator and 99% reserved space available. And I expect it could easily last twice as long and more. But size and economics is working against it. In ~November it will be retired in favour of a slimmer younger model with 500GB Packed in an M.2 design.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

I like Plextor M5 Pro ( Bought two years ago), though I 'm sure other Crucial, Samsung are fine as well.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

my 5 years old intel x25m g2 80 gig has outlasted 3 systems and is now in a notebook that hibernates several times a day.

97% life left.

 

[Cerb]

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/storage-news/rumor-control-intel-730-data-loss-protection/

 

[steve wilson]

I have a Crucial one for 4 years and it worked fine. Just got my second drive which is a sandisk, so can't comment on that yet. So another vote for Crucial.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Intels G1, followed by G2, followed by G3. These have proven to be extremely reliable. Micron/Crucial series have also proven quite reliable.

I still have an original X25-M G1 80GB with 12.17TB written and 51616 power on hours. 56% wearout indicator and 99% reserved space available. And I expect it could easily last twice as long and more. But size and economics is working against it. In ~November it will be retired in favour of a slimmer younger model with 500GB Packed in an M.2 design.

my 5 years old intel x25m g2 80 gig has outlasted 3 systems and is now in a notebook that hibernates several times a day.

97% life left.

I've got a few X25-M G2 80GB drives, and I bought a couple of 160GB models off of Newegg (edit: Refurb), along with some 710 SSDs (enterprise version of the 320 series) off of NeweggFlash. I expect, that they will last far longer than I need them to. I hate to junk them, they work so well. Performance-wise, the 80GB G2 on SATA2 isn't noticeably different than the 240GB Crucial M500 drive on SATA6G that holds Win7 64-bit.

 

[yacoub]

My Samsung 840 EVO and 850 EVOs have all been rock solid. I've bought and installed around 10 of them and zero issues over years of use. My Intel SSDs have also been rock solid, if slower than the more modern Samsungs.

 

[JS17]

My 256GB Samsung 830 has been working great for a few years now (showing 100% health still, 11TB of writes). Also have an older Intel X25-M G2 80GB drive that is still working great, I'd still be using it if it's capacity was larger.

 

[hhhd1]

Thanks for all the replies.

I didn't mention my 'use case' of the ssd in the 1st post because it is not important.

For the average user, for average usage:

1. any MLC drive have enough endurance.
2. and almost all SSDs released in the last 5 years are fairly fast, and all are significantly faster than HDDs, and the difference in real world is negligible.

 

[tweakboy]

Sammy all the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Gronnie]

Lol what a lame thread if you were just wanting to come in later and try to look smart.

 

[hhhd1]

Lol what a lame thread if you were just wanting to come in later and try to look smart.

Not trying to be smart.

I am just saying what others have said in this thread, which is that the use case is irrelevant to my question, since some posts have asked for my use case.