Which FAST M.2 NVMe 2TB SSD brand / model?

[Saracen999]

Background - planning to add a larger (probably 2TB) SSD to my laptop, via the on-board NVMe slot.

I was kinda planning on Samsung 980 Pro, so I'm looking at this being capable of around 7000/5000 MB/s in sequential read/write. Or better, if not silly prices.

I have a couple of smaller (1TB) Samsung 980 Pro's and, so far, am perfectly happy and was planning on just buying 980 Pro on that basis.

However, the slowly emerging ... 'doubts' about several Samsung models including 980 Pro, over longer term reliability, has me at least looking at alternatives.

I'm not at all bothered about modest price differences, either up or down. I'd priced the 980 Pro up at about £225, so by "modest" I mean, say, up to £250-ish. Even up to te £300 mark, if neceesary.

Obviously, I've no aversion to saving a few quid, but it isn't very important in this. Buying a good quality and reliable, suitably fast drive from a supplier I trust is.

So if you had that type of drive, and budgetary/supplier choice in mind, and were starting to get edgy about 980 Pro (and some other Sammy models), what would you look at?




NOTE - It's beginning to look like this may be a firmware issue and a firmware upgrade MIGHT solve it. But, as far as I'm aware, there's no definitive word from Samsung to that effect. If it does prove to be just that, fair enough. But in the absence of a formal, official confirmation, I'm disinclined to rely on that.

I put reliability on SSDs into a similar category to brakes and tyres on a car - if my and my families lives are at risk in the car, don't economise on those, and if my data is at risk on an SSD, similarly not a good place to cheap out. I'd rather go to 1GB and save that way, than risk an unknown (or lesser known, in reputation) alternative. That's the irony - it was because of reputation and my experience that I was just going 980 Pro, but now, it's why I'm hesitating.

NOTE 2 - Yes, it looks like this probably all refers to older drives and newer ones are probably OK. This is a precautionary consideration, just in case.

[DanceswithUnix]

I have a similar outlook on SSDs.

I tend to buy from companies that made the Flash chips as well as the SSDs themselves, so that's WD, Samsung, Crucial and in theory Kioxia (though I haven't actually used any Kioxia drives, though I did once apply for a job there and came away with a very good impression of their engineering).

Still, sounds to me like Samsung have shaken down that drive now and are on their second firmware update since the problem. Seems like as good an option as ant to me.

I've just spun up my new Ryzen 7900 machine for work, which has a WD Black SN770 boot drive (bit slow for your needs) and a small array of three 2TB SATA Crucial MX500 drives for main storage. This machine will be a shared server, so I really don't want it to fail. It will be a Linux box, but annoyingly I now have to put Windows on it temporarily just to update those SSDs. I learned the hard way to always update new SSDs.

[MrJim]

I'm using the 1tb version of this drive as my boot SSD, & I've been really impressed with it.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-...xoCQfYQAvD_BwE

The performance of the drive has been solid, although I'm not really doing anything to really thrash it.

I tend to get quite a few power outages where I live, and although I know I should be using a UPS, this drive has never lost cany data as a result of power loss (sadly the same couldn't be said for my previous WD Black).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 990 series has issues so I would hold off them until they are sorted. Also I would certainly check if the laptop can support PCI-E 4.0 speeds. If not the SN770 would do the job:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...770-ssd-review

It is also relatively cool running and has decent TBW. However,I suspect you want a PCI-E 4.0 drive looking at the quoted speeds.

I went with a Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB because:
1.)High TBW
2.)Long warranty
3.)Free data recovery

Hence,I would suggest the Seagate FireCuda 530,which is the updated version:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...vme-ssd-review

If you want the fastest SSD ATM,the Kingston KC3000 is very fast:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...-m2-ssd-review

However,Kingston can be hit and miss with drives IMHO. The updated version of the Samsung SN850,ie,the SN850X is decent but power draw seems quite high:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...-back-in-black

Generally speaking in terms of SSD companies I usually will go with WD,Crucial and Seagate. I also prefer to go for higher TBW drives,if given the choice for similar money because I will use the SSDs for years. Also consistent sustained write performance for me is more important than short term speed.

My current drive setup is:
1.)WD Blue 500GB(SATA) - 200TBW
2.)Crucial MX500 1TB(SATA) - 360TBW
3.)Intel DC SC3710 800GB(SATA) - 16900TBW and used for my Windows downloads folder,and any swap files.
4.)Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB(NVME) - 3600TBW

The Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB replaced my WD SN700 500GB. The latter is now in another PC.

I have a spare Samsung SM863A 1TB(SATA) which will replace the WD Blue 500GB at some point and has 6160TBW. I got the two Enterprise drives secondhand and relatively cheap and they still had some warranty left! They both together cost me about the same as the Crucial MX500 1TB!

[[GSV]Trig]

I'm sure I'm teaching you suck eggs here, but fast drives tend to generate more heat, so given this is going in a laptop you wanna make sure that whatever you get isn't going to throttle or die when it gets hot...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It's important to look at how hot these drives run. My FireCuda 520 in in an Ncase M1 mini-ITX case which is quite small,and so far seems to not throttle. It does have a "heatsink" on it but even when I ran it in the other slot without one it was fine. The FireCuda 530 does come with a heatsink installed,so you would need to check it can fit a laptop. It is more efficient than the 980 Pro and 990 Pro and SN850X. It's closer to the SN850 but with much better performance overall.

However,any of these higher end PCI-E 4.0 drives will consume more power than the lower end ones with no DRAM,or pure PCI-E 3.0 drives.

[Jonatron]

For some perspective, SSD's are generally pretty reliable: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/ar...stations-1550/

[Saracen999]

All replies appreciated.

@MrJim - I hear you, but I have a problem, personally, with that. I still haven't forgiven (or forgotten) what I considered a wholly unacceptable response to the "exploding PSU" debacle. Whether entirely rational or not, their response suggests a corporate attitude I object to, so they're simply on my "no way in hell" list for anything. A shame in a way, as they used to be one of my go-to's, at least for motherboards. I've already recently ruled them out for (if I do it) te mobo for my build, any version of any GPU, a relatively high-end monitor and, yup, laptops.

@ Cat-5 re: PCIe 3 or 4.

Umm. Currenty, no, the laptop is PCIe 3. So, good point. However, I'm (still) trying to make up my mind on whether to build a PC with both gaming and video editing in mind, or just cop out and get another laptop. It's kinda hanging in the balance. The LT route has advantages, namely buy one box, open, set up and go. The Desktop (DT) has other advantages, like considerably more scope for tweaking spec, and/or adding extra hardware.

Right now, either is possible, but either way, that will be PCIe 4.

So yup, this LT won't fully drive the 7000MB end of things but, upon jumping either way, the new one will and, at that point, the new 2TB drive goes in that .... with one exception. One candidate (another Asus Zephyrus like this one but newer gen) already has 2 x 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs (in RAID, though I'd want them unraided into 2 separate drives, which I assume shoukdn't be a problem). One issue either way is whether I can still 'downgrade' default W11 installs back to W10. If not, DT it is, with an existing licence.

I was trying to gloss over the whole PCIe 3 v PCIe 4 thing, on TL / DR gounds but should have known I wouldn't get away with it.

Seagate is a strong contender. It's a shame I'm retired journalistically. In the past, I'd have given the press people a call and very likely had a loan unit next day. I even met one of their founders (Finis Conner) several times, though he was running Conner at the tiime, just as Seagate bought them out. Nice guy. But I've been out of the game way too long now, sadly.

@DwU - Yeah, it sorta looks like it might be resolved but as far as I can tell, there's no definitive word on that from Samsung and until thgere is ....

[Saracen999]

For some perspective, SSD's are generally pretty reliable: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/ar...stations-1550/

Yup. Ironically though, it was Puget that first brought the whole issue with Samsund NMVe SSDs (as opposed to SATA) to light.

As I said (I think) I have existing Samsung NVMe drives in a different (older) machine, and one of my favourite drives is a T7 Touch, with is both pretty quick and has a useful built-in fingerprint scanner (MUCH more important to me for a drive I take out and about, than those sitting in machines back home, though).

[Saracen999]

I'm sure I'm teaching you suck eggs here, but fast drives tend to generate more heat, so given this is going in a laptop you wanna make sure that whatever you get isn't going to throttle or die when it gets hot...

Good point. I guess there's no 100% guarantee, but it is currently in an LT thats pretty well cooled. With a 5900HS, 32GB DDR4 and a 3080, it needs to be. I doubt another SSD is going to radically add to that, especially over the 3080 (though, as a mobile version it kinda isn't a 3080).

Either way, this Asus LT gets MUCH less hot than my old MS Surface Pro did, despite the MS being way less powerful. The newer LT I had thought about is certainly available with 2x 2TB SSDs (dunno which) as a standard configuration. The DT, if I do it, will be geared to cope with 7900X (or 3D), fairly beefy (but not right at the top) GPU etc, so probably Noctua D-15, chunky case (for space for GPU and that CPU cooler) and either generous lashings of fans, or maybe (possibly) water-cooling.

It's a concern for sure, but a heatsink on the SSD (assuming an LT case permits) and system cooling already being an issue, should cope. I think.

[MrJim]

Generally speaking in terms of SSD companies I usually will go with WD,Crucial and Seagate. I also prefer to go for higher TBW drives,if given the choice for similar money because I will use the SSDs for years. Also consistent sustained write performance for me is more important than short term speed.

I bought one of these a year ago (at a bit of a knock-down price), & although it's designed for NAS use, I use it for downloads, swapfiles etc. It has crazy endurance stats though... one drive write per day! (over the 5 year warranty period).

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-I...67&sr=8-4&th=1

All replies appreciated.

@MrJim - I hear you, but I have a problem, personally, with that. I still haven't forgiven (or forgotten) what I considered a wholly unacceptable response to the "exploding PSU" debacle. (

Yes, Gigabyte certainly didn't win any friends over their exploding PSU issue. I got that SSD a while before that all kicked off, but I can understand your views on the brand.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

@ Cat-5 re: PCIe 3 or 4.

Umm. Currenty, no, the laptop is PCIe 3. So, good point. However, I'm (still) trying to make up my mind on whether to build a PC with both gaming and video editing in mind, or just cop out and get another laptop. It's kinda hanging in the balance. The LT route has advantages, namely buy one box, open, set up and go. The Desktop (DT) has other advantages, like considerably more scope for tweaking spec, and/or adding extra hardware.

Right now, either is possible, but either way, that will be PCIe 4.

So yup, this LT won't fully drive the 7000MB end of things but, upon jumping either way, the new one will and, at that point, the new 2TB drive goes in that .... with one exception. One candidate (another Asus Zephyrus like this one but newer gen) already has 2 x 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs (in RAID, though I'd want them unraided into 2 separate drives, which I assume shoukdn't be a problem). One issue either way is whether I can still 'downgrade' default W11 installs back to W10. If not, DT it is, with an existing licence.

I was trying to gloss over the whole PCIe 3 v PCIe 4 thing, on TL / DR gounds but should have known I wouldn't get away with it.

Seagate is a strong contender. It's a shame I'm retired journalistically. In the past, I'd have given the press people a call and very likely had a loan unit next day. I even met one of their founders (Finis Conner) several times, though he was running Conner at the tiime, just as Seagate bought them out. Nice guy. But I've been out of the game way too long now, sadly.

TBH,the FireCuda 520 is running in PCI-E 3.0 mode,because the B450 chipset does not support PCI-E 4.0,but since I re-use drives it was a capability I wanted.

Also,the FireCuda 530 has impressive write consistency.

I bought one of these a year ago (at a bit of a knock-down price), & although it's designed for NAS use, I use it for downloads, swapfiles etc. It has crazy endurance stats though... one drive write per day! (over the 5 year warranty period).

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-I...67&sr=8-4&th=1

That is the advantage of higher endurance drives - you don't need to be concerned about the amount of data written onto them as much.

Out of interest - how much was it?

[MrJim]

That is the advantage of higher endurance drives - you don't need to be concerned about the amount of data written onto them as much.

Out of interest - how much was it?

I got it for £299 from a third-party seller on Amazon, I think. I suspect they had mispriced it though, as at that time it was usually around £499 I believe.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I got it for £299 from a third-party seller on Amazon, I think. I suspect they had mispriced it though, as at that time it was usually around £499 I believe.

A good deal!

[DanceswithUnix]

That is the advantage of higher endurance drives - you don't need to be concerned about the amount of data written onto them as much.

I always sort of factor that in when buying an SSD, but I also know in reality I doubt any of us here can really worry a modern SSD, unless it is one of the really bad ones. My Linux work SSD here (1TB Samsung 860 EVO) is showing only 20TB of writes in 3.5 years and I hit that pretty hard with constant compiles, docker container builds, running VMs etc. It looks like that is 3% of the drive wear used, if the SMART indicator dropping from 100 to 97 is to be believed.

[Saracen999]

A good deal!

You can say that again. Wow.