Samsung 4TB QLC SSDs enter mass production

[HEXUS]

These 2.5-inch SATA 3 drives offer 540MB/s read, 520MB/s write, with a 3 year warranty.

Read more.

[peterb]

Pity no prices on these! My concern with SSD's in general is still lifetime and failure mode - they seem to fail suddenly without the warning signs you get with conventional drives.

I guss RAID1 with devices added from different batches (or with different use) would help (ie, start on off with a degraded array - just one drive in it - then add the second after 6 months so there is a difference in lifetime on the basis that the older one will fail first so it can be swapped out in good time)

[watercooled]

Any mention of QLC seems to be met by panic about endurance, but I don't think people are taking into account that this is still V-NAND and the cell size is much bigger than it was for the last generations of planar nand. I've read in quite a few places that 3D TLC tends to have higher endurance than something like 15nm planar MLC - if people were fine with planar MLC's endurance there's really no reason to panic over 3D TLC.

Programming time on the other hand might be an issue, but would likely be hidden by SLC caching for most consumer workloads outside of writing massive files from another fast SSD.

OTOH it's definitely nice to still have a choice of MLC for applications which demand it - it's not that hard for someone moving a ton of e.g. video files to burn through a TLC drive's rated cycles in a few years, so I'm not saying it's a non-issue.

I do wonder how much cheaper they will actually be give you only get ~33% more storage vs TLC and has greater controller demands? There surely has to be a point where diminishing returns becomes a real problem when faced with slower performance and endurance which tails off far more rapidly than capacity increases.

Edit: Cross-post. Yeah I agree peterb, something a bit frightening about SSDs is their unique ability to nuke their entire contents almost instantly through e.g. controller bugs, and the way they works makes recovery extremely difficult even if the data itself is untouched on the NAND. HDDs can't really fail like that - even with a head crash you'll lose some data, but the rest of the platters should be fine and recoverable if necessary. Making out like HDDs are all bad just isn't looking at the whole picture IMO.

[3dcandy]

This is why I have robust backup procedures. Boot drive is ssd but main big storage drives are hdd's. Best of both worlds...

[peterb]

This is why I have robust backup procedures. Boot drive is ssd but main big storage drives are hdd's. Best of both worlds...

Likewise - and I will take a clone of the boot drive on a 2.5" hdd, so that if/when the SSD does fail, IO can swap it out without needing to reload/reconfigure the OS and its applications.

[DanceswithUnix]

This is why I have robust backup procedures. Boot drive is ssd but main big storage drives are hdd's. Best of both worlds...

So your PC could stop booting without warning and your main storage is slow and having two storage devices basically doubles your chance of seeing a failure and giving an overall system that is neither cheap not fast. Worst of both worlds?

Likewise - and I will take a clone of the boot drive on a 2.5" hdd, so that if/when the SSD does fail, IO can swap it out without needing to reload/reconfigure the OS and its applications.

I presume you would do that with a boot HDD, and that isn't anything special about SSDs?

[3dcandy]

So your PC could stop booting without warning and your main storage is slow and having two storage devices basically doubles your chance of seeing a failure and giving an overall system that is neither cheap not fast. Worst of both worlds?

lol nope - as said I've got regular clones of boot drive. Most data I need is stored on NAS. I'm happy with how it's working

[DanceswithUnix]

lol nope - as said I've got regular clones of boot drive. Most data I need is stored on NAS. I'm happy with how it's working

Fair enough. I just boggle at people who seem to back up SSDs because they are new and scary, like hard disks never fail.

I have had one of the supposedly worst SSDs ever (an OCZ from their dark days) glitch but a firmware update brought it back and it has been fine ever since, otherwise I believe I have been the victim of HDD failure from every brand you can remember but so far I am thrashing SSDs to heck and back with no issue. I am slowly purging the house of spinning rust, apart from the house server where I can't afford 8TB of SSD and over a 1Gbit network connection the speed isn't so critical. It's somewhere to back up to.

[aidanjt]

Oh goodie, an affordable steam drive!

[3dcandy]

Fair enough. I just boggle at people who seem to back up SSDs because they are new and scary, like hard disks never fail.

I have had one of the supposedly worst SSDs ever (an OCZ from their dark days) glitch but a firmware update brought it back and it has been fine ever since, otherwise I believe I have been the victim of HDD failure from every brand you can remember but so far I am thrashing SSDs to heck and back with no issue. I am slowly purging the house of spinning rust, apart from the house server where I can't afford 8TB of SSD and over a 1Gbit network connection the speed isn't so critical. It's somewhere to back up to.

Boot drive is an OCZ lol!

[DanceswithUnix]

Boot drive is an OCZ lol!

Erm, a Vertex with the Sandforce controller?

Edit: actually thinking about it the Corsair Force drive was the one with the Sandforce controller that needed resurrecting, the supposedly bad OCZ hasn't skipped a beat. I actually went for an interview at OCZ and used the laptop with that Vertex drive in it for a presentation, would have been an amusing discussion if it failed at that point

[peterb]

So your PC could stop booting without warning and your main storage is slow and having two storage devices basically doubles your chance of seeing a failure and giving an overall system that is neither cheap not fast. Worst of both worlds?



I presume you would do that with a boot HDD, and that isn't anything special about SSDs?

Less likely, because a HDD usually gives some warning of impending failure - an SSD is more likely to fail with little warning. But most of my data is stored on RAID 1 on a a server which is backed up. It's the boot drive on the server I clone.

[3dcandy]

Less likely, because a HDD usually gives some warning of impending failure - an SSD is more likely to fail with little warning. But most of my data is stored on RAID 1 on a a server which is backed up. It's the boot drive on the server I clone.

Had a fair few hdd's just fail with no warning as well. Just sayin

[shaithis]

something a bit frightening about SSDs is their unique ability to nuke their entire contents almost instantly through e.g. controller bugs, and the way they works makes recovery extremely difficult even if the data itself is untouched on the NAND. HDDs can't really fail like that - even with a head crash you'll lose some data, but the rest of the platters should be fine and recoverable if necessary. Making out like HDDs are all bad just isn't looking at the whole picture IMO.

There is a reason you can buy HDD controller boards on eBay......they do go just like SSD controllers...

I've replaced a number of them over the years to recover data from a drive or even resurrect a dead drive. There is even a company in Canada who will clone a HDD controller for you for a very reasonable price, so guessing its a fairly well used service for a fairly common fault.

[Iota]

My concern with SSD's in general is still lifetime and failure mode - they seem to fail suddenly without the warning signs you get with conventional drives.

Oh, HDDs give warnings? I've never seen a warning come from any HDD failure I've ever seen in the past.

At least in the meantime I've found out that HWInfo64 gives an indication of remaining life of drives with smart reporting, SSD or HDD. Overall though I can't say I'm concerned remotely, considering I always backup my important files on a regular basis (great habit to get into), plus a clean install on SSDs is pretty damn quick nowadays, unlike back when I used HDDs.

Also considering lifetime is an issue to you, I'm running the very same SSDs in Raid 0 that I built my PC with 6-7 years ago, without any issues so far. I really think doing some research prior to purchasing them helps weed out those with potential reliability problems. That goes for both SSDs and HDDs alike I guess, but I'm unlikely to return to HDDs.

[peterb]

Oh, HDDs give warnings? I've never seen a warning come from any HDD failure I've ever seen in the past.

SMART reporting usually gives some indication - sector reallocation is a strong clue.

At least in the meantime I've found out that HWInfo64 gives an indication of remaining life of drives with smart reporting, SSD or HDD.

Exactly - although I suggest the warning with an SSD is likely to be less than with a hard drive which tend to degrade gracefully (with re-allocated sectors) rather than a sudden catastrophic failure. Of course HDDs can fail catastrophically, but I suggest it is less likely.

Overall though I can't say I'm concerned remotely, considering I always backup my important files on a regular basis (great habit to get into), plus a clean install on SSDs is pretty damn quick nowadays, unlike back when I used HDDs.

The OS might be, but its configuring the various applications that takes the time, mail servers, web servers etc - although backing up the configuration files can speed up re-installation (usually in /etc )

Also considering lifetime is an issue to you, I'm running the very same SSDs in Raid 0 that I built my PC with 6-7 years ago, without any issues so far. I really think doing some research prior to purchasing them helps weed out those with potential reliability problems. That goes for both SSDs and HDDs alike I guess, but I'm unlikely to return to HDDs.

I'm very pleased for you! However statics apply to populations, not individuals.