Most reliable SSD

[hhhd1]

Two years ago, it was easy, Samsung 830/Crucial M4/Intel where the most reliable, but now as I read reviews on amazon.com for Samsung 840 pro/evo , and Crucial m500/m550/mx100 , I can find allot of comments like 'died after X months'.

Is there any statistics about failure or return rates ?

Any SSD Brand/Model now have a near perfect reliability record on any of the newer SSDs ?


The reason I am asking:
I need to buy an SSD internationally, and that mean forfeiting my warranty, and I need an MLC SSD that is fast for heavy writing applications with low idle power consumption.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Why don't you buy from your home market? When you spend money for a new item you should always try to get the peace of mind that a warranty brings. With that said just google ssd reliability as I saw them posted recently for each line.

 

[Burpo]

http://www.computerworld.com/articl...intel-releases-its-most-reliable-pro-ssd.html

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...might-be-the-only-reliable-drive-manufacturer

"The Intel drives, in contrast, didn’t fail, despite being power-cycled over 6,500 times. Neither the Intel 320 or the newer S3500 failed to verify the data write in any circumstances.
Note: At present, only the Intel S3500 and S3700 provide this power protection capability. The Intel 540 series does not."

 

[hhhd1]

Why don't you buy from your home market? When you spend money for a new item you should always try to get the peace of mind that a warranty brings. With that said just google ssd reliability as I saw them posted recently for each line.

Buying internationally i could get half the price, so even if I got an SSD that failed, i could buy another one and still would not be paying more than if i had bought it locally, and i generally do not trust local warranty service for any brands, because having to deal with retailers.

 

[hasu]

The problem that I had with an SSD was, unlike regular spin drives, there was no warning before it failed. Even if the failure rate is only 1%, you are actually taking a chance of loosing all that data on an SSD with 1% probability. I guess no amount of backup, short of raid-1, can help you with SSD crash. On my main personal machine, I have an SSD as a boot drive and two more SSD's in raid-1 for data. You can use built-in mdadm raid in Linux or hard-drive mirroring in Professional versions of Windows. That being said, most of my hard drives are in raid-1 configuration, including a couple of 3TB NAS storage. Looks like failure rate of SSD's are far less than their spin counterparts so all you might get from raid-1 is just peace of mind.

 

[soccerballtux]

The problem that I had with an SSD was, unlike regular spin drives, there was no warning before it failed. Even if the failure rate is only 1%, you are actually taking a chance of loosing all that data on an SSD with 1% probability. I guess no amount of backup, short of raid-1, can help you with SSD crash. On my main personal machine, I have an SSD as a boot drive and two more SSD's in raid-1 for data. You can use built-in mdadm raid in Linux or hard-drive mirroring in Professional versions of Windows. That being said, most of my hard drives are in raid-1 configuration, including a couple of 3TB NAS storage. Looks like failure rate of SSD's are far less than their spin counterparts so all you might get from raid-1 is just peace of mind.

1% of the time, it breaks 100% of the time

 

[Data-Medics]

Stick with a Samsung "PRO" series. They have better memory and have held up the best in brute force wear testing compared to others.

 

[Berryracer]

indeed! Never had any Samsung SSD die on me for many years

 

[It's Not Lupus]

I haven't heard anything bad about SanDisk.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I just had a Samsung 840 pro 256 freeze up on me recently and getting them to rma it was a horrible experience as they use a 3rd party to handle it. I replaced it with an intel 520 which is quite a bit faster and intel's rma process has been better for me than the Samsung one. With that said all drives have the potential to fail. I just had a wd black 1.5tb go bad and they replaced it under warranty with no hassles. If you're worried about losing a drive then run it in raid 1 mirror.

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.computerworld.com/articl...intel-releases-its-most-reliable-pro-ssd.html

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...might-be-the-only-reliable-drive-manufacturer

"The Intel drives, in contrast, didn’t fail, despite being power-cycled over 6,500 times. Neither the Intel 320 or the newer S3500 failed to verify the data write in any circumstances.
Note: At present, only the Intel S3500 and S3700 provide this power protection capability. The Intel 540 series does not."

OP said "heavy writing scenario", so I suggest Intel 710 series enterprise SSD. Uses MLC-HET technology, good for 50-60K P/E cycles.

I was able to pick up a couple on NeweggFlash.com recently for $70 ea.

 

[Spungo]

One of the cool things about Newegg is that the reviews are surprisingly useful when taken in large clusters. One or two people might be idiots, but hundreds of people agreeing on something often means it's true.
This effect is most clearly shown when looking at processors sorted by Best Rating. What are people saying to buy? sorted CPU list. Notice how most of the highest ranked have unlocked multipliers. Proof of concept: the herd is generally correct.
Just sort the hard drives by Best Rating and buy the first one to jump out.

I will say that this only works with large numbers. A site like newegg for Canadians or Australians might not work because the countries don't have people for this to work. 10 people giving reviews is not enough. 400 people all saying a hard drive is good actually means something.

 

[coercitiv]

I replaced it with an intel 520 which is quite a bit faster

How exactly did you establish the Intel 520 to be faster than the Samsung 840 Pro?
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/529?vs=665

 

[slumbarr]

With rebate, the Intel 520 a lot more expensive!!! Go with Samsung then...

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Series-S.../dp/B006VCP9G6

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electr.../dp/B009NB8WRU

 

[radeson]

The samsung 850 pro is by far the most reliable drive. Samsung has even doubled the warranty time and write limit on the 850 pro. this means that you get a 10 year warrant and 150tb write limit whichever comes first. this says alot. Plus it is probably the fastest drive out there without going the pci express route. I just spent the last month researching them and had to break down and buy some. I just bought 4 256gb 850 pro's. The only problem Ive really ran into is you cant use the included samsung rapid mode when you put the drives in raid. But the benchmarks on the standalone drive in rapid mode blew the 4-way raid benchmarks out of the water almost 2 time over!!!. so now i have a 3-way raid and i run my OS off of the 1 samsung in rapid mode.

 

[hhhd1]

The samsung 850pro seems tempting, but is it worth 60~90% more than curical , when both seem to have negative reviews with similar content ? ....

Curcial m500 is at 90 something, samsung is at 165

 

[radeson]

i also have a crucial m100 256gb that i initially bought with this system. I actually liked it alot. I am just a speed demon and i wanted to go really fast. I am booting to desktop noticeably faster with the samsung sdd in RAPID mode through samsung magician utility thats included. But not much faster. THe crucial gets good reviews and is still reasonably priced. If you are looking for a huge boost in performance pretty much any ssd will be a huge difference compared to an hdd. If you dont want to spend that much money then I would go with crucial. Ive read some really bad reviews about Intel's latest stuff also. Crucial is the best bang for your buck. Samsung has the best warranties and they have 150tb write limit on the 850 pro with a ten year warranty. That is killing all the competition out there. considering crucial only comes with a 3 year warranty and i think a 70tb write limit. So samsung for reliability and crucial for bang for buck....

 

[radeson]

And BTW pretty much all the reviews for Samsung 850 pro ssd drives that I've seen have been 5 star. Actually i cant think of any websites average review on the Samsung 850 that has been less than 5 stars. This is in response to Spungo's reply

 

[tortillasoup]

Proof of concept: the herd is generally correct.
Just sort the hard drives by Best Rating and buy the first one to jump out.

I will say that this only works with large numbers. A site like newegg for Canadians or Australians might not work because the countries don't have people for this to work. 10 people giving reviews is not enough. 400 people all saying a hard drive is good actually means something.

Well it's a herd of above average intelligence people. Drop the herd's IQ by one standard deviation and I wouldn't trust any of them.

 

[corkyg]

I suppose the most reliable is the one you have that has never failed.; I have had 2 Samsung 830s, 256GB for over a couple of years, and they just keep on keeping on. I recently added a 500GB 850EVO, and it seems OK after 3 months. Speed is not really relevant to the question.