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Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



I've had excellent experiences with Warehouse Deals, and items are usually in better shape than described, and I wouldn't be averse to trying an SSD from there if the price was right, however there are so many deals on new SSDs that it'd have to be a hell of a discount to bother. Samsung SSDs are good, just not mandatory, and there are plenty of other good options. The Mushkin I posted is suspected to have the same hardware (controller and NAND) of the MX500, which is considered to be right up there in quality and desirability with a Samsung Evo, for example. Since you're apparently looking for an NVMe drive, presumably you've seen the 960 Pro which has a 512 GB version as a Warehouse Deal for $185; I also recently posted an Adata 480 GB NVMe for $100, and there's no way in hell a used 960 Pro is worth almost double what that new SX8200 is going for (on sale.)

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Harik
Sep 9, 2001

From the hard streets of Moscow
First dog to touch the stars


Plaster Town Cop

Klyith posted:

Does the warehouse deal make them cheaper than a new Evo or equivalent TLC NVMe drive? Does your use case actually need a Pro?

One of those would have to be a Yes for me to consider it.

I burned out an EVO doing caching on a 12TB array, yes. I could just keep feeding it lower endurance drives but I think the pro will be more cost-effective in the end. Could be wrong!

If there's a cheaper high-endurance option I'm all for that too.

Atomizer posted:

I've had excellent experiences with Warehouse Deals, and items are usually in better shape than described, and I wouldn't be averse to trying an SSD from there if the price was right, however there are so many deals on new SSDs that it'd have to be a hell of a discount to bother. Samsung SSDs are good, just not mandatory, and there are plenty of other good options. The Mushkin I posted is suspected to have the same hardware (controller and NAND) of the MX500, which is considered to be right up there in quality and desirability with a Samsung Evo, for example. Since you're apparently looking for an NVMe drive, presumably you've seen the 960 Pro which has a 512 GB version as a Warehouse Deal for $185; I also recently posted an Adata 480 GB NVMe for $100, and there's no way in hell a used 960 Pro is worth almost double what that new SX8200 is going for (on sale.)

If a 1 TB mushkin would take more writes than a 500gb pro that'd be an overall better option. This will be drive #3 I've fed to it so I'd prefer it to last. At least I'm getting #2 out before it's completely burnt out, I can put it in something lighter duty.

SlayVus
Jul 10, 2009
Grimey Drawer

Harik posted:

I burned out an EVO doing caching on a 12TB array, yes. I could just keep feeding it lower endurance drives but I think the pro will be more cost-effective in the end. Could be wrong!

If you have an available U.2/M.2 or PCI-E 4x slot, the 900p has a warrantied 10 DWPD for 5 years for both the 280GB and 480GB version. That comes to 8.5 PB of warrantied drive writes for the 480GB version. Where as the 2TB 960 Pro is only warrantied for 1.17 PB.

SlayVus fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Aug 26, 2018

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Harik posted:

I burned out an EVO doing caching on a 12TB array, yes. I could just keep feeding it lower endurance drives but I think the pro will be more cost-effective in the end. Could be wrong!

If there's a cheaper high-endurance option I'm all for that too.

If a 1 TB mushkin would take more writes than a 500gb pro that'd be an overall better option. This will be drive #3 I've fed to it so I'd prefer it to last. At least I'm getting #2 out before it's completely burnt out, I can put it in something lighter duty.

Hmm, it sounds like you have a very specific use-case; without revealing this beforehand you're going to get recommendations assuming you're just looking for a normal consumer drive. You'll definitely want an MLC drive (I don't think they make new SLC ones anymore) and likely an enterprise-grade one designed for durability rather than some consumer drive that's primarily designed to be cheap. You want cheap though which isn't compatible with your rather brutal use-case; most people will not burn out their SSDs before they replace the whole system.

SlayVus' Optane recommendation is probably ideal for your situation.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Sometimes enterprise ssds show up on serve the home's great deals forum:
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?forums/great-deals.8/

The posters there usually find out about how much wear they have and such and say so in the threads. Obviously availability will be based on those dudes finding good deals and posting them, it's not consistent like just buying a pro drive and being done with it.

Sprite141
Feb 7, 2009

I should really just
learn to stop talking.
I'm still using a sony 840 evo after about 5 years or so now. It's been my OS and main program drive about 90% full at all times for years. But recently I've been running into some issues that aren't the ssd's fault, but I'll need to reinstall windows fresh and clean. I had an intel management program decide my os drive and storage drive needed to be in a raid setup for about 4 months, amongst other things.

If I remember correctly, the 840's were out when ssd's were getting stable enough that read/write issues for general users wasn't an issue. But after 5 years of constant use I don't know if I can consider reusing the drive as my main install, or just writing it off and using it as a cache drive. Does anyone here have more experience on doing a clean installs on an ssd?

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


Sprite141 posted:

I'm still using a sony 840 evo after about 5 years or so now. It's been my OS and main program drive about 90% full at all times for years. But recently I've been running into some issues that aren't the ssd's fault, but I'll need to reinstall windows fresh and clean. I had an intel management program decide my os drive and storage drive needed to be in a raid setup for about 4 months, amongst other things.

If I remember correctly, the 840's were out when ssd's were getting stable enough that read/write issues for general users wasn't an issue. But after 5 years of constant use I don't know if I can consider reusing the drive as my main install, or just writing it off and using it as a cache drive. Does anyone here have more experience on doing a clean installs on an ssd?

You can check and see how much life the drive thinks it has left, by running hwinfo (I think) - how much data does it say has been written? it should give a percentage too.
I'm still using an 840 for steam backups. It's still chugging along but doesn't get used all that often.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Sprite141 posted:

I'm still using a sony 840 evo after about 5 years or so now. It's been my OS and main program drive about 90% full at all times for years. But recently I've been running into some issues that aren't the ssd's fault, but I'll need to reinstall windows fresh and clean. I had an intel management program decide my os drive and storage drive needed to be in a raid setup for about 4 months, amongst other things.

If I remember correctly, the 840's were out when ssd's were getting stable enough that read/write issues for general users wasn't an issue. But after 5 years of constant use I don't know if I can consider reusing the drive as my main install, or just writing it off and using it as a cache drive. Does anyone here have more experience on doing a clean installs on an ssd?

You mean Samsung; Sony wishes it owned Samsung's SSD line!

You're right, the 840 Evo was right around the time that Samsung was starting to dominate SSD recommendations, and when TLC was becoming acceptable, although this was still 2D NAND. This particular SSD (specifically, the NAND used,) however was vulnerable to performance degradation over time (i.e. notably prominent cell charge decay requiring data re-reads and thus low read performance) and had at least two firmware updates to address the issue (which largely resolve it at the cost of re-writing data periodically, which of course decreases drive lifespan.) If you installed Magician and updated the firmware (which was last updated over 3 years ago unless I'm mistaken) you'll have the best performance possible out of that drive, and I still think it's worth using. Note that SSDs should NOT be filled up for performance and endurance reasons, so if yours has been at 90% capacity then you may actually benefit from upgrading to a higher-capacity drive.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


That 840 likely still has a factory overprovision, so there's no need to worry about keeping track of your space usage on your windows volume for the purpose of SSD health.

If you've patched it with Magician (note: do not apply the os optimizer, it is poo poo), you're golden for a long long time.

Sprite141
Feb 7, 2009

I should really just
learn to stop talking.
Yeah, I've patched it. The OS optimizer might be why my computer thought it was in raid format, so yeah it really does suck. So considering what all of you have said, I think I'll continue using it as my OS Drive but not install all of my applications to it as well. Originally the only things I installed to my 2TB HDD worst Steam games, I think if I space it out more then the smaller SSD will continue to work for me. But I'll take a look later at how much it's written on it and get back to you.

Harik
Sep 9, 2001

From the hard streets of Moscow
First dog to touch the stars


Plaster Town Cop

Atomizer posted:

Hmm, it sounds like you have a very specific use-case; without revealing this beforehand you're going to get recommendations assuming you're just looking for a normal consumer drive. You'll definitely want an MLC drive (I don't think they make new SLC ones anymore) and likely an enterprise-grade one designed for durability rather than some consumer drive that's primarily designed to be cheap. You want cheap though which isn't compatible with your rather brutal use-case; most people will not burn out their SSDs before they replace the whole system.

SlayVus' Optane recommendation is probably ideal for your situation.

Well, I did only ask if people trusted a used pro from amazon warehouse, not if it was right for normal usecase :v:

One other thing I'm going to check is cache eviction stats - if the small (250gb evo) was causing too many evictions because the common working set was too large, it would lead to excessive wear. So maybe throwing a cheap 1TB at it would improve performance and lead to lower writes.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Harik posted:

Well, I did only ask if people trusted a used pro from amazon warehouse, not if it was right for normal usecase :v:

One other thing I'm going to check is cache eviction stats - if the small (250gb evo) was causing too many evictions because the common working set was too large, it would lead to excessive wear. So maybe throwing a cheap 1TB at it would improve performance and lead to lower writes.

So I guess the answer to your original question is absolutely yes, but I still think you're looking at the wrong products. If you want to try a cheap 1 TB SSD though, try this one, which is AFAIK the cheapest one aside from used/refurb or other rare deals. It regularly goes to ~$130ish there on Rakuten (sold directly from Adata) although at the moment there's that 20% back in points which could certainly be valuable if you were willing to make future purchases there. The SU650 is DRAMless TLC (the SU800 has DRAM) though so endurance will be limited unless like you said, most of your important cached data are retained in the larger cache instead of being constantly rewritten. I'd be interested in hearing how it works out though.

Edit: eBay has a 15% off everything sale for the next several hours, use code PREGAME15. You can certainly use it on any odd SSDs you find there, and most notably that brings the Micron 1100 2 TB down to ~$250. (Platinum Micro is the seller that sells these on Rakuten, I trust them.) That's not the absolute lowest price it's been (and remember, this is not a retail drive) but it's still among the best deals on a per-capacity basis.

There's also this Team Group 480 GB SSD for $65, and while this is of questionable quality compared to the more reputable drives, it's more along the lines of something I'd throw into a caching role, especially for the price, as $65 is about as low as I've seen SSDs hit that price for that capacity with any regularity.

Atomizer fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Aug 28, 2018

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy
I'm trying to burn out a 512GB 840 Pro by using it as the landing zone for my NAS. So far I'm only at a wear level of 93. It's gonna take me about 10 more years at this rate!

All the 840 EVOs I had in use are dogshit slow. gently caress those drives.

Lambert
Apr 15, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
Fallen Rib
Yep, can confirm. I had two 840 Evo 1 TB (SATA and mSATA)

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


Even with the latest firmware?
I've got steam on mine. It seems to benchmark around where it should. It's only 1/4 full though.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

I had two smaller 840's fail. Those are the only SSD's I've had go bad. [/anectdote]

Seamonster
Apr 30, 2007

IMMER SIEGREICH
I had the OEM version of a 840 brick trying to run their own loving software (magician).

Not bootable, not recognizable in BIOS.

First storage of any kind I've ever had fail like that. Never had a HDD do that.

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Post update on the 840Evo never had an issue since. The slow down was real thought.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



I purchased an 840 Evo for my Razer Edge tablet a few years back at a price I'm ashamed to remember because I'm sure you can guess why; back then I knew Samsung SSDs were good but didn't know much else about them, and definitely wasn't aware of the charge decay issue. I mean it's updated and still works fine, but if I could do things over I'd have waited a few years and gotten an 850 or 860 Evo (because Samsung appears to be the only reputable company still making mSATA SSDs, and I'm not sure why they still do on top of that. :shrug:)

slidebite
Nov 6, 2005

Good egg
:colbert:

Might be a stupid question, but I'm getting a collection of old SSD and HDD that I should dispose of. What's the best way to ensure they are wiped short of destroying them?

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Turn on encryption and forget the key.

Geemer
Nov 4, 2010



Secure erase the SSDs, completely overwrite the HDDs.

Or just open the HDDs and use the platters as tiny mirrors to scare birds or something. Bonus: Get some strong magnets out of it as well.

Lambert
Apr 15, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
Fallen Rib

Geemer posted:

Secure erase the SSDs, completely overwrite the HDDs.

Or just open the HDDs and use the platters as tiny mirrors to scare birds or something. Bonus: Get some strong magnets out of it as well.

ATA Secure Erase for both of them, HDDs support it as well.

Geemer
Nov 4, 2010



Lambert posted:

ATA Secure Erase for both of them, HDDs support it as well.

I did not know that. Last time I read up on it I read that it bricked HDDs. But that's probably only for old ones, with newer ones supporting it. How would that differ from completely overwriting, though?

Falcorum
Oct 21, 2010
Is there any particular downside to using a single SSD on a new build (as in, with no non-SSD drives) nowadays? I was looking at parts for one and considering 1tb SSDs are actually not terribly expensive nowadays and I don't really need much more than that, it seems like a decent option.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Falcorum posted:

Is there any particular downside to using a single SSD on a new build (as in, with no non-SSD drives) nowadays? I was looking at parts for one and considering 1tb SSDs are actually not terribly expensive nowadays and I don't really need much more than that, it seems like a decent option.

There's been no reason in the last....5-6 years to build a machine without an SSD as the primary drive

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week
On a system with just a SSD you really want to keep their free space needs in mind, because you don't have a spare drive to throw downloads or other temporary crap.

So if 1TB is going to be 90% full right off the bat with your current stuff, that will be a thing to work within. Not a deal breaker but a thing you'll want to manage. How much free space your SSD needs depends a lot on your use patterns.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I haven't had a PC with more than 256GB of storage in for years now, all the big files go onto an Unraid NAS I built. Granted I don't have it filled with Steam games either, so it might not be for everyone.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



I just did another SSD upgrade, it was an HDD cloned to a new m.2 drive so the SSD was being added while the HDD remains for game storage. Is there any way to force Windows to boot from the SSD without having to disconnect the HDD first? It's not a matter of boot order in the BIOS; Windows is still configured to boot from the original drive until it's no longer present. I didn't want to disconnect the HDD because it was staying in the system, and had already closed up the laptop after checking to make sure all the hardware worked (but before trying to boot from the new SSD.)

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Atomizer posted:

I just did another SSD upgrade, it was an HDD cloned to a new m.2 drive so the SSD was being added while the HDD remains for game storage. Is there any way to force Windows to boot from the SSD without having to disconnect the HDD first? It's not a matter of boot order in the BIOS; Windows is still configured to boot from the original drive until it's no longer present. I didn't want to disconnect the HDD because it was staying in the system, and had already closed up the laptop after checking to make sure all the hardware worked (but before trying to boot from the new SSD.)

Windows isn't configured to do anything until it boots first - wipe the HDD, boot order in BIOS, you're fine.

Lambert
Apr 15, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
Fallen Rib

Geemer posted:

I did not know that. Last time I read up on it I read that it bricked HDDs. But that's probably only for old ones, with newer ones supporting it. How would that differ from completely overwriting, though?

It ensures reserved/retired sectors are overwritten as well. Also, with newer drives, there's no guarantee the sector mapping the OS sees corresponds to the actual layout of the data on the drive (with Shingled Magnetic Recording, for example).

ATA Secure Erase doesn't brick drives. But if you remove power before the drive is finished secure erasing, you'll have to manually unlock it with an ATA command before it becomes operable again. That's probably where the "bricked" stories stem from.

Geemer
Nov 4, 2010



Lambert posted:

It ensures reserved/retired sectors are overwritten as well. Also, with newer drives, there's no guarantee the sector mapping the OS sees corresponds to the actual layout of the data on the drive (with Shingled Magnetic Recording, for example).

ATA Secure Erase doesn't brick drives. But if you remove power before the drive is finished secure erasing, you'll have to manually unlock it with an ATA command before it becomes operable again. That's probably where the "bricked" stories stem from.

Thanks for the explanation! :tipshat:

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



The Iron Rose posted:

Windows isn't configured to do anything until it boots first - wipe the HDD, boot order in BIOS, you're fine.

Well that's a little more difficult to do because like I said it's only booting from the HDD, and you can't wipe the current system drive, so basically then it's either: unplug the HDD, boot from SSD, then plug the HDD in again, or you have to boot to any OS via a USB device to wipe the HDD and go from there. It didn't matter if the boot order was already changed in the BIOS to go to the SSD first, it would always go from the HDD.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Atomizer posted:

Well that's a little more difficult to do because like I said it's only booting from the HDD, and you can't wipe the current system drive, so basically then it's either: unplug the HDD, boot from SSD, then plug the HDD in again, or you have to boot to any OS via a USB device to wipe the HDD and go from there. It didn't matter if the boot order was already changed in the BIOS to go to the SSD first, it would always go from the HDD.

Just use gparted on a usb. Or hit F8/F10/F12 or whatever it is for your system to get to the boot menu, manually choose the SSD to boot from that.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



The Iron Rose posted:

Just use gparted on a usb. Or hit F8/F10/F12 or whatever it is for your system to get to the boot menu, manually choose the SSD to boot from that.

Like I wrote:
- I hadn't intended to boot from a USB device and didn't have one prepared, and my question was about a solution constrained to Windows itself. I was trying to avoid opening up the laptop again or preparing a bootable USB device.
- I did change the boot order in the BIOS, and Windows still booted from the HDD because the OS installation was cloned on two drives and both pointed to the HDD. Physically disconnecting the HDD was the only way to get it to boot from the SSD.

Also, I'm not sure that gparted can do what I was looking for; I wasn't even able to figure out how to do this within Windows itself using BCDedit. Remember, I'm not trying to modify partitions, I needed to tweak the Windows Boot Manager, and I have no experience doing that.

I realize that, while this involves SSDs, it's still only tangentially related to the thread, so if I hadn't already resolved it I would continue this in a different thread. It's over now though, so thanks for the input.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Hey who wants a cheap SSD? Rakuten's SAVE15 code is active again, and with it you can get (among other things, through the end of 9/11 :911:) the Adata SU650 960 GB for $115 :eyepop: or their SX8200 of the same manufacturer and capacity for $204 if you want NVMe.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



It's tempting, although isn't ADATA considered poo poo in the thread OP? Getting one for cheap may actually be worth it considering the three year warranty though.

ChaseSP fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Sep 11, 2018

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



ChaseSP posted:

It's tempting, although isn't ADATA considered poo poo in the thread OP? Getting one for cheap may actually be worth it considering the three year warranty though.

Adata's not top-tier (e.g. Samsung, Crucial) but it's not some Chinese bottom-of-the-barrel manufacturer, and certainly not all Adata SSDs are "poo poo" even if you had a problem with one once. That NVMe drive appears to be well-regarded (according to other users in the deals threads) and the SU650 is similarly satisfactory (i.e. unremarkable, problems or otherwise.) You can certainly spend more on any other drive (note that that code's site-wide) but the SU650 is notable for being the cheapest 1 TB-class SSD like the Micron 1100 is the cheapest 2 TB drive.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week
OTOH when adata puts stuff on big sales you might look at it as a leading indicator. They get all their flash from the fab companies with recognized names, so their bread and butter is previous-generation stuff that's being replaced, or surplus stock.

So if you need a 1TB drive right now go for it. I'm really not sure why they're so prominent on the bad list vs other no-nomes like Silicon Power or Patriot. They use slower controllers and have DRAM-less drives (pretty sure that SU650 has no dram). That's what you're paying for, or rather not paying for. There's definitely been times where their crap drives are only being sold for a small discount vs something like an Evo at which point they're a bad buy. I wouldn't buy that NVMe one for example.


But if you're just idly considering moving to all solid state or impulse shopping, I'd say hold off. All the reports are that there's a flash oversupply, plus stuff like QLC coming out that's gonna push even more downward price competition.

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Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



I think the good vs. bad SSD list was more relevant in earlier years when products were more suspect. Nowadays, there's generally only a handful of controllers, DRAM manufacturers, and NAND flash manufacturers, and the retail drives are all combinations of the available parts as opposed to there being random buggy Sandforce controllers and the like out there that you have to watch out for. The SU650 is indeed DRAMless (the SU800 is the version with DRAM) and has older components, but nevertheless it's the best storage/$ you can buy at the moment. Certainly prices will continue to drop, but just FYI regarding QLC, apparently there are yield issues so the tech isn't going to flood the market any time soon.

Also FYI, while Adata frequently (at least once a month as far as I can tell) has sales on their stuff on Rakuten (they have AD## discount codes,) that SAVE15 code (which is also very frequent,) is site-wide and is directly from Rakuten.

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