SSD Query

TiGeR KiNgS

I'm looking at upgrading my hardrive to an SSD.

Do SSD's lose performance over time, say over a 4-5 year time-scale ?

Are they actually dependable, some reviews of products I have researched seem to highlight failure issue's ?

BloodBath

Been a few posts about this lately, yes they are. It depends on the size of the drive, the nand memory used in the drive and what you will be using it for. You will get a minimum of 5 years out of even the lowest durability nand unless you are writing massive amounts of data daily on it.

Serephucus

Actually, quite a bit more, if Hardware.info's stress test of the 840 is anything to go by. The drive's written something like 600TB already, which assuming you're writing 10GB a day (the upper-end of the average for users) it'll last... 168 years, LOL.

Now, that's only taking into account the NAND itself. You could (read: probably will) have something else fail somewhere in the 168 years there, but the point still stands: SSDs, insofar as people were worried for a long time about NAND failures (and this is where the stigma came from) are completely reliable now.

From personal experience, they are absolutely and completely worth it. This is someone who has 6TB of data on a file server because he likes having everything to hand all the time, and I would be perfectly happy to sacrifice a 1TB HDD for a 128/256GB SSD in a laptop.

Monotype

Just back up. SSDs aren't perfect and neither are hard drives. If you can't afford to lose the data, then keep a copy... that reminds me...

Buy a decent quality one. Some are better than others - in terms of failure and performance.

I wholeheartedly recommend that you do buy an SSD - the difference in usability of a computer is immense.

BloodBath

The samsung 840's are the ones to go for atm. Great performance and size at budget prices.

jimmycrackcorm

BloodBath wrote: »

The samsung 840's are the ones to go for atm. Great performance and size at budget prices.

Since I changed over to the 840 ssd I get regular windows 8 sudden power offs with no indicators why. But at least it's very quick to restart.

I don't know if it is the ssd or that I put a new install of windows 8 whereas the previous was an upgrade of windows 7 so the hardware drivers are different.

BloodBath

No idea why that's happening. I doubt it's the ssd though.

Any error report? Have you seen it do this?

..Brian..

BloodBath wrote: »

The samsung 840's are the ones to go for atm. Great performance and size at budget prices.

The 840 or the 840 pro?

Serephucus

840. The Pros are faster (the fastest on the market actually, I think) but you pay for it. The 840s - especially the bigger capacity ones - are excellent value. The 500GB one is less than €300.

Monotype

With the cashback on the 840s (and the pros too, if you can afford them), they're pretty good value.
A 500GB one is about €300 delivered from dabs.ie
http://www.dabs.ie/learn-more/components-and-storage/claim-up-to--57-cashback-on-selected-samsung-ssds-12302.html

Or I think it should work out a bit cheaper from scan, even including the dearer postage.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500gb-samsung-840-series-basic-25-ssd-3-core-mdx-21nm-toggle-nand-read-530mb-s-write-330mb-s-97k-iop

Kind of debating whether I should get one myself before the offer closes. That 256GB M4 that I have is fine and all but 756GB would allow me to move all my programs onto solid state with only media on hard drives. :cool:

Tinie

On the topic of SSDs, my samsung 120gb 840 has a weird quirk. Its showing up in the "safely remove hardware" icon in the bottom right of the toolbar. Is this normal? Anyway to remove it from there, as im afraid I will click it by accident.

Serephucus

As far as I know, that's something to do with AHCI mode. My two hard drives show up there as well. Haven't a clue how to disable it. I never really use the safely remove feature anyway.

BloodBath

All my drives show up there too.