Which SSD to buy?

[stratman]

there is a Sandisk SSD utility availabe - Sandisk Dashboard

Nice utility. I still would like to see how many Terabytes written, but Sandisk has the next best thing as long as it works.

"The Life Remaining percentage represents the remaining writes the selected drive can perform in its lifetime."

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The German computer magazine c't did some SSD heavy load/lifetime testing over several months some time ago, this test overall showed that drives of the major companies - SanDisk, Samsung, I think Toshiba at the time of that test - performed very well and exceeded the lifetime rating by 50-100%, some products of other companies which don't do flash/controller chip design, production etc inhouse - performed worse. But the problem is that such results are just a snapshot at the time of testing which you cannot generalize so much , SSD's a year later can be of a different design, different flash and controller chips and may perform different.
But at least Samsung and SanDisk give you a health indicator for their SSD's which I'm missing at all for flash SD cards. There must be a reason that SanDisk is offering a separate line of microSD cards 'High Endurance' for dashboard cameras and alike with a higher write load than cards for regular video/cameras and camcorders.

 

[PeterBJ]

I found the c't magazine online, but I couldn't find the test. Is this test freely available online or only for subscribers? Or maybe only in a paper magazine? A link please if reading this test is free.

 

[The Hat]

Dude, this is exactly a place where people love to test, compare, and improve on things.

Having these fancy SSD drives are all very fine but if your computer doesn’t match it for speed then you’re better off with a normal high spin hard drive, I’ll post the specs for my son’s home computer later, he calls it his “Black Ferrari”..

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

most of the c't articles are behind a paywall, and they publish quite a lot of articles about SSD's, new models, tests, techology etc so it is difficult to find. But I think I found an entry point - here at an arcticle in volume 10/17 which refers to other test reviews in 3/17 and 1/17. That Implies that they started their testing months earlier, almost 3 years ago on drives available at that time. We all may have such hardware still in use but technology has changed since then - 32/48/64 layers, this and that cell structure, other controller chips etc. The essence from those tests just indicates that the major companies are pretty conservative with their lifetime specs and the user can feel pretty safe. A tool like the SanDisk dashboard is helpful for assurance.

https://www.heise.de/select/ct/2017/10/1494595173481151

There is another aspect with SSD's, the long term data retention period - about no data is available about this parameter, just this old article

https://www.heise.de/ct/hotline/SSD-als-Backup-Datenarchiv-2056534.html

 

[PeterBJ]

Having these fancy SSD drives are all very fine but if your computer doesn’t match it for speed then you’re better off with a normal high spin hard drive, I’ll post the specs for my son’s home computer later, he calls it his “Black Ferrari”..

I had success with installing a SSD in a 2010 laptop with Core i3 CPU @ 2 x 2.13 GHz and 4 GB RAM (3.43 GB useable with 32 bit OS). It didn't become a "Ferrari" but it was like replacing the engine/motor in a family saloon with a larger and turbo charged one . And it looks like @palombian had a similar experience.

But of course the faster the other components in your computer are, the greater improvement you get by changing the HDD to an SSD.

 

[The Hat]

OK, I have got all the info on my sons computer, O’ and I might warn the skin flints not to read this.. It’s not for the faint hearted..

CPU:

Intel Core i9 Extreme 7980XE @ 2.6 GHz (18 cores, 36 threads); Mega Tasking enabled

CPU Cooling:

Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro RGB 360mm Liquid Cooler

RAM:

64GB Corsair Dominator Platinum PC4-21300 Quad Channel DDR4 at CAS 15-15-15-36-1T + 64 GB Intel Optane M.2 Memory Accelerator (64 GB + 64 GB)

Motherboard:

Asus Rampage VI Apex X299

Case:

Corsair Obsidian 750D Windowed Airflow Edition

Graphics:

2x gold anodised Nvidia Titan RTX “T-Rex” (NVLink Enabled) @ 1965 Mhz, 48 GB VRAM , with 6x DisplayPort 1.4 , 2x HDMI 2.0

PSU:

Corsair AX1600i Titanium Plus PSU

OS Disk:

PCI Express x4 Corsair Neutron NX500 800 GB SSD

Secondary Disks:

10 TB Seagate SkyHawk, 7200 RPM , 256 MB Cache + 5 TB WD Black , 128 MB Cache

Sound Card:

Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition with 40 LEDs

Speakers:

Altec Lansing Expressionist FX3021 PLUS 2.1 @ 6 Ohms

Displays:

32” Dell UP3218K @ 8K, 60 FPS + 27” Dell U2711 @ 2560x1440, 60 FPS

Keyboard:

Corsair K95 RGB Platinum

Mouse:

EVGA TORQ X10 Carbon (Fibre)

OS:

Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 64 Bit (Version 1903, Build 18362.207)

 

[PeterBJ]

I'm no expert but these specs look to me like the highest grade specs that have been posted on the forum. I'm impressed!

 

[PeterBJ]

The best way to install a SSD is to clone the C: drive to it, replace the disks and reboot.
Your Windows license remains valid doing so and you spare the tedious work to reinstall all software.
I use the free Minitool Partition Wizard.
In a desktop you can branch the SSD on a free SATA connector to clone, on a laptop you need an USB-to-SATA connector.
No problems with the cheap Kingston 400's, altough they are not the fastests (but more than fast enough on an older PC).

You are right, thats fine for a computer with an OS in good working order. But my reason for reformatting and starting over with my main computer is that it has become very slow to boot almost like it were running Vista and twice it has not "blue screened" but shown a yellow (default?) desktop at boot and a message saying that my profile couldn't be loaded and I had no longer access to my files. Luckily I could access the files with Explorer and Total Commander. The sfc /scannow command in both cases brought back my profile.

Nice to hear the budget priced Kingston SSDs are OK. I used a 240 GB Kingston in a laptop.

I have not yet decided whether to keep Win 8.1 or upgrade to Win 10 on my main computer. There is also a need to find out what to transfer/backup. That's why I haven't done the SSD upgrade yet. A quick and dirty solution would be to Install the OS to the new SSD from a DVD created for this purpose and then install drivers and programs. After that I could attach the old HDD to a SATA port on the MB or use an eSATA port. It is then easy to copy what I want to keep. But a regular back-up is of course more secure.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

CPU:

Intel Core i9 Extreme 7980XE @ 2.6 GHz (18 cores, 36 threads); Mega Tasking enabled

CPU Cooling:

Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro RGB 360mm Liquid Cooler

RAM:

64GB Corsair Dominator Platinum PC4-21300 Quad Channel DDR4 at CAS 15-15-15-36-1T + 64 GB Intel Optane M.2 Memory Accelerator (64 GB + 64 GB)

since this is a printer forum I just try to think how many printers you can drive with that processor/memory configuration at the same time.............................