HDD, SSD Reliablity

beachboy2 · 01-24-2022, 10:29 AM

borgward,

Intel or Crucial both make decent quality SSDs.

I have several Crucial MX 500s.

The SSD is a straight swap for the existing laptop HDD.

SlowCoder · 01-24-2022, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by obobskivich

As far as who makes good SSDs (or how to tell what is a good SSD), ideally a high TBW spec coupled with DRAM cache is the goal - there are plenty of manufacturers who offer such drives. I would also avoid Samsung drives on linux (and Mac) systems, because they use a proprietary controller that has issues with TRIM (which means it ends up being blacklisted, which leads to write thrashing (which reduces the life of the drive) - IME they also cause instability on linux (tested on both an 870 and a 970 - on Windows they work just fine)).

Maybe I'm an outlier, but my Samsung 870 SSD, that I bought 6 months ago, has been nothing but a positive experience. Maybe it's a revision issue.

I actively monitor the Smart TBW, and the amount is in line with what I would expect, considering what it's used for. When I got it my only big concern was swap usage, but I also upgraded my RAM to 20gb, so swap isn't an issue.

onebuck · 01-24-2022, 12:07 PM

Hi,

I have several SSD in use and thankfully no failures to date. I do like Crucial and have uses in servers, desktops and Laptops. My use is daily and hours at a time. Additionally I do use spinning hardware but moving away whenever need too. I do check my health for the drives frequently, at least once a month.

Cost for Crucial SSD are reasonable at NewEgg; https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=crucia...63%20100011693

Others available at NewEgg; https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=ssd

I am not affiliated with NewEgg but a frequent satisfied customer.
Hope this helps.

obobskivich · 01-24-2022, 11:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlowCoder

Maybe I'm an outlier, but my Samsung 870 SSD, that I bought 6 months ago, has been nothing but a positive experience. Maybe it's a revision issue.

I actively monitor the Smart TBW, and the amount is in line with what I would expect, considering what it's used for. When I got it my only big concern was swap usage, but I also upgraded my RAM to 20gb, so swap isn't an issue.

It may also be that you've got a distro/update that is properly blacklisting the drive as that seems to be the 'fix' these days, and if you aren't using an AMD controller that probably helps as well. This issue goes back to the -40 series drives (at least that I can remember). Here's a semi-recent post about it: https://www.neowin.net/news/linux-pa...d-amd-systems/

Note that I've never seen the 'PRO' or 'QVO' variant drives mentioned - always just 'EVO' - so that could also be a factor (if those use different controllers it would stand to reason they may have different results as well). On AMD systems (as in actual AMD-branded chipsets, not the modern ASMedia/AMD solution for the Zen SoCs) the IO stalls are sporadic, but enough to make the system feel unreliable (it can go months without issues, and then have problems 'out of nowhere'). It's a screwy issue that's probably not easily reproduced for 'fixing' and the blacklist solution looks pretty brute force.

I'm not trying to 'rip' on Samsung - just provide info based on a very long 'chase a problem down' experience. And again, the drives I confirmed this on all seem to work just fine in Windows...go figure.

Fearless Fred · 01-26-2022, 06:25 PM

If the same drives work well on Windows then that points squarely at driver issues, especially as large makers like Samsung develop drivers and pay for the Hardware Compatibility sticker from Microsoft. I believe its quite expensive to do..