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B-Nasty posted:Bitlocker (Windows) will allow you to encrypt removable drives with a simple password scheme. It's pretty handy, because if your machine is secure/encrypted, you can save the password so that you don't have to enter it when you insert that drive again. Neat. So best cheap SSD? Samsung 750?
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Oct 9, 2017 07:36
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RightClickSaveAs posted:Is anyone still doing writeups on SSD tech like Anand used to when he was still running the site? He was fantastic at explaining the technology used in SSDs, and 90% of what I know about their workings come from these, but I just realized it's been several years now and I don't know how/if the technology has changed since. Most writeups you can find now go oversimplified (each cell is like a bucket of water!) or super technical into the physics behind it all, I miss the intermediary explanations like he was so good at giving: Each cell is pretty much like a bucket of water though... Sorry. The main development since then is 3D NAND. It hasn't changed the fundamental idea of a flash memory cell -- a FET transistor with a special isolated gate which acts a charge trap. The state of charge in the floating gate can be read by applying a low voltage, or altered by applying high energy pulses that induce quantum tunneling through the floating gate's insulation. All of that's the same, the new is methods of building vertical stacks of NAND memory cells on one chip. Or buckets, if you will. Although the resulting chips take more process steps to manufacture than planar NAND, the overall cost per bit is significantly lower and the density much higher. Also of note: prior to the development of 3D, planar NAND had been scaled pretty close to the physics-based limit on how small a NAND memory cell can possibly be. That limit was based on the thickness of the oxide insulation around the floating gate. 2x and 1x nm flash process nodes were starting to hit problems with cells being leaky buckets, having less and less useful erase/write cycle lifespan, increased program (write) time, and other issues. 3D offered a nice one-time opportunity to go backwards on feature size to get better floating gate insulation while still moving forward on density; as a result most (maybe all?) 3D NAND on the market to date performs better, retains data longer, and has better write cycle endurance than planar NAND.
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Oct 9, 2017 09:35
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Red_Fred posted:Neat. So best cheap SSD? Samsung 750? MX300 uses MLC NAND, so that'd be my pick.
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Oct 9, 2017 16:55
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BIG HEADLINE posted:MX300 uses MLC NAND, so that'd be my pick. I think the Samsung Pro series all use MLC too.
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Oct 9, 2017 18:22
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redeyes posted:I think the Samsung Pro series all use MLC too. Yeah, but he asked for the best *cheap* SSDs. The Samsung 750 is poor-to-average at best, and the 850 Pro in an external enclosure is overkill.
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Oct 9, 2017 19:03
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As a note, a SSD does not make a good backup drive if you're doing the usual backup style, plugging in an external drive every couple of weeks to sync data, and leaving it unplugged the rest of the time. To continue the bucket analogy: the water in the buckets evaporates over time. The electrons stuffed into the charge cell don't want to be there, and will naturally migrate out. At some point the controller can't tell how much water the bucket was supposed to have and you get read errors. Particularly with TLC cells this can be a bad source of read errors -- the 840 Evo problems were all rooted in charge migration. When powered and in use, the SSD fixes this as part of it's normal self-maintenance program. Data gets shuffled around to balance wear, cells get refreshed if old data is getting hard to read. If it's unpowered it can't do that. So for Red_Fred's purpose of a drive to dump photos to this isn't particularly relevant, as long as you're then grabbing that data to a different system before you leave the drive sitting on a shelf for a month. And for traditional backups a spinner is still the best option.
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Oct 9, 2017 21:44
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This will be dumping photos to during the trip and then clearing it once I'm back and have backed up everything to the cloud. So SSD should be fine?
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Oct 10, 2017 01:30
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Red_Fred posted:This will be dumping photos to during the trip and then clearing it once I'm back and have backed up everything to the cloud. So SSD should be fine? For some weeks or even a few months it should be fine. For years, it will degrade. On the other hand, if you're even just a little careful about packing a spinning drive would still be a better deal.
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Oct 10, 2017 07:13
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Red_Fred posted:This will be dumping photos to during the trip and then clearing it once I'm back and have backed up everything to the cloud. So SSD should be fine? Yeah you're fine. It was more a note on the potential drawbacks of SSDs for general-purpose backup. But I'm with nielsm in that a SSD seems like overkill for the purpose. A laptop drive can stand plenty of travel abuse as long as it's not being shaken around while in use, so unless you are going to some extreme places you shouldn't need to worry about that. And the SSD's speed advantage is not gonna make a difference when moving photos from the camera to the drive, the camera's gonna be the limiting factor. It seems like extra money being put to little advantage.
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Oct 10, 2017 09:27
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Thanks everyone. I'm going to grab a Hitachi normal drive given all of this.
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Oct 10, 2017 10:23
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What's the verdict on Western Digital? I never hear anyone talking about their SSDs but I seem to see them being offered for sale a lot.
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Oct 12, 2017 08:19
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klosterdev posted:What's the verdict on Western Digital? I never hear anyone talking about their SSDs but I seem to see them being offered for sale a lot. The WD Blue is a fine budget SSD as it's the same as the SanDisk X400.
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Oct 12, 2017 08:23
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What about the new WD Blue they're selling ("WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD") that goes up to 2 TB and is slightly more expensive?
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Oct 12, 2017 15:25
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orcane posted:What about the new WD Blue they're selling ("WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD") that goes up to 2 TB and is slightly more expensive? Nearly as fast as the 850 Evo for less money, I got the 1TB in M.2 myself recently. The 3D NAND makes it more or less the same as the SanDisk Ultra 3D, which branding is being phased out in favor of the WD Blue 3D Crucial's MX300 is also a good buy metallicaeg fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Oct 12, 2017 |
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Oct 12, 2017 15:47
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Newegg's email circular has a combo deal on Samsung 850 Evo 500GB x 2 for $280. Deal is only lasting for 72HRs. Pretty close to what 1TBs we're selling for a couple months ago before shortage. Currently the 1TB is ~$330.
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Oct 12, 2017 20:57
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Cross-posting from the Hardware questions Megathread:Wilford Cutlery posted:What should I use to test a Lite-On SSD?
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Oct 14, 2017 05:22
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Wilford Cutlery posted:Cross-posting from the Hardware questions Megathread: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/bluescreenview/ That's not the only BSOD parser, but it should be able to track down the driver file that caused the crash.
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Oct 14, 2017 05:31
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If the BSOD mentions anything about windows system files, generally its RAM memory. Could also be corrupt HD but usually RAMs.
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Oct 15, 2017 18:55
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redeyes posted:If the BSOD mentions anything about windows system files, generally its RAM memory. Could also be corrupt HD but usually RAMs. Counterpoint: When my old video card was dying it caused BSODs for ntoskrnl exclusively, instead of the AMD drivers like you'd have expected.
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Oct 15, 2017 19:36
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Crap, I was just downtown to turn on a server that doesn't have DRAC. I forgot to go upstairs and and try that on the laptop, which has been running memtest86 since Friday.
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Oct 15, 2017 20:35
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39 error-free passes of memtest86 later, tried BlueScreenView but the C:\Windows\Minidump folder doesn't exist. Looking thru the System logs, I see Event ID 161 (volmgr), Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation.
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Oct 16, 2017 00:25
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Wilford Cutlery posted:39 error-free passes of memtest86 later, tried BlueScreenView but the C:\Windows\Minidump folder doesn't exist. Looking thru the System logs, I see Event ID 161 (volmgr), Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation. While there's no way to be certain since there's nothing coming up in Crystal Disk Info, I've heard of a lot of people having to get replacements from Dell for Lite-On SSDs. I'd see if you can just swap in another SSD or even a hard disk for diagnosis.
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Oct 16, 2017 01:52
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A repair install of Windows might not hurt, either. Rewrite all of the DLLs and such.
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Oct 16, 2017 02:45
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BIG HEADLINE posted:A repair install of Windows might not hurt, either. Rewrite all of the DLLs and such.
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Oct 16, 2017 02:56
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Unrelated: I wrote a toy SSD flash translation layer to handle page allocation, garbage collection, and wear leveling, and that poo poo ain’t easy. I also have a newfound respect for how helpful TRIM can be for the FTL to handle its business.
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Oct 16, 2017 02:58
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:He’s reset and reimaged Windows 10 already. Thanks, glad someone's reading. From Googling the "Dump file creation failed" message it seems there are similar experiences out there, seems like a driver incompatibility introduced with the Creators Update. This is a standard issue company laptop but it's the only one with this problem. I have a spare 250GB Samsung 850 Evo that I'll try in it. If it still happens, gotta be another driver I guess.
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Oct 16, 2017 05:31
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Geemer posted:Counterpoint: When my old video card was dying it caused BSODs for ntoskrnl exclusively, instead of the AMD drivers like you'd have expected. Eyah never ever seen that. Odd as heck.
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Oct 16, 2017 05:37
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It's my birthday, time for more storage. I'm looking for around 500-1tb of the really good stuff. M.2. I read the first few posts but they mention 2016 as "current" so what is the best in the $250-400 range for 500-1tb and super fast. I have an Asus motherboard with this: Intel® Z170 chipset : 1 x M.2 x4 Socket 3, with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE mode)*1 6 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), gray, , 4 ports from 2 x SATA Express 2 x SATA Express port Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10 Intel® Rapid Storage Technology supports*2 Supports Intel® Smart Response Technology*2
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Oct 17, 2017 05:54
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Beast of Bourbon posted:It's my birthday, time for more storage. I'm looking for around 500-1tb of the really good stuff. M.2. At $400 you're *just* under the wire for a 1TB 960 EVO, but evidently Samsung is getting ready to launch the 970 and 980 (seems naming both drives '960' were confusing people) NVMe drives. Micro Center was just selling the 1TB 960 EVO for $339 a few weeks back, but they sold out systemwide in something like 36 hours. Details on the 970 and 980 drives: http://techreport.com/news/32695/report-samsung-970-and-980-nvme-ssds-are-on-the-way It also appears the 860 is coming soon as well: https://www.techpowerup.com/237913/samsung-860-evo-ssd-spotted-in-sata-io-listing BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 05:59
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Great. All they had to do was make a 2TB 960 evo, and price it at $800-$850. Lots of rich people out there don't need a faster SSD, just more capacity at the same drat speed and the convenience of a single drive.
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Oct 17, 2017 14:58
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I don’t see the need for an upgrade from the 960 series either, unless it’s for PCIe 4.0 which the this new 970/980 doesn’t seem to support.
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Oct 17, 2017 15:15
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Random general SSD question, how often should Trim be sent? Are we talking once a week, every few days, once a month, after large amounts of writing, like an OS update, can doing it too often cause damage and lower the life of the SSD?
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Oct 17, 2017 15:55
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With a modern OS it's sent constantly with virtually every I/O operation. I think if you're on something embedded with a custom OS that was made before SSDs it shouldn't matter since the performance will be so much better regardless it's not worth having to micromanage it and if you're on a general use machine you should update to a newer OS.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:09
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Beast of Bourbon posted:It's my birthday, time for more storage. I'm looking for around 500-1tb of the really good stuff. M.2. While not super fast, but still fast, $300 will get you 1TB SATA drives in M.2 as well. Crucial's MX300 and WD's 3D Blue both have near-850 Evo performance and have that capacity in that format.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:16
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Im_Special posted:Random general SSD question, how often should Trim be sent? Are we talking once a week, every few days, once a month, after large amounts of writing, like an OS update, can doing it too often cause damage and lower the life of the SSD? Trim isn't a command that affects the entire drive, but only a block of storage at a time. The idea is to tell the flash controller when a region of the physical storage is no longer used by real data and can safely be erased without moving the contents somewhere else. When the controller knows what blocks are empty it can better work its wear leveling algorithms, so trim'ing should never hurt, only increase longevity.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:21
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craig588 posted:With a modern OS it's sent constantly with virtually every I/O operation. I think if you're on something embedded with a custom OS that was made before SSDs it shouldn't matter since the performance will be so much better regardless it's not worth having to micromanage it and if you're on a general use machine you should update to a newer OS. I'm on Window 10 with a Samsung 850 EVO, and maybe "Trim" is the wrong word here, what I'm referring to is that "XX days since last run", this seems to vary with everyone, like with this picture (not mine). (Isn't this just a Trim command?) 
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Oct 17, 2017 16:25
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Trim isn't a command. Think of it as a notification.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:29
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Im_Special posted:I'm on Window 10 with a Samsung 850 EVO, and maybe "Trim" is the wrong word here, what I'm referring to is that "XX days since last run", this seems to vary with everyone, like with this picture (not mine). (Isn't this just a Trim command?) Yeah thats a trim pass. What it does is zero out deleted data getting the NAND cells ready to be written. Zeroing out the cells takes a poo poo load longer than writing to cells so instead of doing the whole thing as you delete something, it schedules it for idle time.
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Oct 17, 2017 16:32
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Im_Special posted:I'm on Window 10 with a Samsung 850 EVO, and maybe "Trim" is the wrong word here, what I'm referring to is that "XX days since last run", this seems to vary with everyone, like with this picture (not mine). (Isn't this just a Trim command?) Don't run that command. Windows 10 already supports trim by default, manually retrimming will only wear out your drive. I believe Windows does it once a month anyway, which is likely overkill.
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Oct 17, 2017 17:10
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Manual trim doesn't wear the drive out, though. Good controllers (those recommended) just let data sit waiting to be overwritten. It's ultimately the case that your system will send trim notices when necessary, and those notices don't necessarily result in any action further than the ssd making a note of "hey nobody cares about block XYZ anymore, I'll use it later for storage or leveling or whatever." Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 22:28
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