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

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.

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: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.

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: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: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: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.