Samsung Releases First 2TB Consumer SSD For Laptops

Lucas123 writes: Samsung has released what it is calling the world's first 2.5-in consumer-grade, multi-terabyte SSD, and it's issuing the new drive a 10-year warranty. With up to 2TB of capacity, the new 850 Pro and 850 EVO SSDs double the maximum capacity of their predecessors. As with the previous 840 Pro and EVO models, Samsung used its 3D V-NAND technology, which stacks 32 layers of NAND atop one another in a microscopic skyscraper. Additionally, the drives take advantage of multi-level cell (MLC) and triple-level cell (TLC) (2- and 3-bit per cell) technology for even greater density. The 850 Pro, Samsung said, can manage up to 550MBps sequential read and 520MBps sequential write rates and up to 100,000 random I/Os per second (IOPS). The 850 EVO SSD has slightly lower performance with 540MBps and 520MBps sequential read/write rates and up to 90,000 random IOPS. The SSDs will range in capacity from 120GB to 2TB and in price from $99 to $999.

Comments

Step 1

[JMJimmy]

Finally we have a reasonably sized SSD... now it's just got to come down in price 80-90%

Re:Step 1

[tompaulco]

Finally we have a reasonably sized SSD... now it's just got to come down in price 80-90%

Reasonably sized? It's 5 times the size of all data on my system.

Re:Step 1

[Totenglocke]

Clearly you're not a gamer. 60 GB installs are the norm these days.

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

This.
Installing GTA V and Rome II alone would take up almost 100GB.
Add to that Shogun II, Civ 5, and some other random games and you're looking at hundreds of gigabytes.

Re:Step 1

[nospam007]

"Finally we have a reasonably sized SSD... now it's just got to come down in price 80-90%

'Reasonably sized? It's 5 times the size of all data on my system.'

Wot? You don't have an Oracle Server running on your laptop?

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

They're talking about PCs, not your phone or tablet. That's a tiny fraction of the space on a real computer.

Re:Step 1

[tompaulco]

Wot? You don't have an Oracle Server running on your laptop?

No, but I have IIS, Tomcat and SQL Server. I think the bitcoin blockchain takes up more space than anything other individual thing on my system.

Re:Step 1

[tompaulco]

Clearly you're not a gamer. 60 GB installs are the norm these days.

How does that work? Multiple Blurays?

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Fast internet connections. Physical media are so passe.

Re:Step 1

[macs4all]

Clearly you're not a gamer. 60 GB installs are the norm these days.

Or video editor. Unless you are fastidious about getting rid of stuff, you can stack up some serious GB on each project.

Re:Step 1

[tompaulco]

I've got Civ 5 (5 GB) on my system, and Flight Simulator X (25 GB) , Simcity 4 (1 GB) , Simcity 5 (3 GB), several Railroad Tycoons, Age of Empires, Zoo Tycoons, GTA IV, several versions of Tropico, plus I have Tomcat, IIS and SQL Server, and a complete backup of my previous system (which has a previous backup of my previous previous system, ad infinitum). My whole system uses about 375 GB.

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

How much storage does a true Scotsman need?

Re:Step 1

[Totenglocke]

Almost everyone does digital anymore. For some stupid reason though, the PC gaming industry refuses to adopt Blu-ray, so they just ship games like GTA V on a truckload of DVDs. I have a 50 Mbps connection, so downloading 50+ GB doesn't take long.

Re:Step 1

[JMJimmy]

Finally we have a reasonably sized SSD... now it's just got to come down in price 80-90%

Reasonably sized? It's 5 times the size of all data on my system.

Wow... I delete the equivalent of your system every month due to lack of space. Currently our household has 8TB of HDDs (not including the 4TB of dvd storage) every one of them is near capacity and we're not backing up nearly as much as we should. We could easily fill 30-40TB if we had everything we wanted installed/properly backed up.

Re:Step 1

[JMJimmy]

I have 148 Steam games, only 11 of which are installed due to lack of space. I regularly have to run with less than 500MB left on my 1TB budget laptop harddrive. I figure we download about 200-300GB of data every month that is deleted once consumed/needed for something higher priority.

Re:Step 1

[ArcadeMan]

I think the bitcoin blockchain takes up more space than anything other individual thing on my system.

Well, you could send me your Bitcoins to clear some space on your drive... 18LQHMjKSCSU3g4f29TfmtfxHXUfnh7juB

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I see an episode of Hoarders in your future.

Re:Step 1

[tompaulco]

I have 148 Steam games, only 11 of which are installed due to lack of space. I regularly have to run with less than 500MB left on my 1TB budget laptop harddrive. I figure we download about 200-300GB of data every month that is deleted once consumed/needed for something higher priority.

Wow, I'm not sure if I have played 148 different video games in my lifetime. But then, I am only 45 years old and I only spent most of my free time in my youth playing video games. I just finished playing Lego Jurassic Park and it took about 40 hours. Games like Skyrim I have not even gotten completed, but have hundreds of hours invested.

Re: Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

External drive + Velcro

Re:Step 1

[Mascot]

Having 148 games in his Steam account doesn't mean he's played them all.

For comparison, I have 228 in mine, 67 currently installed. When I'll ever get around to playing half of them, I have no idea.

Re:Step 1

[jedidiah]

My steam folder is 250G and I'm just a poor Linux user.

Now a LAMP server, that's something that can fit in about 4G.

Re:Step 1

[oh_my_080980980]

LMOL 5x your data? Lightweight....

Re:Step 1

[jedidiah]

Oracle express limits you to 10G.

Although you can always snag the enterprise version and go crazy with that on your own system if you really want.

Re:Step 1

[jedidiah]

I have over 2000 DVDs and BluRays and they are all nicely organized and tucked away. They take up the equivalent of a single tall IKEA bookshelf and sit in the unused bits of space along the walls of my home theater.

Unless you live in a closet in NYC, that amount of space doesn't even register for most people.

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people have optical disc drives at all these days? Of those people, how many of them have bluray drives? Couple that with how much faster internet connections have gotten and I can see why they wouldn't bother with bluray.

Re:Step 1

[JMJimmy]

I have completed every achievement in 266 xbox platform games, played 1147 of them enough to get at least 1 achievement (37% completion of the 1147 overall), Steam has ~2,538 recorded hours, and that doesn't include anything before 2007 or my PS1/2/3/Wii/Xbox Original/Genesis or Blizzard games collection.

Insomnia opens up an amazing amount of time.

Re:Step 1

[Scragglykat]

Honestly, you could have had 2TB of 850 EVO storage from Amazon for $700... cheaper than this single drive's MSRP by $100. Of course, you'd have to split up installs across drives then.

Re:Step 1

[JMJimmy]

That's true, I've only played 73 of the 148. 55 of them are sequels that I haven't started because I haven't finished the previous game. (I tend to buy collections so it's cheaper)

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I can probably get close to 148 just by counting the major franchises I've played in my childhood. FF 1-12 (plus X2, minus 11), FFT, FFTA, FFMQ, Final Fantasy Adventure, Secret of Mana, Legend of Mana, Final Fantasy Legend 1-3, SaGa Frontier 2. Super Mario 1, 2, the other 2, 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario Land, Mario N64. Zelda 1, 2, Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, All the various Dragon Warriors. All the various mega mans and mega man Xs. The Castlevanias and Metroids. Wizardrys, Ultimas, and these are just the things I've played on consoles. Throw in the C64 and PC and it'll add up.

I've definitely slowed down now that I have a job.

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn you Steam sales! Damn you all!

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I still keep a USB DVD drive around in case I need one. I don't have an optical drive in any of my machines. Didn't bother with Bluray.

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash SSD is never going to be as cheap as HDD.
Price doesn't matter, just admit you'll never buy SSDs.

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I'm not sure if I have played 148 different video games in my lifetime. But then, I am only 45 years old and I only spent most of my free time in my youth playing video games. I just finished playing Lego Jurassic Park and it took about 40 hours. Games like Skyrim I have not even gotten completed, but have hundreds of hours invested.

I call bullshit, or, sir, I put it to you, that you are not now, and never were, a gamer!

You've never played 148 video games in your lifetime? I have probably entered, by hand, the Basic language or hex code of more than 148 free games published in various games related journals from the 80s that were then saved to tape or floppy disk on no less than 3 different game/computer systems (Atari 800, Commodore 64, TI-994/A). I probably had more than 200 floppies, 40 cassettes, and 30 cartridges for just the Commodore 64. And I am 44 years old! Look back upon your life and weep for the lost opportunities! For Shame! For. Shame!

Re: Step 1

[mabhatter654]

Consumer PC Blu-Ray isn't worth the money. I can get 32GB memory stix for less than the cost of Blu-Ray blank disks. Some makers put combo drives in but those only burn DVDs, blu-Ray writers are like the Zip drive when CD-ROM came out.

Re:Step 1

[bobbutts]

This has to be one of the more unusual software combinations for a Slashdot user to run in 2015. I always hated IIS and MS SQL server and haven't thought about them since I left a job where I had to support them many years ago.

Re:Step 1

[WuphonsReach]

If you're trying to fit 2TB in a laptop, then you'd have to find a laptop with (2) SSD bays in order to use those EVOs.

Not too many laptops have a 2nd drive bay. The older Thinkpads let you swap out the optical drive bay to fit a 2nd SATA drive, but not sure they still offer that option.

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the price. I want reliability!

Re:Step 1

[mjwx]

Clearly you're not a gamer. 60 GB installs are the norm these days.

How does that work? Multiple Blurays?

No one sells games on Blurry. Chances are they never will, the drives are just not popular and digital download is slowly taking over as a means of game distribution.

I bought GTA V in physical form. It came on 7 DVD's and I still had to download another 5 odd GB.

60 GB installs are only the norm for "tripple A" dross because they're too lazy to use compression on audio and textures. I've bought a lot of non-AAA games during the recent Steam sale, the largest was Cities Skyline at 2.9 GB.

Re:Step 1

[mjwx]

Almost everyone does digital anymore. For some stupid reason though, the PC gaming industry refuses to adopt Blu-ray, so they just ship games like GTA V on a truckload of DVDs.

GTA V had 7 DVD's.

As for Blurry, its going the way of LaserDisc. Digital distribution is taking over and Bluray doesn't offer any advantages over DVD. In fact it has a few disadvantages, the fact the drives and media are too expensive compared to DVD. For people that need Shit-ton of portable storage. A 64GB SD card or USB thumb drive is cheaper and reusable. When games become too big for DVD, they'll be shipped on flash media instead.

The use of optical media is declining, but I'm still going to bet DVD will outlast Bluray.

Re:Step 1

[mjwx]

Clearly you're not a gamer. 60 GB installs are the norm these days.

Or video editor. Unless you are fastidious about getting rid of stuff, you can stack up some serious GB on each project.

Not a video editor, but I've been a sysadmin for GIS companies, they deal with a shitload of high res imagery as well as databases. GIS analysts have to be fastidious about using fast storage and slow storage. We've been able to provide them with a lot of slow storage for ages now but fast storage is still expensive even with consumer grade SSD's. They still have to set up their work to read from slow storage and write to fast storage, after processing is complete they move the finished product to the slow disk. I set up a modern GIS workstation with 2 SSD's and at least 1 big spinning disk. I use one small SSD for the OS and applications and a second larger SSD just for processing.

If the company is rich enough to give them fibre channel connections to a SAN it gets a lot more expensive (the extra processing speed on server HW can be worth it though).

Re:Step 1

[fyngyrz]

Well, how many true Scotsmen? One? More?

Re:Step 1

[JMJimmy]

Hoarders don't "delete". I could just keep buying drives and storing crap but I only keep what's important and ditch the rest.

Re:Step 1

[JMJimmy]

I have about 400 in two binders, unfortunately they got tucked away in storage for a year the mice had a field day and the mold did the rest. Complete write off. The 850 or so in proper cases fared much better, takes up 2 BESTA shelves but definitely worth it.

I need more BESTAs but they don't sell the narrow ones anymore. :(

Re:Step 1

[JMJimmy]

Price matters and while they'll never be as cheap, they can be a hell of a lot cheaper than $1k for 2TB. I could put a downpayment on a house for the $25k it would cost to meet my storage needs at home.

Re:Step 1

[Trax3001BBS]

Clearly you're not a gamer. 60 GB installs are the norm these days.

Battle Field 4 (40-60 GB) - with a SSD drive you can be in game and take 3 of 5 objectives you need to hold, before any other storage device user can even begin to play. With a dual monitor or viewing the web based map one can watch it going down while the loading continues.

Re: Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he is just one of those people that plays all games all the way trough before starting a new one?

Or someone that plays the same one multiplayer for a decade (like some counterstrike players).

Gamers aren't all alike.

Re:Step 1

[PPalmgren]

Sounds like you need to pick up Cities Skylines. It takes SC5 out back and punishes it with impunity. Very happy with my purchase of that game.

Re: Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably will be cheaper someday... After HDDs go away. Seems to me all the extra steps and moving parts in a spindle disk would make it a lot more expensive than SSD manufacture, at least once you have paid for the fab.

Re:Step 1

[doccus]

I have 148 Steam games, only 11 of which are installed due to lack of space. I regularly have to run with less than 500MB left on my 1TB budget laptop harddrive. I figure we download about 200-300GB of data every month that is deleted once consumed/needed for something higher priority.

Wow, I'm not sure if I have played 148 different video games in my lifetime. But then, I am only 45 years old and I only spent most of my free time in my youth playing video games. I just finished playing Lego Jurassic Park and it took about 40 hours. Games like Skyrim I have not even gotten completed, but have hundreds of hours invested.

Ah yes, but a lot of people who call themselves "gamers", are often more than that. By rights you could call them game "collectors"..

Re:Step 1

[FlyHelicopters]

Not anymore, there is now a 2TB 850 EVO, single drive...

Re: Step 1

[Agripa]

Consumer PC Blu-Ray isn't worth the money. I can get 32GB memory stix for less than the cost of Blu-Ray blank disks.

And what is the unpowered retention time of those inexpensive Flash memory sticks? All of the USB Flash drives I have tested had an unpowered (and powered) retention time of less than a year when new which makes them suitable for only short term storage.

Re:Step 1

[Agripa]

When games become too big for DVD, they'll be shipped on flash media instead.

Which will be great for the game makers; the short retention time of high density Flash media will make their dream of a time limited expiring media a reality.

Are these relevant?

[Overzeetop]

I suppose there are a few 5 pound laptops out there for power users that still use the 2.5" form factor, but they're disappearing rapidly. Things are moving fast in the SSD storage area and many are moving to the M.2 format. Though I suppose any increase in density is good as it means higher cap small format drives and cheaper options*.

*so that Microsoft and Apple can increase their profit margins on storage. The great thing about impossible to open PCs is that they can charge whatever the fuck they want for storage no matter how cheap it gets.

Re:Are these relevant?

[Virtucon]

They've already announced the newer form factors for m.pcie m2 sdds which will leverage this. I can't wait till we get above 256GB for this. As for the 2.5" form factor, cracking open any SSDs now shows a lot of empty space, so this lastest announcement is evolutionary, not revolutionary. aka Tock

Re:Are these relevant?

[war4peace]

M.2 is a mess. Same connector type for two, even three* different protocols is always dumb. This, combined with poor mobo documentation, confuses people.
I got shafted yesterday, bought an M.2 SATA EVO 850, 512 GB for my PC and when I got home the PC wouldn't recognize it. After lots of digging around, I came to realize my mobo only had support for PCI Express M.2 SSDs, not SATA ones. No, the user manual was NOT straightforward, nor did it provide any hints on compatibility (or lack of it). So I gave it back and upgraded to a 2.5" 1TB EVO 850. At least I can't be surprised (in a bad way).

*three because there's PCI Express 2.0 support and PCI Express 3.0 support as well.

Re:Are these relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

> still use the 2.5" form factor,

I've had close to two hundred new laptops come through my office so far this year, and I have never seen a laptop without a 2.5" harddrive. My brand new Dell, a Latittude E6440, that I'm typing this on, has an externally accessible 2.5" hard drive. Unlike Apple, the dinosaur PC makers are refusing to move on. Companies like Dell and HP are sticking with them. IIRC, that form factor was introduced by PrairieTek in 1989. The PC makers love staying with 25+ year-old technology. It's very profitable for them.

Re:Are these relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

These aren't exactly aimed at laptops, they are aimed at computers that can use 2.5" drives. Most desktops (and most modern desktop computer cases) now has drive bays for 2.5" drives built in.

Re:Are these relevant?

[macs4all]

I suppose there are a few 5 pound laptops out there for power users that still use the 2.5" form factor, but they're disappearing rapidly. Things are moving fast in the SSD storage area and many are moving to the M.2 format. Though I suppose any increase in density is good as it means higher cap small format drives and cheaper options*.

*so that Microsoft and Apple can increase their profit margins on storage. The great thing about impossible to open PCs is that they can charge whatever the fuck they want for storage no matter how cheap it gets.

If you are referring to Apple (especially Apple laptops) with your "impossible to open" comment, that hasn't been true for quite some time now. Remove the 10 Phillips-head screws holding the bottom "pan" on, and the battery, RAM (on replaceable-RAM models) and Drive(s) are readily-accessible and replaceable, even on the newer models with the PCI(?) SSDs. Even the Trackpad is easily replaced.

Ironically enough, when Apple went to the Unibody design for laptops, the only thing that became an absolute BEAR to replace was the keyboard; which USED to be the easiest thing to replace!

Re:Are these relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

2.5" form factor, but they're disappearing rapidly.

Where do people come up with this garbage? No, 2.5" is the standard in laptops. We've bought six different brands where I work over the past five years I've been here, and I haven't seen a single damn one without a standard 2.5" drive. You are wrong.

Plus, all of our new ultrabooks still use 2.5" drives. There's even a new 5 mm height standard for them. PC makers are going to use 2.5" drives in laptops for a very long time. Of course, Apple moved away from that long ago, but Apple is usually ahead of the PC garbage by five to ten years.

Re:Are these relevant?

[King_TJ]

Valid point, but there actually are still some very popular choices out there in Corporate/Enterprise class laptops which would still take a 2.5" form factor drive.

For example, HP has the Elitebook 840G2 out now, and I believe it's a "new for 2015" version of the Elitebook 840G1, which is still being sold until existing inventories of it dwindle. Both of these laptops have the option of using a M.2 format SSD, but still provide a regular internal 2.5" drive bay too.

Re:Are these relevant?

[barc0001]

Of course they're relevant, maybe not for laptops so much though. I have a bunch of servers using 512GB 840 pros in our datacenters, and when we EOL those drives, these 2TB models should be at the same price we paid for the 512GB parts so we'll get to quadruple our storage for the cost of the EOL refresh. Nice.

Re:Are these relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect, especially the latest gen ones:

First, they are not Phillips head. They are five-lobed Torx-like screws which require a special tool to open. A Phillips head will round them out.

Second, you have to heat the battery in order to remove it, as it is slathered with glue. Too much heat... it expands and destructs. Too little, and pulling it out might cause it to destroy itself.

Third, the Apple drive is not a standardized format. You can't just replace it unless you can bribe an Apple employee to use a drive just for that model. If you order 256 gigs, you are stuck with that. RAM? Soldered on.

The grandparent is right. Apple's laptops are scoring a 1/10 for repairability on iFixit with newer models.

Re:Are these relevant?

[macs4all]

Unlike Apple, the dinosaur PC makers are refusing to move on.

Thank you for stating that correctly!

Just like with the Floppy Drives, Serial Connectors, and VGA, then DVI...

But now, cue the Apple haters that will whine incessantly about no eSATA and the USB-C connector on the new MacBook (hey, I think they should have at least kept the MagSafe, too!).

Re:Are these relevant?

[jedidiah]

I have a 2TB drive in my laptop. It's more of a mobile workstation though. It's not intended to be tiny and anemic.

Re:Are these relevant?

[amorsen]

Even the Trackpad is easily replaced.

I give you the instructions for replacing the trackpad on my Macbook. It is an easy 44 steps. Well, 87, since you have to do it all in reverse to put it back together.

Also, it's $450 just for the parts and tools. More if you don't like to buy refurbished.

Re:Are these relevant?

[macs4all]

Incorrect, especially the latest gen ones:

First, they are not Phillips head. They are five-lobed Torx-like screws which require a special tool to open. A Phillips head will round them out.

Second, you have to heat the battery in order to remove it, as it is slathered with glue. Too much heat... it expands and destructs. Too little, and pulling it out might cause it to destroy itself.

Third, the Apple drive is not a standardized format. You can't just replace it unless you can bribe an Apple employee to use a drive just for that model. If you order 256 gigs, you are stuck with that. RAM? Soldered on.

The grandparent is right. Apple's laptops are scoring a 1/10 for repairability on iFixit with newer models.

Funny that the same site, iFixit, that whines about "repairability" seems to always manage a COMPLETE teardown without having to bribe anyone for special tools, take a bandsaw to the product, etc., eh?

My point being that, if you assess "repairability: on ANYONE's modern consumer devices, especially the things like phones, tablets and laptops, and restrict your "toolbox" to the one your Dad had, you will be frustrated. But a modern bench-tech should really have things like Torx screwdrivers and even Tri and Pentalobe screwdrivers. They just aren't that "special" in the computer-tech world (and certainly are NOT a "special tool", available only from the manufacturer, like you might have to have to work on some cars), and are certainly not found just with Apple gear. Open a Dell, Samsung or many other lappies and you will find the EXACT same construction techniques.

As for using adhesives, again Apple is CERTAINLY not alone in that regard. That has been standard manufacturing practice for nearly 20 years now. I don't like it much, either; but it isn't even close to be the exclusive province of Apple, not by a long shot.

As far as soldered-in RAM, this is also an industry-trend in laptops. I don't like it either; but connectors are expensive and huge (especially huge), and it is a royal pain to make the data-paths to the RAMshort while still keeping the RAM accessible; so I understand.

Re:Are these relevant?

[macs4all]

Even the Trackpad is easily replaced.

I give you the instructions for replacing the trackpad on my Macbook. It is an easy 44 steps. Well, 87, since you have to do it all in reverse to put it back together.

Also, it's $450 just for the parts and tools. More if you don't like to buy refurbished.

Funny, the TrackPad I replaced in a friend's 2009 13 inch MacBook Pro was like 4 steps, if. Remove screws from bottom pan. Remove battery connector. Remove battery. Remove 4 screws holding Trackpad. Done.

Well, I see that it IS a bit more involved for that model (you did pull the wrong guide though. Here's the right one). But the tools needed are more like $20, and the TrackPad can be had for around $60 online. FAR less than the $450 that you quoted (without citation).

Re:Are these relevant?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I don't why anyone who wants to tinker with things complains about difficulty of repairs when it comes to fasteners. As you mentioned things like Torx and Pentalobe should be considered standard. It's not like we are talking about some strange fastener here like the old Whitworth ones where the modern replacement seems to be this or this. Besides just consider it an excuse to acquire more tools which is always a good thing.

Re:Are these relevant?

[macs4all]

I don't why anyone who wants to tinker with things complains about difficulty of repairs when it comes to fasteners.

Because this is Slashdot; where ANY excuse to Apple-Bash (no pun intended) is considered a good excuse.

Re:Are these relevant?

[amorsen]

Funny, the TrackPad I replaced in a friend's 2009 13 inch MacBook Pro was like 4 steps, if. Remove screws from bottom pan. Remove battery connector. Remove battery. Remove 4 screws holding Trackpad. Done.

It all changed around 2012.

My information came from the link I supplied: "The MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display Early 2013 packs the battery, keyboard, trackpad, and upper case into one assembly. If any of these components fail, the entire assembly must be replaced."

Your guide is for the 13" model. I do not know whether it works for the 15" model, but I can assure you that I am not intending to find out.

But yes, it can be done for one $80 in tools and materials at least on the 13" model, unfortunately in 47 (well 93) steps.

Re:Are these relevant?

[Megol]

Comparing like to like - notebook computers optimized for slimness/light weight and you'll (generally) see that PCs have abandoned the 2.5" form factor many years ago. But you are comparing notebook computers optimized for those factors (often with significant limitations as a result - Apple machines) to cheap machines not optimized for the same things.

My current machine doesn't use M.2 format SSDs as they didn't exist when it was designed/manufactured, it uses a custom form factor SSD RAID instead. Other slim/thin PCs did the same several years before this machine - heck, even my old eeePC had a custom SSD in a much smaller format of a 2.5" drive. And that was a _cheap_ machine!

BTW before you try some more bullshit look at the Gigabyte P35X v3. It have space for the top of the line mobile GPU (GTX 980M with 6GiB GGDR5 DRAM), two M.2 slots for SSD RAID, one 2.5" HDD _and_ an optical drive. In a thin 15.6" form factor. That's how one pushes the technical envelope!
Oh - and it's cheaper than the closest Mac too.

Re:Are these relevant?

[mjwx]

Funny that the same site, iFixit, that whines about "repairability" seems to always manage a COMPLETE teardown without having to bribe anyone for special tools, take a bandsaw to the product, etc., eh?

So basically you're saying they're in the perfect position to tell you just how difficult it is to get them open.

I've opened and repaired a few things that were _NOT_ designed to be user serviceable. Most of them are difficult to open without being broken, but none are impossible even when you require special tools. There's been a few times when I've had to MacGyver a few tools myself (I.E. a bifurcated screw involved taking an angle grinder to an ordinary flat head screw driver). Your "point" has only demonstrated your lack of ingenuity here.

That being said, there's a reason I prefer to buy things that are easy to work on. This is the main reason I bought a 200sx (Silvia S15) rather than a 300zx which was more powerful and cheaper. The twin turbo V6 in the 300zx takes up literally all of the engine bay making it a complete pain to work on if you dont have a hoist (its no walk in the park with a hoist either).

Re: Are these relevant?

[reg]

Actually there are three M.2 formats: - SATA - PCIe AHCI - PCIe NVMe

Re:Are these relevant?

[macs4all]

Your guide is for the 13" model. I do not know whether it works for the 15" model, but I can assure you that I am not intending to find out.

A posting on the iFixit forum led me to the guide I linked as being the same for the 15 inch replacement.

That IS pretty obnoxious, though, I'll admit. Same reason I haven't replaced the keyboard on my 2013 non-retina MBP.

Re:Are these relevant?

[AmiMoJo]

Funny that the same site, iFixit, that whines about "repairability" seems to always manage a COMPLETE teardown without having to bribe anyone for special tools, take a bandsaw to the product, etc., eh?

They are experienced professionals, not ordinary users. In the same way that a professional car mechanic might be able to strip an engine, but would still rate a car badly for maintenance if an ordinary person would struggle to change the belt or top up the radiator.

But a modern bench-tech should really have things like Torx screwdrivers and even Tri and Pentalobe screwdrivers.

Just another set of screwdrivers for the unlucky consumer to buy, when there is no good reason why the company could not have simply used more common screws.

As for using adhesives, again Apple is CERTAINLY not alone in that regard. That has been standard manufacturing practice for nearly 20 years now.

For consumer-hostile manufacturers perhaps, but for example my NEC LaVie laptops are both comparable to Apple ones in terms of size, and actually lighter than the same screen size Apple versions, and yet the batteries are not glued in. They are internal to the machines, but removing the case is just a matter of undoing six ordinary Philips screws. The SSD and wifi/bluetooth cards are both easy to change, as is the battery, and the fans are easy to clean out.

Sorry, but this is a deliberate design choice made by Apple. Other companies can produce comparable products that are much easier to service and upgrade.

good news, bad news

[Gravis Zero]

the good news is that fantastic advances in memory construction are coming to SSDs. the bad news is all SSDs and HDDs are relying on security by obscurity and at some point everyone's storage devices will be permanently infected with malware that gives away their personal information.

Jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine how long that thing's gonna take to rewind, let alone defrag? I think I'll pass.

Re:Jesus

[war4peace]

All you need to do is insert page numbers and the firmware will do the rest.

Re:Jesus

[ArcadeMan]

Well, since it's solid-state, it should be much faster to rewind compared to a DVD.

Re:Jesus

[fyngyrz]

You're so glib. Oh, sure, it's easy enough to rewind. But what about when the tape gets stuck and the head gets dirty and the belts stretch? THEN what?

Re:Jesus

[KGIII]

Ah man... When DVDs were a thing I used to share them amongst my fellow workers and I printed up a bunch of "Be Kind! Rewind." stickers and would stick them on the cases before loaning them out. I got a fairly high percentage of them back. A higher percentage than I got with books.

Windows Update

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the hard drives come with firmware that turn off Windows update?

Big but price has stalled

[Guspaz]

The price-per-gig on the EVO model comes out to around $0.40/GB, which is where SSD prices have more or less been stalled for a few years now. So that's not so great. We really ought to be seeing some price reductions from 3D NAND.

On the other hand, $800 is roughly what I paid for my first SSD, an 80GB Intel G1. Today, for the same price, you can get 2000GB.

Re:Big but price has stalled

[jratcliffe]

"The price-per-gig on the EVO model comes out to around $0.40/GB, which is where SSD prices have more or less been stalled for a few years now."

Really? A few years?

The 850 EVO 500GB is currently $162 at Amazon (0.32/GB). In December, it was $252 (0.50/GB).

That's a nearly 40% decline in six months.

I'm getting 500GB SSDs today for what I was paying for 250GB drives a bit over a year ago.

Re:Big but price has stalled

[Guspaz]

I may have made the mistake of comparing prices today using CAD and historically in USD, and only comparing at the ~1TB level, where price per gig seems to be a bunch higher.

Re:Big but price has stalled

[WuphonsReach]

A few years? Consumer SSDs only broke the $1/gb barrier about 2 years ago, then dropped down below $0.50 about a year ago.

There are even some down around $0.30/GB if you shop around and aren't picky about brand name.

My price point is no longer about $/GB, but "how much space can I get for $100" if it's an office / light duty machine or "how much for $400" if it's a power-user / gaming machine.

So, please call me these new 2TB drives drop below $400. Which will probably be around this time next year, maybe as long as 18 months.

Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVERS

[mcrbids]

We've been using Samsung drives in "non production" status servers, embedded servers, etc. and have had a terrible time of it. The first drives we bought a few years ago (840 Pro) were good, but we've seen Samsung SSDs run entirely through their write capacity (as reported by SMART) and then go dead when not even mounted! Turns out we aren't the only ones to get bit by buggy Samsung drives.

It also turns out that Samsung drives are even blacklisted in the Linux Kernel

I welcome Samsung's excellent cost/size value proposition! I just wish their drives were solid enough for our actual use.

this is a watershed event

[sribe]

It's the first time that max SSD capacity is greater than HD in a given size.

Yes, I know there's a 2.5" 2TB HDD out there. But it's a 12mm height, and so cannot be used in any laptop that I know of, including my older thicker MacBook, which takes a 9.5mm height drive.

This Samsung is a 7mm height, and thus will fit in any laptop that takes a 2.5" drive of any kind.

Re:this is a watershed event

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I know there's a 2.5" 2TB HDD out there. But it's a 12mm height

You're at least 1.5 years out of touch: 2TB hard drive 9.5mm thick

Re:this is a watershed event

[adolf]

You must have forgotten about Samsung's own 2.5" 9.5mm 2tb HDD, which works in every laptop that I know of.

Re:this is a watershed event

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also the only one.

Re:this is a watershed event

[bemymonkey]

Many laptops these days can only fit 7mm high drives. This has been the case for years now... even my Thinkpad X220 only has a 7mm slot (you can get a 9.5mm high drive in there, but it's a squeeze and you need to remove the keyboard and palmrest assembly IIRC).

Re:this is a watershed event

[sribe]

You must have forgotten about Samsung's own 2.5" 9.5mm 2tb HDD [amzn.to], which works in every laptop that I know of.

How the hell did I miss that??? I'm constantly watching for bigger drives for my laptop, because I actually need 2TB these days, and the only one I'd seen previously was 12mm.

There are a lot of laptops these days that only take a 7mm, but not mine, so I'm happy now.

Ya but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs local storage? We use the cloud now.

Re:Ya but...

[tompaulco]

Who needs local storage? We use the cloud now.

Local storage is cloud storage for people who care about their data and their privacy.

Re:Ya but...

[neminem]

I don't even care that much about privacy most of the time.

I do care a great deal about being able to access my data when I'm not connected to the internet, which if I'm traveling - being, you'll note, the *reason* for using a laptop - is reasonably likely.

Re:Ya but...

[rubycodez]

I use a cheap virtual "storage server" and put pgp encrypted tarballs on it

Re:Ya but...

[mlts]

I'd love to live somewhere where WAN bandwidth is cheap enough to use for primary storage. The cloud is either usable for file syncing (Dropbox, Google Drive) [1], document backups (again, a secondary copy, with the primary on local media), or long term archive copies on something like Amazon Glacier.

[1]: With proper encryption, of course. BoxCryptor comes to mind for cloud drives, and one can use OpenPGP for long term storage.

Sound is small

[Anonymous Coward]

This is 2015. I go to Costco and see 3 TB for 66 dollars.

Re:Sound is small

[aaronmd]

This is 2015. I go to Costco and see 3 TB for 66 dollars.

You are comparing a Ford Escort to a Ferrari.

SSD's aren't for cheap storage, they are for fast storage.

Re:Sound is small

[jedidiah]

No. It's more like a Ford Escort with a JATO engine welded to the roof.

Although the "always in the shop" aspect of the SSDs might be spot on. Then there's the whole "you got the horses but can't actually use them" aspect of "glamour cars". Also probably a good match for SSDs.

Perhaps your attempt to grovel at the feet of the gods of conspicuous consumption wasn't wrong after all...

Re:Sound is small

[Blaskowicz]

But a Ferrari is useless, does something like 10 mpg (?) and you're more likely to kill someone or yourself with it.

Will these still die as quickly?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been putting a few Samsung 850 SSDs in servers since last September. About a tenth have quit already. They wear-out fast. SMART info for the last one I installed:

# smartctl -a sda
Device Model: Samsung SSD 850 EVO mSATA 120GB
Serial Number: S249NWA[deleted]
  9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 802
177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0013 099 099 000 Pre-fail Always - 8
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1848781952

It's 8% dead already after just 33 days! We've had to give-up on SSDs for now. They just wear-out too quickly.

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[Yunzil]

You're doing something wrong if you're wearing out an 850 in a consumer environment. You're also doing something wrong if you're using an 850 in an enterprise environment.

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[compwizrd]

Well no.. You're at 8 write cycles used, and 99%.
Here's a pair of 840 Evo's in RAID1 after 13,150 and 15,536 POH:

177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0013 080 080 000 Pre-fail Always - 237
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 75268142612

177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0013 095 095 000 Pre-fail Always - 55
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 79376718460

The one has 80% left and the other 95%, and the cycle count(with 1000 being expected) roughly matches.

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're doing something wrong if you're wearing out an 850 in a consumer environment.

I love how you irrational fanbois ignore facts. He posted exactly how much data his drive has written, but instead of recognizing the truth, you start spouting off half-ass ignorant insults.

Their post showed that the drive had written 882 gigabytes. That is not too much despite your lie.

I wish /. would do something about these hail corporate assholes that are destroying the site. SSDs simply don't have the endurance yet to be used in any real environment. They die quickly. As we've seen, most die within six months. Since we scale horizontally and plan for failures, we can get away with using such garbage storage. Most people can't. They need storage they can depend on which means using a real harddrive rather than a disposable imitation of one.

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[goarilla]

To be fair you've written ~950 GB and used 8%. If we simply extrapolate that you'll get ~12 TB or about 100 full drive writes.
Personally I'm also dissapointed in the consistency of the TLC NAND drives.
I get performance degradations on all my Samsung drives even though I've applied all the performance fixes.
I can't fathom though why you are putting the smallest (slowest) and cheapest drives in your server.
A Professional SSD (Sandisk or Intel) would be a lot more appropriate.

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[goarilla]

Well no.. You're at 8 write cycles used, and 99%.

Right that value represent the raw maximum erase cycles (~3.000 cycles TLC, ~10.000 MLC, ...)
Let me quote wikipedia:

173 0xAD SSD Wear Leveling Count Counts the maximum worst erase count on any block.

Now my own raid0 drives:

Device Model: Samsung SSD 840 EVO 750GB
Firmware Version: EXT0DB6Q
User Capacity: 750,156,374,016 bytes [750 GB]

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 5954
177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0013 099 099 000 Pre-fail Always - 6
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 11617995820

Device Model: Samsung SSD 840 EVO 750GB
Firmware Version: EXT0DB6Q
User Capacity: 750,156,374,016 bytes [750 GB]

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 4510
177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0013 099 099 000 Pre-fail Always - 4
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 8497497858

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[Blaskowicz]

You used TLC drives rather than MLC, worse by one or two orders of magnitude or more ; and those number are what SMART tells you, it's a dumb count ill-related to the physical realities.
If you use an MLC drive and ignore the SMART count, then I believe it's a ton better, bigger drives are better than smaller ones too.. Then they'll die without notice but less often.

If you want some "fun" order a "Kingfast" 30GB SSD and install windows 7 32bit on it.. Now that's probably a shit ton worse than any Samsung 850.
If you want to go guinea pig with an Intel 750 400GB : that may be the best consumer SSD (but it's quite new)

Still, I'll believe what you said. With HDDs, you get about the same reliability whether you buy the cheapest one or the most expensive ones (save for industrial defects like the 7200.11 and some other well known ones). With SSDs it's almost a crapshoot though there is e.g. a tech site doing long write tests, where most good MLC disks fare well. To me it's a bit like CRT vs LCD monitors : a low end CRT is a ton more solid than a low end LCD (can display black, higher refresh rate, lasts 10 years minimum). The best kind of LCD would be good though (say recent 2560x1440 VA panel)

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[halltk1983]

1) He's overwritten the entire drive 8 times in 33 days. That's not a "consumer" workload.
2) 177 isn't a percentage. It's how often it's had to overwrite the data. 8 times. Which matches the data written.
3) Samsung claims 2,000 P/E cycles (the number represented in SMART 177). Independent testing has shown closer to 6,000 P/E cycles. That means that it's at .25% of its claimed and documented life cycle, being overwritten every 4 days for over a month. If he wasn't okay with replacing the drive after 500 days or a year and a half, then he should have researched better, or bought the next size up in drive capacity, which would have cut the wear in half. It's more likely, though that the drive will last around 5 years, even under these write loads, according to independent testing by anandtech and others.
If you don't understand what SMART is, does, or means, please don't talk about it as though you do. Other people might see your confident ignorance and believe you instead of doing their own research.

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[halltk1983]

As I posted above, SMART 177 isn't a percentage, it's a P/E count. Documentation claims 2000 P/E cycles, independent testing shows close to 6,000. It's far less than even 1% used.

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the "Worst" column. It is "099." Samsung made it a relative number rather than an absolute. As I confirmed with their support, when Wear_Leveling_Count reaches 100%, the drive goes into read-only mode. That drive will probably die within (1 / (0.08 / 33) - 33) the next 379 days. We're replacing the Samsung drives in our database servers about every 120 days so that isn't out of line from what you would expect from an SSD. Thankfully we use RAID-10 so we can swap half the drives, wait for the resync, then swap the other half.

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the "Worst" column. It is "099."

Yes, that's 99% life remaining.

As I confirmed with their support, when Wear_Leveling_Count reaches 100%, the drive goes into read-only mode.

False. Samsung drives no not go into read-only mode when they hit rated P/E cycle count. They happily keep operating. And that would be at 177 raw hitting 2000 on this drive.
The behavior you describe is how intel enterprise SSDs handle reaching rated P/E count. Intel consumer drives? Those will completely brick themselves for "data security reasons".

That drive will probably die within (1 / ((8 / 2000) / 33) - 33) the next 8217 days.

FTFY. So a consumer drive running in a server will reach rated lifetime in 22 years. Oh the huge manatee.

We're replacing the Samsung drives in our database servers about every 120 days so that isn't out of line from what you would expect from an SSD.

Considering you can't even interpret SMART attribute values properly, that sounds entirely plausible.

Re:Will these still die as quickly?

[goarilla]

As I posted above, SMART 177 isn't a percentage, it's a P/E count. Documentation claims 2000 P/E cycles, independent testing shows close to 6,000. It's far less than even 1% used.

You're absolutely right. I wonder what other SMART values will be really important to SSD's.
Where is blackblaze's SSD data. My guess is it will be even more vendor specific as it is now.

With Samsung rapid mode I get 5-6GB/sec

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great news! i love these drives and with Samsung rapid mode I get 5-6GB/sec on my current 840's and 850's.

Re: Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERV

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome information! Thank you!

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[Anonymous Coward]

TRIM is broken in lots of SSDs, and was in most of them until very recently. There's a reason it's disabled by default.

This doesn't absolve Samsung, but calling them out specifically is a bit disingenuous when that's just the norm.

What about ramdrives

[Anonymous Coward]

With DDR4 and the huge amounts of ram available to modern desktop pcs, I would think the ramdrive would be gaining in popularity. I guess though, if you've got sensitive data a ramdrive is a bad move.

Re:What about ramdrives

[bobbied]

With DDR4 and the huge amounts of ram available to modern desktop pcs, I would think the ramdrive would be gaining in popularity. I guess though, if you've got sensitive data a ramdrive is a bad move.

I wouldn't say sensitive data, I'd say data you need to persist. Actually putting sensitive data (stuff you don't want disclosed) into RAM might be a good idea in some ways. With data in RAM power off and the data is gone, where if you have it on a removable device it can sprout legs and walk away.

Re:What about ramdrives

[Anonymous Coward]

In DOS days, my first 4 MB RAM computer, I built a 1M ramdrive and put the OS there, booted from it, and ran the rest as system ram, and it was so much better than the XT it replaced. The load time was not any better, but running after that was great, bypassing the slow drives.

Though, that leads to the answer. The fastest drives are close to the slowest RAM, so there's not as big of a jump as when I first did it. Why bother with a ramdrive when I can get an SSD. Though, you could call your SSD "persistent RAM" and then you have a 1 or 2 TB ramdrive. It would be faster than my first ramdrive was.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a Samsung SSD crap out on me after less than six months in service, and that was just on a normal general-purpose desktop PC that was mostly just running Firefox, OpenOffice, and a few other light-to-medium-duty applications. (I.E. no gaming, no SQL database servers, nothing that would be constantly hammering the drive with large data requests and constant rewrites of information, or at least I shouldn't have thought so.)

I like the speed, but IMO, when it comes to reliability, SSDs are just not ready for prime-time.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[jones_supa]

More specifically, TRIM is not broken in those drives but it is designed to work against the behavior of Windows mass storage subsystem. Linux can issue unexpected command patterns which can make the drive enter weird states and get confused. It's the same thing that happens with ACPI: in practice no manufacturer writes against the official spec but against the Windows spec.

The mess should be fixed really. Either the SSD makers should get their shit together (the proper solution), or the Linux kernel should be modified to be more compatible (the practical solution). Currently there is just a list of devices with blacklisted TRIM in the kernel and that list keeps growing.

The speeds are not worth mentioning

[jones_supa]

The 850 Pro, Samsung said, can manage up to 550MBps sequential read and 520MBps sequential write rates and up to 100,000 random I/Os per second (IOPS).

There's nothing special in bothering to even mention the speeds of current consumer drives. They all saturate the SATA 6Gb/s bus, and that's that.

Re:The speeds are not worth mentioning

[FranTaylor]

They all saturate the SATA 6Gb/s bus, and that's that.

I really doubt that is true for truly random access like you would get in a multiuser database

Re:The speeds are not worth mentioning

[jones_supa]

In that case the IOPS value would still be worth reporting.

Good Summary

[Art3x]

This summary is well written. It is:

• Complete: It covers all of the main facts. There was no big question left in my mind after reading it. It's so complete that many will not go on to the article itself. (Not that they would anyway. This is Slashdot.) But that's what headlines and leads are supposed to do. They are supposed to tell the whole story, from beginning to end --- just not with every last detail. If you want all the last details, you read the rest of the article.
• Approachable: It defines all but the most common acroynms. For one it even goes further than just spelling out the acronym and also gives a nice little picture: ". . . 3D V-NAND technology, which stacks 32 layers of NAND atop one another in a microscopic skyscraper."
• Well-built: The English is good. Although technical, it uses plain English where it can instead of buzzwords. The sentences are not too long or tangled with several interdependent clauses. They have a good rhythm. You hear the words in your head even when reading silently, so sonic things still matter, like rhythm, alliteration, and rhyme (That doesn't mean you should rhyme all the time).

As a former professional technical writer, I am always on the look-out for good explanatory writing. I wanted to call it out here, especially since often we just complain when the summary's bad. When something's good, we're often silent. I suppose that's partly because when things are working, like the utility company, they don't attract attention and we just take them for granted. But writing like this is no accident.

Re:Good Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably mostly a copy of Samsung's press release, so a professional tech writer like you has written most of it.

Re:Good Summary

[WallyL]

I see you're point, and I agree!

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[Anonymous Coward]

So the kernel maintainers are supposed to just assume that since the equipment doesn't comply with the published spec, it will comply with some undocumented specification instead? The drives are blacklisted because they report features that are not actually implemented

This type of situation isn't exactly unique, I recall some video adapters reporting features allowing for "aero" capability around the release of Windows Vista, however the feature was disabled for those units due to them not implementing the features properly.

You need to try Nethack, then

[billstewart]

"My Documents"/prog/nethack on my laptop is about 7MB, including a bunch of bones files and a saved game or two...

But yes, bigger hard drives can be useful. My last laptop refresh at work went from a 300GB rotating hard disk to a 256GB SSD, and I had to move my music and Linux ISOs to an external drive. (Eventually I added a 128GB SDXC card, but the news keeps saying that the latest iTunes has serious bugs, so I haven't reinstalled it yet.)

Re:You need to try Nethack, then

[Archangel Michael]

Why keep ISOs at all. They are static and available via download and Torrent. Music? Just get Pandora or whatever, and stop worrying about what you have where it is and what format it might be in.

I don't own music, the artist does. I just listen.

Re:You need to try Nethack, then

[drinkypoo]

Why keep ISOs at all. They are static and available via download and Torrent.

Clearly you have a badassed internet connection. Mine is the opposite. It maxes out at 6Mbps. It's the best thing I can get where I live for $62/mo. I'd have to get a fractional T3 in order to get more bandwidth here, or a private point to point microwave link perhaps. I save ISOs for a rainy day. Literally.

Re:You need to try Nethack, then

[Archangel Michael]

By the time I need to reuse a Linux ISO, there is a newer version out there and I have to download it again anyways. It has little to nothing to do with bandwidth. My view is different because waiting two hours for an ISO to download isn't that big of a deal.

Re:You need to try Nethack, then

[chipschap]

This tempts me to raise the side question about whether games today are more fun. I don't mean slicker, with infinitely better graphics and so on. I mean more FUN. What makes a 50GB game more fun than an old 200kB game?

I'm not trying to be silly. In pre-computer days, we had fun with card and board games. In the 80s, we had great fun with those "new" computer games. Things progressed. Today, we can play incredible 50GB games, but does size and slickness and super graphics translate to more fun, or is there a point of diminishing returns, or even regression?

Re:You need to try Nethack, then

[donaldm]

This tempts me to raise the side question about whether games today are more fun. I don't mean slicker, with infinitely better graphics and so on. I mean more FUN. What makes a 50GB game more fun than an old 200kB game?

It depends on what types of games you like to play.

Personally I like a mix of Action/Adventure and RPG's so even old NES games like Zelda (131kB) or Faxanadu (262kB) are still fun to play although they do take quite allot of time to finish. Lets not get started on SNES and Sega games which were normally of the order of a few hundred kB to a max of 5MB. You can get older style PC games which are are less than a few MB and are great fun to play.

Many people today can afford a HDTV or even a larger monitor especially in first world countries so games have increased in size and graphics quality and in some respect decreased in play time although that is subjective and dependent on the games you like. For example if you are into on-line shooters you could spend hundreds of hours playing, however the single play mode if it has one may be very short. On the other hand RPG's like Skyrim which is single player only and no on-line component except for DLC addon's can take well over a 100 hours to complete and that is assuming you are just doing the main story line and not getting sidetracked which IMHO is very easy to do.

Of course there are MMO's which may have anything from mediocre to very high quality graphics which can gobble up hundreds if thousands of hours of time and are surprisingly small (a few GB initially) in size although that does depend on the game.

Re:You need to try Nethack, then

[smallfries]

I would say that they are. Cities Skylines is not just better than Simcity - it is the nostalgic version of simcity that I remember from my childhood. It actually lives up to those inflated expectations. It is a huge improvement on everything that has come before it.

GTAV is proving to be a lot of fun, not just flashier graphics but the gameplay is a lot more satisfying. The cutscenes seem to have improved a lot as well, some of them have made me laugh out loud. Unusual for a game storyline. Farcry 4 was a lot of fun. Both focus on emergent gameplay a.k.a "dicking around to see what happens".

If you like strategy then the Paradox catalogue is well worth a look. Games of that depth didn't exist 20-30 years ago. CK2 and EU4 are a lot of fun to play, and very engrossing.

Re:You need to try Nethack, then

[drinkypoo]

By the time I need to reuse a Linux ISO, there is a newer version out there and I have to download it again anyways.

Unless it's a brand new ISO, odds are a new install will need a whole bunch of packages which have been updated since the release anyway...

Re:You need to try Nethack, then

[Archangel Michael]

If it is a brand new ISO, you won't have it already downloaded. If you just downloaded it, and you keep it forever, that is your problem. Download ISO, use, discard. No need to keep it after use.

Most people don't use ISO's more than a couple times before they are outdated.

Re:You need to try Nethack, then

[drinkypoo]

Most people don't use ISO's more than a couple times before they are outdated.

I have to reburn old ISOs all the time for one reason or another. Why would I want to redownload it? Disk space is cheap, and more readily available than high-speed internet connections if you live in the sticks. Never underestimate the storage capacity of a newegg box full of HDDs, or something

The moderation here is absolute crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone posts actual experience with real data, and the Samsung fanbois bash them for it and mark them as a troll. This site is dead. It used to be a tech site. Now, it's just a bunch of angry children trying to protect the corporations they worship. Corporations have replaced god in this new Internet age. Now people want us to die for telling the truth about crappy products. That is the way of their kind.

Again, Samsung SSDs do not last long enough in any nontrivial application. The ones we have at work typically die within five months. They have a lower TCO than the Dell enterprise drives we were using, that were very high quality and typically lasted over a year, so we still buy the Samsung disposable drive.

Re:The moderation here is absolute crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only "angry children" interpret skepticism as "worshipping corporations". And only retarded angry children use teenybopper words like "fanboi".

Re:SSD Card Formats - Arrgh!

[billstewart]

My wife's Lenovo laptop power connection fried recently, and we got to discover the joys of different SSD formats. The first generation X1 Carbon had a Sandisk 20+6 format, and I think the second was M.2 and the third some mSATA format, but I may have the latter two backwards. After looking around online for a while, I found a $25 adapter board from China that lets you plug in the 20+6 drive so you can read it on a "standard" SATA connector, so we were able to back up the data before sending it in for (Yay! Just under the deadline!) warranty repair.

(We even got lucky, either they didn't need to replace the motherboard after all, or they did replace it with the same kind and the old SSD worked, or they replaced both and really transferred everything; in any case there's still an operating system and her data. I really wish Apple would lease their magnetic-connector power cord patent cheaply enough that everybody would use it, since it prevents all kinds of damage.)

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[macs4all]

I welcome Samsung's excellent cost/size value proposition! I just wish their drives were solid enough for our actual use.

Then how is Apple having such good luck with them? Granted, Macs aren't generally used as high-transaction-count Servers; but people who do media creation/editing can sure churn through some R/W cycles in a hurry.

Thin notebooks - Lenovo X1 Carbon didn't use 2.5"

[billstewart]

It has an SSD daughter card on the motherboard. (As I ranted above, three different generations of them had three different interface formats, but to be fair, the market was changing rapidly.) There's no room for a 2.5" drive. There are probably other ultra-thin notebooks with that limitation as well.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[barc0001]

Why in God's name are you using SSDs in a server (production or not) without using hardware RAID? And none of that fakey-RAID that Linux sees right through either, I might add. From what I can see it's a problem between Linux trying to manage TRIM and the drive getting confused. Cut out the middleman, RAID them and underprovision a bit to give the drives more life, and then let Linux only see the storage presented by the RAID card and let the card itself handle communication with the drives.

But it's SATA

[Anonymous Coward]

This opens up a whole new door for VSAN All Flash, and workstation storage. SATA is crap, it was made for magnetic disks, not ultra low-latency Flash. New generations of storage for the consumer/enterprise must become reverse compatible with SATA, but have NVME and SAS controllers. Any SATA device is not a "Ferrari" its a ford escort with a Ferrari body kit. They have practically no Queue Depth, constantly abort all commands, and many more downsides. That fact we are seeing new devices for SATA, and not "legacy SATA compatible" is a sign of the times. Times where the "think they know shit consumer" cause the release of inferior products, cause they are the majority. Much like video gamers be content with non-innovative regurgitated games. All in all its a horribly missed opportunity for Samsung, and companies like Intel will pick up this dropped ball. IMHO

Re:But it's SATA

[mlts]

The enterprise is the best place to see what leads. There, it is Kingston, Micron, Sandisk, and Intel. Business doesn't suffer fools gladly, and a drive maker with a poor record won't last long, especially since the drives are usually OEM-ed by an array maker (EMC, HP, Dell, NetApp), and the array/SAN maker has their rep on the line.

I do agree on the above... I wish there were a better protocol than SATA... but factored in would be the ability for drives to "downshift" to SATA, similar to how a USB 3.1 device can work on a USB 1.1 machine, albeit slowly.

Re:But it's SATA

[m.dillon]

Just in case you didn't know, SATA and SAS use the same physical interface on the drive side. For systems with a small number of drives there isn't a whole lot of difference. The main issue comes down to how fan-out is handled when a large number of drives are available but the driver is simply so that vendors can pump up the price for the controllers and drives (double, triple, etc for basically the same hardware). The SATA protocol was intentionally hobbled in order to not compete with the SAS protocol. However, for a small number of drives, performance will basically be the same and the cost difference has driven lots of vendors to simply support both and use point-to-point links instead of fan-out anyway.

-Matt

Re:But it's SATA

[Anonymous Coward]

SATA should be legacy. The standard should be SCSI or NVME, SATA is not made for dealing with ultra low-latency flash. The only reason i can think it hasn't been legacied in the consumer world is lack of consumer understanding.

Re:But it's SATA

[Anonymous Coward]

SAS is the scsi protocol. We don't care what the end users performance is running current software. The point of technology is to provide hardware* well beyond the current needs, while the end user learns to utilize it. The end user includes developers, sysadmin, mom, dad, etc. When you platform is limited, known or unknown, this prevents people from delivering solutions that could work if only that capability was there. Those in the enterprise don't require SAS drives because of the performance it offers under real workload conditions. Moreover its not as expensive as it once was. a 1TB SAS drive is roughly +$10 more than SATA. And SAS has dual controllers, allowing for multi-link, and even controller fail-over. Continuing to use SATA is hurting everyone, weather they know it or not.

Re:But it's SATA

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops "Those in the enterprise *DO* require SAS".

Hopefully it was inferred.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[mlts]

Maybe it is just me, but if I have to spec a SSD by brand, it will be Intel. $2200 gets me a 1.7 TB Intel enterprise tier SSD (DC S3710.) It isn't cheap by any means... but you get what you pay for, and Intel has a very good reputation for reliability.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[mlts]

Since TRIM is a standardized command, SSD vendors either need to support it, or like is done with the format command on IDE drives... do nothing, return a success value.

It is better to do nothing than to do it broken, and TRIM isn't exactly a new technology... it has been around for quite a few years now.

Re:encryption won't help you against malware

[billstewart]

Doesn't matter whether they use security-by-obscurity or real hardware-driven or OS-driven encryption. The malware's running on top of the OS, which already has access to all the data on the drive (unless you're doing something fancy with multiple user logins, each of whom has differently-encrypted home directories, but even then, the malware can attack whoever's logged in right now.)

Drive encryption mainly helps you against stolen hardware, and not usually very much, because that would require an inconvenient user interface.

Get the terms straight

[fnj]

TLC is a kind of MLC. "Multi" means "more than one". Multi does not mean "two and just two".

Re:Get the terms straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget SLC! (several level cells)

Re:Get the terms straight

[TeknoHog]

Also, the way I understand the term TLC, it would mean three voltage levels. So it can store log2(3) or about 1.58 bits per cell. Of course, "triple level" could mean it has 3x the old number of levels. Since you need 8 levels to store 3 bits, then I guess the old kind had 8/3 or a bit over 2 levels.

Re:Get the terms straight

[JesseMcDonald]

TLC means three bits per cell, not three voltages:

Samsung has pioneered high-performance MLC technology with three bits per cell for eight total states. This is commonly referred to as Triple Level Cell (TLC) and was first seen in the 840 EVO Series SSDs. Link

Re:Get the terms straight

[TeknoHog]

TLC means three bits per cell, not three voltages:

Samsung has pioneered high-performance MLC technology with three bits per cell for eight total states. This is commonly referred to as Triple Level Cell (TLC) and was first seen in the 840 EVO Series SSDs. Link

Well, I sort of figured this out, and hence wanted to point out that the terminology does not make sense. "Triple Level" does not sound like three bits or eight levels.

Re:Get the terms straight

[JesseMcDonald]

"Triple Level" does not sound like three bits or eight levels.

You're assuming that "levels" means "voltage levels". It's more like levels of a fractal; each level divides the range of voltages in half, yielding one additional bit of storage. This corresponds to the way the cells are actually programmed, shifting the voltage by 1/2 step relative to the previous bit, e.g.:

111 = 0.5 -> 0.75 -> 0.825
101 = 0.5 -> 0.5 -> 0.625
011 = 0 -> 0.25 -> 0.375

You could also visualize each cell as a three-level binary tree with eight leaf nodes.

Re:Get the terms straight

[Agripa]

Well, I sort of figured this out, and hence wanted to point out that the terminology does not make sense. "Triple Level" does not sound like three bits or eight levels.

This is marketing at work; it does not have to make technical sense. MLC is an acronym for multi level cell and commonly means 2 bits or 4 levels. TLC is an acronym for triple level cell and means 3 bits or 8 levels. This is why marketing gets the big bucks and engineering gets layoffs; if you are not sales, then you are overhead.

Of Course It's Time for Larger SSDs

[BrendaEM]

I am surprised it has taken this long to get to 2TB. Perhaps the price on 1TB will drop a little now, as they are no longer considered a premium drive.

[Personally, I have 750GB of data. When replacing drives, I've always bought twice as much storage as I have had data.
Once you do anything with video, space goes quick, I also have lots of photos, graphic projects, CAD and design projects.]

Re:Of Course It's Time for Larger SSDs

[AK Marc]

I just bought a 1 TB for $77 from Amazon, so I don't think they need a huge drop. http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-... (though the price has risen $2 since I bought it last month).

Re:Of Course It's Time for Larger SSDs

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a hybrid spinning drive, not a SSD. You're not making a fair comparison.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[FranTaylor]

It is better to do nothing than to do it broken

apparently you've learned nothing at all, modern computers are steeped in layers and layers of "doing it wrong" for the sake of compatibility

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[jones_supa]

There could be some kind of ata_mimic=winnt61 kernel argument. In this case it would enable a feature set that matches Windows 7. For example, some drives incorrectly claim to support queued TRIM when they actually don't, and this makes the drives explode under Linux. Under Windows 7 the drive happens to work, because the operating system does not even poll the drive for queued TRIM support, because it is not part of the Windows 7 platform.

Nice, But

[0xG]

Would like to have seen a SAS version.

Has anyone experimented with SSD RAID?

[swb]

...using these con/pro-sumer drives and not high-dollar SLC enterprise drives?

I've been long tempted to and more so with the generally positive results from the SSD write-them-to-death-athon that wrote to SSDs until they expired.

I know it's "not advised", risky, etc, but I'm thinking that maybe the drives are more reliable than we think and between backups and maybe a double parity RAID scheme or hot spare the risk is dialed down, or at least worth taking on a what-if basis.

For my own home/lab VMware cluster I'd sure like more disk performance than spinning rust gives me.

Re:Has anyone experimented with SSD RAID?

[mlts]

Because of the way virtualization has so much random I/O, going with a SSD will mean a night/day performance increase, just because each OS isn't fighting for a share of the drive head to read/write its own data.

Running virtual machines on a SSD versus a spinning platter, you definitely will notice a performance improvement.

Re:Has anyone experimented with SSD RAID?

[swb]

I don't doubt the performance would be stellar, but even with the encouraging news from the write endurance tests and stuff like Samsung's 10 year warranty on their Pro series drives I still am just nervous enough about long-term durability and some rubber-hits-the-road compatibility with systems like FreeNAS/Nas4Free that it makes me just a smidgen nervous about dumping $2500 into a new NAS setup.

My own personal usage patterns are probably low enough that durability really wouldn't be a major issue, although I wonder what the "write multiplier" effect is with even single parity RAID. Is every byte written to a filesystem multiplied by 2, 3, 5, or more? That could play into the durability angle faster than you might think. Just moving my 2.5 TB of VMs to a new NAS could end up being 5, 10 or more TBs of writes to the drives.

Re:Has anyone experimented with SSD RAID?

[WuphonsReach]

Keep backups, keep backups, keep backups.

That being said, good enterprise SSDs are around $0.60-$0.80 per GB the last time I looked. About $650 for a 1TB unit with a super-capacitor inside (which makes it more resilient against power failures).

SSD in software RAID is fine, unless you are going to be writing to the array 24x7 at max speed, you will never have issues with drive endurance with modern units.

The big win is that a RAID-1 array of SSDs can vastly outperform a short-stroked, dozen or two dozen, array of 15k RPM SAS drives. Using far less power and noise to do so. So as long as you don't need massive amounts of space, the SSDs in RAID-1 make the best choice. In fact, I expect 15k RPM SAS drives to exit the market within 2-3 years, pushed out by the SSDs. The older 10k RPM SAS will probably suffer the same fate a few years after that, or may linger on as nearline storage.

I have three Linux servers using SSDs, all with either 2x RAID-1 or 3x RAID-1 setups. No issues with any of them for the past 12-18 months. One of the servers hosts VM images, and it's made a huge improvement in performance/responsiveness of the guest VMs.

Re:Has anyone experimented with SSD RAID?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the problem with using SSDs in RAID is that some/many RAID controllers don't support TRIM yet, and that has a serious impact.
It's not quite as simple as just plugging SSDs in where you had magnetic drives.

Re:Has anyone experimented with SSD RAID?

[swb]

The cost factor is still a little painful, as I'd like about 4 TB usable which would put the drive cost north of $3k alone. With the NAS box I would need to build to house it, I'm now at $3500.

I agree with your prediction about SSD pushing out disks and I think it will be very disruptive to existing SAN vendors. Not that long ago, 5k IOPS was $100,000 and a lot of vendors like Compellent have entire sales pitches based around tiering data to "cheap" disks to minimize use of 15k disks and maintain high IOPS and storage capacity.

Those kinds of solutions are complex and require heavy duty controllers (Compellent uses 2x Dell R720s). What's the Compellent sales pitch going to look like when competitors are merely stuffing a shelf with 24 1 TB SSDs? No tiering necessary, no complex tiering software, ~20 TB of storage, 2 million IOPS, cheaper controllers due to less overhead, 10 gig NICs all for a fraction of the cost of 20 TB Compellent solution.

If you assume that you could do such a solution for $30k (which I think is on the high side), the competing solution from other vendors is well north of $100k. It'd still be a bargain even if you had to buy a replacement disk due to burnout once a month.

If Samsung is willing to warranty their 850 Pros for 10 years, I'd wager they could really blow the disk market wide open if they would partner with a SAN vendor and demonstrate their disks are viable in a SAN, even if replacement rates exceeded 15k SAS.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[tlhIngan]

Then how is Apple having such good luck with them? Granted, Macs aren't generally used as high-transaction-count Servers; but people who do media creation/editing can sure churn through some R/W cycles in a hurry.

First off, the problem is Linux is somehow triggering a bug in the TRIM implementation on Samsung SSDs.

We know Windows doesn't do it, as Windows users are probably the biggest consumer of Samsung SSDs and there isn't a mass loss of data problem from Windows users. (And from querying Windows 7 via the command line, Windows does use TRIM).

OS X may be using TRIM or not (depends on whether you're talking Apple-approved SSDs which are OEM versions, or third party user installed SSDs replacing the hard drive that was shipped). It's possible OS X may use TRIM in a way that it doesn't trigger the bug. Or maybe it does it less aggressively than Linux, so the bug incidence is far lower and no one noticed it yet.

All we know is that Linux definitely triggers the TRIM bug, OS X and Windows doesn't, yet (but there are no guarantees that Apple or Microsoft won't change the way Windows 10 or El Capitan does TRIM which WILL expose the bug).

The bug is in TRIM. That's all, if you don't use TRIM, it'll be fine. Maybe even using fstrim periodically is OK over using discard mode.

Re:SSD Card Formats - Arrgh!

[Blaskowicz]

I'm waiting for the patent on Apple's original iPod connector to expire so I can get a portable media player compatible with it.. or by then, everyone will have forgotten about it.
Don't get your hopes up.. I don't even know of a single media player compatible with the iPod connector.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the fact that Apple only uses TRIM on Apple-approved SSDs leads one to infer that there is indeed something buggy about TRIM under certain conditions, and Apple only tests for functionality on their OEM drives. Or it's just Apple being dicks, as usual.

"10-year" warranty

[danlip]

From TFA: "Samsung guarantees the 2TB 850 Pro for 10 years or 300 terabytes written (TBW), and the 2TB 850 EVO for five years or 150 TBW."

So the warranty is limited to 150 write cycles regardless of age for the Pro, and 75 for the EVO. That doesn't sound good to me.

Re:"10-year" warranty

[jtownatpunk.net]

The idea of a 10 year warranty makes me more nervous than a normal 1-3 year warranty. There must be a reason they need to make that kind of offer. When I bought my last car, I could have bought a mid-range Hyundai with a 10 year warranty but I bought a Toyota, barely glancing at the warranty terms. Why? Because it's a Toyota. It'll run forever with regular maintenance. It's about to roll over 100,000 with nothing but regular maintenance.

Re:"10-year" warranty

[TeknoHog]

So, if I fill the drive with my current backups and shelf it for 10 years, they guarantee it won't lose the data?

Re:"10-year" warranty

[thegarbz]

The idea of a 10 year warranty makes me more nervous than a normal 1-3 year warranty. There must be a reason they need to make that kind of offer.

You are nervous due to a general mistrust for corporations and thus don't understand the simple reason. Wildly extended warranties are typically a show of faith to customers that a company is willing to stand by the claims that are covered by a warranty: namely that a SSD won't just magically lose data and die due to time, but rather only due to wear out.

You car example is quite telling too. Hyundai were a horrendous brand tarnished by a reputation it deservedly received in the early 2000s over it's absolutely atrocious vehicle reliability. The introduction of a 10 year warranty coincided with a shakeup of their manufacturing which has now made them a worthy and quite reliable contender in the market. Standing by their product was a way to try and teach their customers that they've changed, and these days I see no reason why Hyundai couldn't compete with other manufacturers for my dollars, something that I would never have said 10 years ago.

On the flip side you bought a car from a manufacturer who had one of the highest number of product recalls in recent times all based on a reputation that I'm not sure they deserve anymore. Don't get me wrong I drive an old Toyota and it has been one of the most reliable cars I or my family have owned, but I'm not sure I would say the same about their modern cars, especially now that some of the German cars have come down in price locally. Again, something I would not have said 10 years ago.

Re:"10-year" warranty

[thegarbz]

Only if you don't know what a warranty is or how it works.

They guarantee that the drive won't magically stop working for no reason. Your data is entirely in your own hands.

Re:"10-year" warranty

[TeknoHog]

Only if you don't know what a warranty is or how it works.

They guarantee that the drive won't magically stop working for no reason. Your data is entirely in your own hands.

Well, my general understanding is that these warranties never cover the data itself, as it would be unrealistic to recover in many cases. But if the drive won't return my data, it means it's not working as intended, so the drive itself should be replaced.

I guess SSD warranties now need a clause about not being unused for too long. In fact, I wouldn't expect a HD to stay fully functional after 10 years of shelf time.

Re:"10-year" warranty

[Agripa]

I guess SSD warranties now need a clause about not being unused for too long. In fact, I wouldn't expect a HD to stay fully functional after 10 years of shelf time.

I would. I have powered up hard drives after 10 years and they retained their contents just fine but of course those hard drives were at least 10 year old designs. I have yet to power up any high density Flash device after 1 year and have it fully retain its contents.

Re:"10-year" warranty

[Agripa]

Oh, and to add insult to injury, most (all?) Flash devices do not do idle time scrubbing so they will forget whether powered or not. I assume SSDs are an exception.

encryption? huh?

[Gravis Zero]

i'm not talking about encryption, you fool! i'm talking about firmware! why else would i write "permanently infected" if not to say it was firmware?

Re:encryption? huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

If no unencrypted data is written to the drive, then it probably doesn't have much of a way to leak your data - provided your key is still undisclosed and there is no exploit it can perform over the host interface.

Encryption, though, may not prevent communication between the bugged drive and the outside world, just it will have nothing sensible to talk about beyond usage patterns.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[PRMan]

Actually, a recent article showed that SSDs are much MORE reliable than PCs (I think it was Backblaze). They just aren't cheap enough for many applications yet.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[PRMan]

PC=>HD. Sorry.

Re:SSD Card Formats - Arrgh!

[adolf]

Or, easier: Someone should market some simple extension cables, ala the original Xbox's controller cords.

Trip over the cable? No problem! It orients itself automatically to be easily unplugged mid-span, and neither the laptop nor the person take a spill.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[Trogre]

While I agree with you for the most part, why do you say Hardware RAID instead of Software?

The historical reasons for not using Software RAID (via mdadm) have long been resolved:

• No scope for hot-swapping disks (resolved by AHCI eight years ago)
• Slow (resolved about ten years ago when multi-core CPUs effectively eliminated CPU overhead in Software RAID)

What, then, is the advantage of spending hundreds (or thousands) on a RAID card and introducing another point of failure?

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[Rockoon]

Since TRIM is a standardized command, SSD vendors either need to support it, or like is done with the format command on IDE drives... do nothing, return a success value.

They do support the TRIM command.

The "bug" is how TRIM and command queuing interact (specifically a race condition labeling the wrong logical sectors RZAT/DRAT) I put "bug" in quotes because the specification specifically says that TRIM is a non-queued command. Windows/NTFS makes sure that the queue is empty before issuing a TRIM. Linux/EXT4 does not.

Ideally the drives should make sure that their queue is empty themselves, but it likely takes a tortured reading of the specification to think that compliant drives will make sure that their queue is empty.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[Trax3001BBS]

We've been using Samsung drives in "non production" status servers, embedded servers, etc. and have had a terrible time of it. The first drives we bought a few years ago (840 Pro) were good, but we've seen Samsung SSDs run entirely through their write capacity (as reported by SMART) and then go dead when not even mounted! Turns out we aren't the only ones to get bit by buggy Samsung drives.

And the 10 year warranty that interest me - running a 32Gig SSD drive for a week I lost 48K of the drive.

It's or bytes written.

"Samsung guarantees the 2TB 850 Pro for 10 years or 300 terabytes written (TBW), and the 2TB 850 EVO for five years or 150 TBW.

840 Series 120GB/250GB/500GB 3 years
840 PRO Series 128GB/256GB/512GB 5 years (73 TBW for enterprise applications)"

http://www.samsung.com/global/...

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[Anonymous Coward]

My intel died in a year.

Intel has a reputation for backdoors like VPRO/VT/AMT, not reliability.

Re:Warning: DO NOT USE SAMSUNG SSDs IN LINUX SERVE

[barc0001]

I still prefer hardware RAID because of trouble I had with those legacy issues yes, but I also got very used to the convenience of letting the RAID card manage the storage and having Linux only deal with the device the card presented to it instead of managing each drive. I also think the RAID cards' management software and hardware monitoring is superior, I've had a few software RAIDs have a disk fail without proper alerting and had more than one close call as a result. This newest info on the SSDs having problems is just more icing on the "yep, my way is the right way" cake. YMMV of course.

Eggs

[ssam]

Not putting all my eggs in one basket. Imagine loosing 2TB at once.

Personally I use 100s of 8GB drivers and a nest of usb hubs and adapters. When they die (a few per week) I only loose a few GB.