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Snow Cone Capone
Jul 31, 2003


BIG HEADLINE posted:

Yeah, general reliability. And the only thing that it comes down to really is "good brand/reliable record." That's why the 840 EVO knocked everyone for a loop - because we didn't expect Samsung to have cut corners like they did. If anything, their fuckup made the 850 EVO into a better (if slightly more expensive in build cost to avoid more bad publicity) drive.

Thanks for the info! lol didn't realize the 840 EVO was considered a gently caress-up, both me and my father use those for our daily workhorses and they've been problem-free since we got them a couple years back.

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oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
There was an issue with some serious slow down over time (It was still more responsive than a HDD) but it got fixed in a firmware update and it has been good ever since.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

Kelp Me! posted:

Thanks for the info! lol didn't realize the 840 EVO was considered a gently caress-up, both me and my father use those for our daily workhorses and they've been problem-free since we got them a couple years back.

With the most recent firmware, they're fine. If you haven't updated them, you might want to. EXT0DB6Q is the most recent.

td4guy
Jun 13, 2005

I always hated that guy.

Too bad my mSATA 840 EVO never got the update. Samsung forgot about us.

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



Apparently Spotify has been guilty of spending gigabytes of write cycles for no purpose, so if you've been using Spotify you may have gotten some lifetime shaved off your SSD.

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?
I just saw this. I have a four-year-old Crucial with 450GB or so; time to run a health check. :(

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!

nielsm posted:

Apparently Spotify has been guilty of spending gigabytes of write cycles for no purpose, so if you've been using Spotify you may have gotten some lifetime shaved off your SSD.
That would certainly explain why I have 13TB of data written in just six months, even tho I'm using my NAS as scratch disk for about anything media creation I do.

I'm like between a stone and a hard place. Google Play Music sucks balls here in Belgium while Spotify has a way way better catalog, but Spotify does pull poo poo like that.

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE
That sounds like one of the legit use-cases for a RAMdisk. Or at least a spinning disk.

It'll still probably be fine, but unnecessary wear is unnecessary wear.

nitsuga
Jan 1, 2007

I'm thinking about getting a Sandisk drive (256 GB). How does the Ultra II compare to the X400? Is there going to be any noticeable difference between the two?

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

nitsuga posted:

I'm thinking about getting a Sandisk drive (256 GB). How does the Ultra II compare to the X400? Is there going to be any noticeable difference between the two?

You won't notice the slightest bit of difference, but get the X400. It's newer - the Ultra II's been around since 2014 (and undergone a few revisions since), while the X400 is a 2016 drive.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.
I just had an Adata SU800 installed in my work PC.

It's a very cheap drive with 3D TLC so it'll be interesting to see how it goes in the long term - I'm picking there is a good chance of 840 Evo type issues cropping up.

Vidaeus
Jan 27, 2007

Cats are gonna cat.
I'm currently using a Samsung 840, 120 GB SSD as my boot drive, with a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB as my "steam" drive, with a couple of Samsung HD103 1TB drives for music, documents, general other stuff. Would I see any real world benefits from upgrading to one of the new Samsung 960 EVOs 1TB when they come out and using this as a bbootstrap drive? Or even a 950 Evo?

B-Nasty
May 25, 2005

Vidaeus posted:

Would I see any real world benefits from upgrading to one of the new Samsung 960 EVOs 1TB when they come out and using this as a bbootstrap drive? Or even a 950 Evo?

The general answer to this is: no. Day-to-day, seat-of-pants performance will not be noticeably better with a NVMe-based SSD.

There are workloads that could potentially benefit from the added speed, but currently, for most people, these drives aren't worth the price premium for anything other than e-peen bragging rights.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

B-Nasty posted:

The general answer to this is: no. Day-to-day, seat-of-pants performance will not be noticeably better with a NVMe-based SSD.

There are workloads that could potentially benefit from the added speed, but currently, for most people, these drives aren't worth the price premium for anything other than e-peen bragging rights.

Anyone investing in an NVMe drive should be doing so knowing they're an 'early adopter.' In 6-9 months the marketplace will be *flush* with them and competition will inevitably drive prices down. It also doesn't help that as general purpose storage drives, OSes still need to be optimized for HDDs. SSDs 'choke' on very small sub-4K files, and NVMe drives are no different. The best analogy is pitting a Hyundai Elantra, a V6 Honda Accord, and a Z06 Corvette on the same line and measuring how long it takes all three to go ten feet.

NVMe drives can be beneficial for boot times and handling massive textures in games - the faster you can allow storage, CPU, and GPU to inter-communicate, the better, but PCIe-linked storage is still in its infancy. Doesn't mean you shouldn't shy away from getting a board with an M.2 slot, though.

Vidaeus
Jan 27, 2007

Cats are gonna cat.
Ok thanks for the advice guys. Wont waste my money on one.

VulgarandStupid
Aug 5, 2003
I AM, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, UNFUCKABLE AND A TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT TO EVERYONE. DAE WANNA CUM PLAY WITH ME!?




Has anyone seen any 1TB SSDs pop up in the Black Friday ads? I want to get a second one and do away with spinners in my tiny mITX builds.

Agrajag
Jan 21, 2006

gat dang thats hot
So I just bought a new Samsung 850 EVO 500GB over the weekend and I've forgotten the steps, if any, I should do before I use Samsung's Data Migration tool to transfer my OS over from my 120GB SSD. Anyone able to give me a quick rundown? Thanks.

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



Agrajag posted:

So I just bought a new Samsung 850 EVO 500GB over the weekend and I've forgotten the steps, if any, I should do before I use Samsung's Data Migration tool to transfer my OS over from my 120GB SSD. Anyone able to give me a quick rundown? Thanks.

Just run it and let it do its job. When it's done, shut down, unplug the old SSD, and test if the system boots from the new clone. If it works, you're done. If it doesn't, you can just go back to the old SSD and try again.

Neon Belly
Feb 12, 2008

I need something stronger.

Answered!

Neon Belly fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Nov 15, 2016

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Neon Belly posted:

I know the answer is usually to just buy the 850 EVO, but a friend offered me a lightly used 840 500gb for $50 (sat in his ps4 that he rarely used). This is an easy yes, right?

Magician:



Incredibly easy yes.

everythingWasBees
Jan 9, 2013




For a upper limit of $120, what would be a good SSD, preferably from Amazon? It's for a laptop harddrive that'll be dual booting Linux and Windows, if that matters at all.

SlayVus
Jul 10, 2009
Grimey Drawer

everythingWasBees posted:

For a upper limit of $120, what would be a good SSD, preferably from Amazon? It's for a laptop harddrive that'll be dual booting Linux and Windows, if that matters at all.

You can pick up an X400 512GB for $134, an 850 EVO is $165.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0196FPT1Y Amazon is out of stock, but there is a new one fulfilled by Amazon for $135.

SlayVus fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Nov 14, 2016

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
Disregard - not a great deal at all.

Binary Badger
Oct 11, 2005

Trolling Link for a decade


Newegg has the 512 GB X400 for $134..

everythingWasBees
Jan 9, 2013




130 is more than I can really afford to spend (120 is pushing it and is a hard upper limit,) but 256 for $80 looks pretty doable. Not going to be putting many games or anything on it, and I still have a 500GB drive for documents and such. That seem decent for the price?

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

everythingWasBees posted:

130 is more than I can really afford to spend (120 is pushing it and is a hard upper limit,) but 256 for $80 looks pretty doable. Not going to be putting many games or anything on it, and I still have a 500GB drive for documents and such. That seem decent for the price?

11 days to Black Friday. Just sayin'.

Also, the 500GB 850 EVO currently comes with a Watch Dogs 2 code you should be able to unload for ~$30.

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Nov 15, 2016

metallicaeg
Nov 28, 2005

Evil Red Wings Owner Wario Lemieux Steals Stanley Cup
Amazon carries Mushkin's Triactor for $120
http://a.co/gjQOR1v

BobHoward
Feb 13, 2012

The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull

BIG HEADLINE posted:

It also doesn't help that as general purpose storage drives, OSes still need to be optimized for HDDs. SSDs 'choke' on very small sub-4K files, and NVMe drives are no different.

FYI, all popular consumer operating systems (for values of "popular" including obscure Linux or BSD bistros) use file systems that default to 4K clusters, or larger, with partitions aligned to 4K boundaries. In these scenarios the SSD never even sees a sub-4K command regardless of file size.

Also, NVME's advantages are greatest on random small accesses. People like to focus on the throughput advantage PCIe offers over SATA, but the real excitement (imo) is its ultra low latency / overhead command queue architecture. SATA command overhead means you need high queue depth to get even close to the rated IOPs of any SATA drive, but you won't find desktop systems generating high QD loads. An NVME drive should give you lots more IOPs at low QD. Although many operating systems need more tuning to make the most of this, it is a real advantage that is here already, and is quite fun on drives that see the most random IOPs (like the boot disk).

Hikaki
Oct 11, 2005
Motherfucking Fujitsu Heavy Industries
I have a z97-a mobo which only supports pcie2x on the m2 slot. I need more space and I want to get an m2 ssd in particular because my sata slots are all full. Is the 600p a good idea in my case? Looks like it has poo poo numbers but my mobo won't be able to run something like a 960 evo/pro at full speed anyway. I could also just get a big sata ssd and just get rid of a smaller one but hearing about the better access times on nvme drives has me leaning towards the 600p.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


Hikaki posted:

I have a z97-a mobo which only supports pcie2x on the m2 slot. I need more space and I want to get an m2 ssd in particular because my sata slots are all full. Is the 600p a good idea in my case? Looks like it has poo poo numbers but my mobo won't be able to run something like a 960 evo/pro at full speed anyway. I could also just get a big sata ssd and just get rid of a smaller one but hearing about the better access times on nvme drives has me leaning towards the 600p.

The Intel 600p and two lanes of PCI line up well on paper. Bear in mind that the theoretical bandwidth of PCIe SSDs isn't where the magic happens for home / office / gamer users. It's in the more modern, quicker protocol and far more responsive read/writes.

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?
How reliable is buying SSDs from eBay? My current laptop only supports 2.5", and I'm hoping to upgrade to something with NVME within a year. I'm considering grabbing a 2.5" Samsung 850 EVO with 1TB now, and then selling it back in a year's time. I figure if the price collapses, that probably means the NVME drives are cheaper as well, and if the price doesn't collapse, then it spreads the NVME cost over time.

Is this a terrible idea?

stevewm
May 10, 2005

Hikaki posted:

I have a z97-a mobo which only supports pcie2x on the m2 slot. I need more space and I want to get an m2 ssd in particular because my sata slots are all full. Is the 600p a good idea in my case? Looks like it has poo poo numbers but my mobo won't be able to run something like a 960 evo/pro at full speed anyway. I could also just get a big sata ssd and just get rid of a smaller one but hearing about the better access times on nvme drives has me leaning towards the 600p.

Just be aware if you are using any of the PCIe 1x/4x slots on your mobo. The z97 platform is limited enough in PCIe lanes that on most using the m2 slot disables one or more of the 1x/4x slots.

I ran into this issue with my Gigabyte z97 mobo.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


Potato Salad posted:

The Intel 600p and two lanes of PCI line up well on paper. Bear in mind that the theoretical bandwidth of PCIe SSDs isn't where the magic happens for home / office / gamer users. It's in the more modern, quicker protocol and far more responsive read/writes.

I'd be really interested in pcie nvme drive reviews aimed at these use cases - Are there any good reviews concentrating on load time?

We've got maximum bandwidth up the wazoo but I just want games to load as quick as possible. Low queue depth etc.

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy
I swear it doesn't feel like I am waiting for the SSD anymore. It feels more like Windows 10 has inefficiencies that cause delays rather than waiting for a HD to load. Also the task manager says my Intel 750 tends to be around %50 or less usage regardless of what I am doing.

metallicaeg
Nov 28, 2005

Evil Red Wings Owner Wario Lemieux Steals Stanley Cup

Hikaki posted:

I have a z97-a mobo which only supports pcie2x on the m2 slot. I need more space and I want to get an m2 ssd in particular because my sata slots are all full. Is the 600p a good idea in my case? Looks like it has poo poo numbers but my mobo won't be able to run something like a 960 evo/pro at full speed anyway. I could also just get a big sata ssd and just get rid of a smaller one but hearing about the better access times on nvme drives has me leaning towards the 600p.

600p is fine, but is very slow compared to other NVMe drives. I, too, have a Z97 board with a x2 slot and when the time comes I'm probably going to drop a 1TB 960 Evo in there - sure I won't be able to use the full performance of it with that slot, but I'm also assuming I'll get a new board in 5 years which I'm sure the drive will last that long for.

Hikaki
Oct 11, 2005
Motherfucking Fujitsu Heavy Industries

metallicaeg posted:

600p is fine, but is very slow compared to other NVMe drives. I, too, have a Z97 board with a x2 slot and when the time comes I'm probably going to drop a 1TB 960 Evo in there - sure I won't be able to use the full performance of it with that slot, but I'm also assuming I'll get a new board in 5 years which I'm sure the drive will last that long for.

I was considering going this route as well but I figured that something faster/cheaper will be available by upgrade time. Even if I spring for a 960 now, I'll probably end up getting the new thing at that point because of tech lust (same reason why I want the 960).

stevewm posted:

Just be aware if you are using any of the PCIe 1x/4x slots on your mobo. The z97 platform is limited enough in PCIe lanes that on most using the m2 slot disables one or more of the 1x/4x slots.

I ran into this issue with my Gigabyte z97 mobo.

drat, I didn't know that. Mine has 2 pcie1x slots and I'm using one, and it looks like using the m2 slot disables both of them. There goes that idea!

Neon Belly
Feb 12, 2008

I need something stronger.

Samsung 960 reviews are out. Here is AnandTech's take.

everythingWasBees
Jan 9, 2013




So I realized I needed an extra cord for installing the SSD for my laptop, but since I was gonna install Linux anyway I'm thinking about just installing that on it for now and transferring the windows install after.
For cloning, how does it work, and what application is there to use? As of right now I have a SSD, and a HDD. The HDD has a factory reset Windows install. The SSD will have a full linux install. Can I move /home over to the HHD and the core Windows install, minus user folders, over to the SSD easily? Will I have to reinstall Linux to make this work?

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

everythingWasBees posted:

So I realized I needed an extra cord for installing the SSD for my laptop, but since I was gonna install Linux anyway I'm thinking about just installing that on it for now and transferring the windows install after.
For cloning, how does it work, and what application is there to use? As of right now I have a SSD, and a HDD. The HDD has a factory reset Windows install. The SSD will have a full linux install. Can I move /home over to the HHD and the core Windows install, minus user folders, over to the SSD easily? Will I have to reinstall Linux to make this work?

The free partition cloning tool I've used is Clonezilla. On the one hand, it's free and worked when I've used it. On the other, it's UI is... eccentric to say the least.

Moving Windows I'm not sure about (haven't run Windows outside of a VM in a decade), but moving Linux is a potentially weird issue. At the least, you're going to have to reconfigure the bootloader and probably the initramfs (the package of files your Linux Kernel needs to boot, including config files, utilities, and the big one, drivers) in the /boot/ directory (or EFI partition, that's distro dependant on if those are even separate) if you need new drivers for the drive. (Probably fine with a SATA drive, certainly not with an NVMe one). That's pretty distro dependant, so you'll need to look up instructions for that (most likely just run grub-mkconfig to regenerate the bootloader config once it's set up since you're likely using GRUB for a bootloader and then dracut/mkinitcpio or whatever your local equivalent is for initramfs). Oh, and UEFI might need to be pointed at the new drive. Reinstalling might honestly be the easier option if you're not especially wanting to dig around in the internals, especially since most app configuration in Linux is stored in /home and will carry over to a new install once you have your packages reinstalled.

Moving /home onto a new drive's a snap, especially if you have it on its own partition though. If you reinstall Linux, you might have one or two weird permission issues to sort out, but it's pretty straightforward.

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BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
So evidently Newegg is going to have the 1TB 850 EVO up for sale for $250 on Black Friday. That'll sell out in seconds. =/

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