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The lesson of the 840 EVO (first-gen TLC) vs 840 Pro (MLC) can be extrapolated to the present day QLC drives... for the nominal cost savings QLC gets you, the reduced performance and endurance and greater chance for flat-out failure has me running the other direction. TLC NAND is now a mature technology, as proven by the myriad of TLC drives that have been performing perfectly since the early days of TLC, when the 840 EVO wasn't quite ready for prime time.
PS: MLC does not stand for MIDI Life Crises, in case anyone was confused.
Normally, you apply a voltage to a cell and keep increasing it until you reach a point where the result is far enough from the "off" state that you now consider the cell as being "on". This is how SLC works, storing one bit per cell. For MLC, you store two bits per cell, which means instead of two voltage states (0 and 1) you have four states (00, 01, 10, 11). TLC takes that a step further and stores three bits per cell, or eight voltage states (000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, and 111).
Had you posted the 840 EVO up front, many of us would have said, "Stop testing, replace now!" It was a well known source of problems despite many firmware updates from Samsung designed to overcome them (and requiring Windows to update). Be glad you got as long out of it as you did. Sudden, total failure without warning was not uncommon for these.
For a MP 5.1, a Crucial P2 in a PCIe card is the biggest bang for the buck $199.99 for 2TB. It does require High Sierra or later. https://smile.amazon.com/Crucial-500GB- ... r=8-2&th=1
I don't think a 970 EVO runs any faster in these but it sure costs more.
There are a number of 2.5" SSDs with 3D NAND in the +/- $200 range. Yea, they're not nearly as fast as the P2 but have 5 year warranties from reputable companies.
For many reasons including poor sustained Write performance and 3 yr warranties, I don't like QLC/4D/V-NAND for system drives. The price difference is so small that they are no bargain at all. OTOH, for Read Mostly, Write Rarely, they make great VI drives and are available up to 8TB: https://smile.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-870-QV ... le_ce?th=1
DP 11.34; 828mkII FW, micro lite, M4, MTP/AV USB Firmware 2.0.1 2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sequoia 15.4, USB4 8TB externals, Neumann MT48, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3, Zoom F3 & UAC 232 32bit float recorder & interface; 2012 MBPs (x2) Catalina, Mojave IK-NI-Izotope-PSP-Garritan-Antares, LogicPro X, Finale 27.4, Dorico 5, Notion 6, Overture 5, TwistedWave, DSP-Q 5, SmartScore64 NE Pro, Toast 20 Pro
Oh, man. Thanks for this handy SSD shopping ref Mike. I think I will go ahead and preempitvely replace my remaining EVO 840.
On a related note, it looks like that if I give the new drive exactly the same name as the old one (that just died), Kontakt stays linked to the libraries on it. Time Machine started over and is backing up the entire drive again apparently, but Backblaze seems to be none the wiser.
What IS the normal drill for swapping out non-boot drives - project drives, VI drives etc., so that VI's don't have to be relinked to their samples, and backups don't have to start over etc? ...or is there one? Just keeping the drive names the same seems like a bit of a hack.
What IS the normal drill for swapping out non-boot drives - project drives, VI drives etc., so that VI's don't have to be relinked to their samples, and backups don't have to start over etc? ...or is there one? Just keeping the drive names the same seems like a bit of a hack.
That actually works as long as you do not have an OS on your remote drive (see below).
I would turn Time Machine (Back up Automatically) to Off before doing the following so that TM doesn't get confused.
On a MP 5.1, install the new drive into the same bay as the old one—this is important or you'll have to reset the paths etc. otherwise. My two drives are sitting in a TB Dock and it doesn't matter which slot is which—same applies if they were connected via USB as long as it's the same bus. It doesn't matter where the old drive is now installed since you'll be taking it out of service when done.
Format the new VI drive the same as the old. Since your System drive remains the same, you can now just drag and drop between the old VI drive and the new. Permissions etc. won't be affected. Take the old drive offline, rename the new drive the same as the old, turn Time Machine On when done.
Run sudo trimforce enable in Terminal when done to enable TRIM on all your 2.5" SSDs.
If you had an OS on the old remote drive, you would have to reinstall it onto the new one—drag and drop doesn't work with operating systems. It wouldn't affect your VIs residing on that drive.
DP 11.34; 828mkII FW, micro lite, M4, MTP/AV USB Firmware 2.0.1 2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sequoia 15.4, USB4 8TB externals, Neumann MT48, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3, Zoom F3 & UAC 232 32bit float recorder & interface; 2012 MBPs (x2) Catalina, Mojave IK-NI-Izotope-PSP-Garritan-Antares, LogicPro X, Finale 27.4, Dorico 5, Notion 6, Overture 5, TwistedWave, DSP-Q 5, SmartScore64 NE Pro, Toast 20 Pro
Awesome. I'll do exactly this. My VI drives are solely for VI libraries - no OSes on them.
The only unfortunate thing is that the drives' have their storage-capacities as part of their names (1TB SSD VI-1 etc). Since the replacements have more capacity I'll have to live with the mistake of naming them like that.
dix, I just looked into BackBlaze earlier today, re: swapping out a drive. Apparently, the BackBlaze software looks for identical files (not just same-named files) and, if they already exist on the BackBlaze server, they are not re-uploaded. I'm thinking of tearing apart one of my older Seagate external 8TB drives and swapping my current internal long-term 4TB drive out. I'd hate to use all the bandwidth a 4TB upload would consume, seeing as my ISP gives me just a bit more than 1TB/Month before extra fees kick in.
Ah, I see. So the drive's name isn't relevant for Backblaze backups. Very clever, and makes a lot of sense for cloud backups. This and Mike's TM terminal tip means zero backup parity time lag.
I'll still be keeping the inaccurate drive names I mentioned for Kontakt's sake I guess. Spectrasonics' VIs didn't mind the swap either btw, but I'm not sure the drive-name was a factor for them....whereas Kontakt libraries lost their links if the drive name wasn't identical
