Chloe PriceAs a game library drive it would be fine, I guess.

Early projections for QLC NAND called for at most a few hundred program/erase cycles, which would produce drives that would require careful treatment with workload that treated the storage more or less as a write-once, read-many (WORM) media. As QLC got closer to mass production, the story shifted and it became clear that QLC NAND would have adequate endurance for use as general-purpose storage.

Vayra86The MX500 and the EVO are both TLC, and the M2 drives are different but command a smaller price gap, apparently.

So, no. The numbers don't support your statement. Bottom line: you're paying for Sammy's good brand image.

I'm also missing the actual test data of how Sammy's drives have higher durability. They can say its 150 TBW versus 100 TBW on the MX500, but MTBF on the MX500 is still higher. Its a coin toss, pick a number and you have your number one drive? Only time will tell.

oxidizedPrices are close and for 10€ i'd go samsung for obvious reasons, since everything they have compared to crucial is better, included the brand itself.
There's no doubt crucial wins in "bang for buck" and that's exactly why samsung SSDs are probably better, otherwise crucial won't price their at a higher price, even because then nobody will buy them.

The TBW calculations are approximate (even if they use it as a requirement for warranty, so i wouldn't say they're too much approximate), sure, but that counts for both crucial and samsung, and crucial best case scenario, might match samsung's worst case scenario, and there's still other factors to count in, like speeds for example. MTBF? How did you come up with that, is that even specified into the specifics? Besides, for warranty claims they ask for TBW and not MTBF or MTTF, so well...

Vayra86Ten EUR on a 250 GB drive is 25% more cost per GB. I'm not sure about you but going Samsung 'for obvious reasons' is total and utter bullshit. That's just marketing playing tricks on you. The rest of your post is 100% assumptions and 0% certainty. They are the same quality of NAND, and they both use very good controllers.

So, you haven't brought any data, except the marginal speed gaps between Samsung and Crucial drives of which we've already established are negligible in daily use. The only other data we have is a major price/GB gap, one you've royally understated to push Samsung as your favorite brand.

Just call it what it is please. Don't use BS arguments to make a point.

Here's MTBF which is the regular metric used for most hardware, not some illustrious TBW that got introduced with flash storage and is consistently beaten in real world tests (almost all drives, especially those with good controllers, last far longer)

If there is one thing you should know by now it is that these numbers like TBW or MTBF mean jack shit in a real use case because who writes 100GB/day on a consumer drive?

oxidizedSo you're denying the fact that samsung is a better brand than crucial, based only on specs, and i'm writing BS? Nice logic there. TBW is a parameter which is valuable to ask for an RMA in case the drive fails before the warranty years
Marginally isn't actually accurate, and as i already said the performance difference, even if not huge, is there, and is consistent


I read TBW and not MTBF in there, and besides, TBW is still an easier thing to test compared to MTBF.

And i assure you, there's people who use such devices to write much even if they're not supposed to, and we're still talking about a 50% difference which is huge, while being just slightly pricier, at least here, and in some other european countries (and if i'm not wrong in US shouldn't even reach 10$ difference between the two. So yeah i think any say person would spend 4/5€ (250GB size) more to have even roughly 50% TBW, and not MTBF which is something like 200 years vs 170 years (crucial and samsung respectively)

bugGuys, chill. Look at my sig: I own SSDs from OCZ, Samsung and Crucial (bought them as I could afford them). There's no difference between them for day to day usage.
Since day one, there was one rule about buying SSDs that still holds true today: get the biggest drive that fits into your budget. That's all. With the advent of TLC and now QLC, you may want to be a bit more careful than that if you're routinely doing write-intensive stuff, but other than that, nothing has changed.

bugNice wall of text, but can you summarize, please?

oxidizedSo you're denying the fact that samsung is a better brand than crucial, based only on specs, and i'm writing BS? Nice logic there. TBW is a parameter which is valuable to ask for an RMA in case the drive fails before the warranty years
Marginally isn't actually accurate, and as i already said the performance difference, even if not huge, is there, and is consistent


I read TBW and not MTBF in there, and besides, TBW is still an easier thing to test compared to MTBF.

And i assure you, there's people who use such devices to write much even if they're not supposed to, and we're still talking about a 50% difference which is huge, while being just slightly pricier, at least here, and in some other european countries (and if i'm not wrong in US shouldn't even reach 10$ difference between the two. So yeah i think any say person would spend 4/5€ (250GB size) more to have even roughly 50% TBW, and not MTBF which is something like 200 years vs 170 years (crucial and samsung respectively)

Vayra86Read carefully.

Whichever comes first

oxidizedI still don't read MTBF in there

R0H1TYou're hung up on the $4~5 thing, the difference in percentage can be as high as 20% (over here) or higher in many parts of the world.

Vayra86I've said twice now, that none of those numbers mean anything when it comes to write endurance in the real world. READ. You already missed the crucial (lol) bit of text in your own quoted source.

oxidizedBecause it's like that in most of the places i've checked, it's still minimum difference even if we reach as high as 10€ or 15 even.

R0H1T20% isn't minimum, I can show you that right now & 20% isn't the performance difference either.

oxidizedBecause it's like that in most of the places i've checked, it's still minimum difference even if we reach as high as 10€ or 15 even.



Those number MEAN something, because that's what they said in the warranty note. Missed what?

oxidized? Wall of text? Are you joking?

oxidizedNever said 20% is the performance difference, not even 10% probably, so what? What, you want stuff that's worth every penny you spend? I've got bad news for you.

Vayra86:banghead:



NOW, show me a USE CASE of a consumer pushing 100GB/day through these drives. What on earth kind of data would that be? You saying 'people do that' doesn't suddenly make it true, or logical, and this is the core of the argument: meaningless TBW numbers to defend a high price point.

I have put MTBF in opposition to that because it shows that the cheaper drive apparently does have higher reliability in operating hours. What is more likely - to have a drive for a VERY long time, or to write your ass off every single day so you can kill it before your three year warranty is up?

We both know the answer, and that concludes this discussion. Thank you for playing.

bugI meant I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

R0H1TSo what exactly are you arguing for, Samsung's TBW>Crucial is that it? Samsung's the best in a lot of segments, one could argue virtually every segment in the retail space.
However they aren't the best in every single metric, across the board. Their price premium (20%) is more than what I'd like to pay, many others would agree.

oxidizedMan there's TBW written there, that's the first thing they ask for, after the purchase date, and within either 3 or 5 years depending on the product. TBW is the thing MTBF isn't, stop trying to climb any mirror because there's none left, crucial SSDs are good products but if you're not on a super tight budget it's better to get an EVO (for all the reasons i said), that's the truth you're ignoring for some reason. Yeah exactly you know the answer, is it easier to write 100TB on a 250GB drive, or survive for 200 years? Well i guess we both know the answer don't we? And still there's people who use these drives for that much, not per day, but 100TB isn't THAT much if you think about it

Vayra86Nobody ever asks for TBW because it barely ever happens that these drives reach their TBW before the warranty period is up, and if they do, it was obvious you picked the wrong drive for your use case. Whether that is a Samsung or a Crucial drive doesn't matter, they're both going to die quickly from that kind of usage. I've got a use case for that scenario: Backblaze would try and see how far they could push consumer SSDs in an enterprise storage environment. www.backblaze.com/ That is why they can provide us with those yearly failure rates on a large set of HDDs.

You've spotted two numbers, compared them, concluded this is why Samsung is better and only then started thinking about the practical use of these products. These numbers are disclaimers to prevent a company from having to repair product that is clearly not used as intended. No more, no less. They have no relation to actual amount of writes.

Here's a funny read for you, it shows how meaningless TBW really is.

techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

EDIT: now I know why Crucial and Samsung are so similar in your country: you're paying far too much for the Crucial drive. The opposite is true in my country, you've seen the price is 10 eur lower here.

oxidizedI agree that it could not be their use case, but it's still a pro, and that's something to keep in mind anyway, even if you reach not even half TBW in 100 years, it's still better to have more than less especially when the specs are not that precise. Anyway be it 3 be it 5 or be it 10€ i'd still go for the samsung no doubt for all the reasons i talked about earlier, and because it's samsung, and not crucial.
Oh and don't you think i'm mad with crucial or something (i'm not the kind of guy who has affection towards brands, actually the opposite, the good words i have for samsung are only based on my personal, and not, experience with it), i've suggested their SSDs in all the builds i recently made for people i know, just because the price was not this close, and even because i never went checking properly prices or performance differences with EVO series from samsung.

bugNow I get it. All other things being equal, you lean towards Samsung because it has better advertised TBW, a metric you acknowledge is not really comparable between brands.
I also think Samsung may have an edge on Crucial/Micron, but all things being equals, I'd lean towards Crucial. Just like you, a simple personal preference, I'd do it as a means to stick it to Samsung and their price premiums over the past few years.
At the end of the day, they're both tier-1 manufacturers with a solid track record. You can't go wrong with any of them.

oxidizedI agree that it could not be their use case, but it's still a pro, and that's something to keep in mind anyway, even if you reach not even half TBW in 100 years, it's still better to have more than less especially when the specs are not that precise. Anyway be it 3 be it 5 or be it 10€ i'd still go for the samsung no doubt for all the reasons i talked about earlier, and because it's samsung, and not crucial.
Oh and don't you think i'm mad with crucial or something (i'm not the kind of guy who has affection towards brands, actually the opposite, the good words i have for samsung are only based on my personal, and not, experience with it), i've suggested their SSDs in all the builds i recently made for people i know, just because the price was not this close, and even because i never went checking properly prices or performance differences with EVO series from samsung.