SSD Drives: Samsung EVO vs. PRO

[dewdman42]

So I tried out this tool: http://binaryfruit.com/drivedx/

I have no idea how accurate it is...but it says that I have 97% of lifetime left on my 840EVO. I have no idea how accurate this particular monitoring software is or what its measuring...

I'd had the drive for a year or two, so if there is any semblance of truth to drivedx, lets say its consuming 3% per year. I have quite a few years left before I need to worry about it..

It also reports that i have written a grand total of 17TB so far to date..including a recent complete format and rebuild of OSX on the drive. Its a 1TB drive. The reports say it will fail when I get to what...700TB? And those were on 256gb drives. I would presume that for my 1TB drive the number may be 4x that number at least.

Ok, I can sleep now... not worried...

[mikehalloran]

Yea, as long as the speeds stay up, you will be fine. http://techreport.com/review/27909/the- ... e-all-dead

Thanks for posting that. Very interesting. And it does make me think that this firmware update on the 840 EVO, while it may cause the drive to function completely normally for a few years..there is some point in the future which will not be pretty, which will come sooner now with the new firmware.

I wonder if there is some way to monitor the health of the drive in this regard without having to wait for it to use up all the reserves and implode. Anyone know?

I still think I have quite a bit of time to use it before worrying about it. i just need to remember to not try to use this drive for any other computer after retiring it. We've always known SSD drives in general are somewhat disposable. The 840EVO, with the update, is even more so... but how do we know when to dispose of it?

According to those tests, 20-50 years for most users, then they might fail without warning. Real world performance is quite different.

Mechanical drives used to fail with little or no warning.

Have a good backup scheme such as Time Machine. Enable TRIM. Use the 840 EVO in ways that give it regular use and idle time. Turn off Put Drive to Sleep When Possible in Preferences. Never, ever use 3rd party "maintenance" tools like iDefrag (on any SSD). Do check the health once a year or so with a comprehensive SMART diagnosis tool such as TechTool Pro. Don't use more than 85% of capacity.

I would not use an 840 EVO as a read-only drive such as to store your VIs only. Because of its issues with stale data, nearly anything else is better for that use. You do not need the specialty SSDs for that use such as the 845 EVO or M series nowadays although if you find a great deal on one as I did, you won't be wrong.

Note this applies to the 840 EVO only, not the 840 PRO or any other Samsung SSD including the 830 or 850.

Starting with OS 10.10.4, TRIM enabled on a Boot SSD will enable TRIM on connected USB and TB SSDs. If you have an Apple OE SSD in your Mac, this is done automatically. If you are booting from a non-Apple SSD, run the following Terminal command:

sudo trimforce enable

This will not work in OS 10.10.3 or earlier. The shareware Trim Enabler.app from Cinrdori should be used.

[dewdman42]

all good advice, but I believe the latest firmware from Samsung fixes the stale data issue on the 840EVO that you mention..that is the point..its doing it by rewriting the cells of the drive periodically....which will shorten its life, but avoid the stale data problem.

Near as I can tell I'm still going to get 10+ years of use out of this drive without doing anything special. Not worried.

[jloeb]

This is what you'd expect. From anandtech:

"Some of you are likely skeptical about the effect on endurance since rewriting the data will consume P/E cycles, but I find this to be a non-issue. We know that Samsung's 19nm TLC NAND is rated at 1,000 P/E cycles, so if the drive was to refresh all cells once a week, even that would only consume 52 cycles in a year. In five years time the total would be 260 cycles, which leaves you with 740 cycles for user data writes (for the record, that's 52GB of NAND writes per day for five years with the 120GB 840 EVO)."

Comforting enough under any circumstances. Now consider what we typically do with VI drives in the DAW world: we write essentially once to any given cell and then read forevermore. So nearly the only write activity on such a drive will be conducted by the firmware refresh itself. It is a non-issue under these circumstances. You'll get rid of such a drive for other reasons before it breaks as a result of rewrites.

So I repeat: for a VI streaming drive, literally any available drive from a reputable manufacturer will do. It's overkill in both speed and durability. No drive lasts forever. But under the outlier conditions we put VI drives in, they'll all last more than long enough.

My VI drive is an 840evo 1Tb, and I've had no problems with slowdown recurrence since the first Samsung fix a year ago. So with the 840 evo it seems like it's luck or a lemon. At some point the problem may recur, at which point I'll have no hesitation using the second fix; I statistically never rewrite to this drive.

My system/main use and recording drives are Crucial M500 960Tb and 480Gb, respectively. these are superb, overbuilt drives which you may still be able to grab at a discount here and there.

Always back up your data: amen.

[daniel.sneed]

[...]My system/main use and recording drives are Crucial M500 960Tb and 480Gb, respectively.[...]

960Tb? You're kidding!

[BobK]

Mechanical drives used to fail with little or no warning.

SSD drives can die without warning too.

OT, but possibly of interest: Ten days ago, my OWC Mercury 3G 480 GB SSD died with no warning, after 17 months of use. It was the system drive in my 2009 Mac Pro running Yosemite 10.10.5.

After restoring to a spare mechanical drive via Time Machine, the Mac Pro would hang during startup. I don't know why, but I wonder if a system file might have been corrupted and backed up just before the drive failed.

The restore did recover my User data (except for Apple Messages), but I had to re-install Yosemite via a USB thumb drive where I'd saved the installer, and then update it. Had to re-authorize DP and re-install the entire Arturia V-Collection 4, which didn't work after the restore. After about ten hours of work, I was back in business.

(I spent at least three additional hours trying to recover my messages in Apple Messages, including two hours with AppleCare, evenly divided between online chat and telephone. Managed to recover all but about five days' worth of messages.)

I have another OWC drive in my Mac Pro for sample libraries, and one in my MacBook Pro for the system drive. Maybe it's time to switch to Samsung...

[jloeb]

[...]My system/main use and recording drives are Crucial M500 960Tb and 480Gb, respectively.[...]

960Tb? You're kidding!

And then I woke up. Gb only I'm afraid.

[midilance]

Thanks to all of you. This has been very helpful.