# SSD Reliability: Intel 330 vs 335 vs 520 vs Samsung 840 PRO



## RoutedScripter (Mar 16, 2013)

Long story behind, even checked SuperSSpeed and Intel DC S3700

Budget has changed, so these are the choices now. (unless i get the DC for 100€ less somewher lol)


It's quite a clusterfucked marke, bad firmwares, no updates, I just can't find a perfect drive balanced for my needs, since i'm definitely not doing server-load I do not want the enterprise ones for that, I want it simply for data corruption protection specifically the lower error rates and better firmware to eliminate any BSODs or such unacceptable sacrifices. I do not want peak spead I do like IO consistency and stability.

At first it was Samsung 840 PRO 128GB but I am impressed with Intel's offerings in terms of reliability. However SO MUCH COUNTER-INFO is on the web, I am in a hurry as the SSD is the last thing on my build and all other stuff is already ordered en-route, so I spent quite some hours, at first only good news, then I couldn't research intel firmware's because of their FIRMWARE UPDATE TOOL , i cannot see how many updates there is and how good they are releasing them in regular timely fashion (or is the intial release THAT good?)

There's also those AHCI-detection issues plaguign a lot of drives (at least soem people, there's always somebody) but the challenge is to filter through those who are noob-comments and those who are pro.


I really don't want failing this because it's an OS drive. I need some reassurance. Also i don't care about capacity but it should be 100GB or above at least, not above 180GB (too expensive)

In a summary, I know 335 is newer but has 20nm which may be less reliable because it's smaller, at least some reviewers had problems of low life or at least a pre-release firmware bug, still more comments was on this having lower than 3000 PE cycles. The 520 is older but for some reason may be reported at faster speeds or atleast that's what I heard, the 330 should be well, I forgot half the stuff thorught this day but I should recall it as you guys mention it.

I know the DC s3700 doesn't even need TRIM because it's properly build to avoid that, TRIM is actually a workaround patch for the consumer drives, interesting, yes i watched the intel QA about it in full.

I've looked a lot into Samsung 840 PRO and performance great ofcourse, but I did found no any proof about good reliability, and seeing there's zero FW updates, makes me cringe. On top of that none of these drives provide power-loss emergency capacitors so.... 

I am not planning to reinstall my win7 in less than 2 years, and the most terrible thing to happen is that the SSD causes BSODs or freezes, the other PC i helped build has Crucial M4, well there is no problem with it, it's like 9month old but in the last month i heard there were 3 BSODs, not sure if RAM related, probably not cause it would be a different pattern imo.

I'll have a lot more budget some time from now but right now just not, and SSD shound't be the thing to save on I know, atleast if I can try copying SSD install to another SSD would be better than HDD from SSD right ?

EDIT: Crucial M500 looks like it won't come in this 2 weeks, Q1 is almost over, no reviews yet either. M4 has good firmware updating, but perofrmance reviews seems to be lower.


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## techtard (Mar 16, 2013)

The Samsung Pro is pretty reliable, I've been hearing otherwise about the non-pro 840.

Another SSD you might consider is the Plextor M5 Pro Extreme. I have one in my Windows machine, and it has been solid so far. 

The Plextor drive should be slightly cheaper than the Samsung.


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## pigulici (Mar 16, 2013)

Well, same question I have it last week, yesterday I finaly buy a Samsung 830...


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## RoutedScripter (Mar 17, 2013)

techtard said:


> The Samsung Pro is pretty reliable, I've been hearing otherwise about the non-pro 840.
> 
> Another SSD you might consider is the Plextor M5 Pro Extreme. I have one in my Windows machine, and it has been solid so far.
> 
> The Plextor drive should be slightly cheaper than the Samsung.




Yeah, I know non-pro is TLC, I'm not interested in that at all, ignored it as soon as I found out what TLC is.


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## repman244 (Mar 17, 2013)

If I were you I would go with the 840 Pro or the Intel 520 (I own both).
Both are very reliable, good warranty and great performance. I don't know where you saw the 840 Pro doesn't have any firmware updates because mine had when I first used the provided software.

And just because one drive doesn't have many FW updates doesn't mean much...you could look at it from a different side and say: the FW doesn't have any issues so it doesn't need updating. I would be more worried if the drive had 10 updates so far.


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## RoutedScripter (Mar 17, 2013)

repman244 said:


> If I were you I would go with the 840 Pro or the Intel 520 (I own both).
> Both are very reliable, good warranty and great performance. I don't know where you saw the 840 Pro doesn't have any firmware updates because mine had when I first used the provided software.
> 
> And just because one drive doesn't have many FW updates doesn't mean much...you could look at it from a different side and say: the FW doesn't have any issues so it doesn't need updating. I would be more worried if the drive had 10 updates so far.



Reasonable yes I did thought of that.

That came out like this because I've seen only 1.0 version on samsung website.


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## tokyoduong (Mar 18, 2013)

techtard said:


> The Samsung Pro is pretty reliable, I've been hearing otherwise about the non-pro 840.
> 
> Another SSD you might consider is the Plextor M5 Pro Extreme. I have one in my Windows machine, and it has been solid so far.
> 
> The Plextor drive should be slightly cheaper than the Samsung.





RuskiSnajper said:


> Yeah, I know non-pro is TLC, I'm not interested in that at all, ignored it as soon as I found out what TLC is.



The intel 500s are rock solid in reliability but the samsung 840 pro will beat it in performance. AFAIK, 840 pros should have the same reliability as the 830 pro. Have not heard anything bad about them besides a very small amount of people getting DOAs. From reading all the user reviews, it seems they are about the same in reliability overall. I would give a slight edge to intel but it's negligible.

The difference between Pro and non Pro is MLC or TLC. Yes, TLC is cheaper and only rated for 1000 PE. Besides that, the non Pro is very reliable if you don't do a lot of writes/rewrites. The price difference isn't that much so get the pro for faster write performance and more PE cycles.


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## RoutedScripter (Mar 20, 2013)

The point was, i will have business-grade data on the SSD, i cannot afford this nonsense test rabbit stuff.

Thanks everyone, I researched more and made my decision.


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## repman244 (Mar 20, 2013)

RuskiSnajper said:


> The point was, i will have business-grade data on the SSD, i cannot afford this nonsense test rabbit stuff.



Backup? HDD's aren't necessarily more reliable either.


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