SanDisk Ultra 3D 4 TB 2.5" SSD

[W1zzard]

The SanDisk Ultra 3D is the most affordable 4 TB SSD available, currently selling for only $390. In terms of performance, it's nearly as fast as other high-end 2.5" SATA drives, and write speeds are sustained very well since there's no TLC write hole.

Show full review

 

[Xuper]

Sandisk 4TB , 600 TBW = $390 , Relative Performance = 100%
Samsung 870 QVO 4TB , 1440 TBW = $399 ( amazon ) , Relative Performance = 79% ( Only 1TB tested )

Which one ?

 

[AxilomX]

Honestly I think it's great that the prices on these Sata SSDs have become more reasonable with the larger capacities.

 

[TheUn4seen]

Great. I'm a sucker for cheap storage and silence is infinitely more important to me than speed since I'm absolutely fine with a gigabit network at home and I spend a lot of time in a room with several drives. Cheap 8TB SSDs will probably be an end game for me.

 

[Tardian]

Western Digital 4TB Blue 2.5in 3D NAND SATA SSD (WDS400T2B0A) - Umart.com.au

Buy Western Digital 4TB Blue 2.5in 3D NAND SATA SSD (WDS400T2B0A) - Buy Now, Pay Later + FREE pick-up & same day dispatch!

www.umart.com.au

About the same?

The SanDisk Ultra 3D is the most affordable 4 TB SSD available, currently selling for only $390.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Western Digital 4TB Blue 2.5in 3D NAND SATA SSD (WDS400T2B0A) - Umart.com.au

Buy Western Digital 4TB Blue 2.5in 3D NAND SATA SSD (WDS400T2B0A) - Buy Now, Pay Later + FREE pick-up & same day dispatch!

www.umart.com.au

About the same?

$539 isn't really close to $390.

 

[Selaya]

AUD $540 is actually a lot closer to USD $390 ...

 

[tripleclicker]

I appreciate the review, W1z, since manufacturers tend to switch components it's nice to see what they're putting into it nowadays.

 

[Tardian]

$539 isn't really close to $390.

539.00 AUD = 390.99 USD

https://www.currencyconverterx.com/AUD/USD/539

 

[Anymal]

Ah, only 390 usd, no problem.

 

[W1zzard]

Sandisk 4TB , 600 TBW = $390 , Relative Performance = 100%
Samsung 870 QVO 4TB , 1440 TBW = $399 ( amazon ) , Relative Performance = 79% ( Only 1TB tested )

Which one ?

Samsung QVO is 100 MB/s, do not buy

 

[Anymal]

But 1440 TBW vs. 600!

 

[Chrispy_]

I'm more than okay with this mediocre showing. SATA is starting to become a crippling bottleneck but the sub-10c/GB is great to see and there are some pretty common use cases where this will be one of the best options. The fact this delivers a consistent write speed to keep up with the SATA bottleneck is another welcome bonus in this cheap market segment that is otherwise served by abysmal drives crippled by DRAMless QLC.

Gaming laptop is one obvious choice - they can benefit from a light, large, fast, shock-tolerant storage library in a 2.5" form factor.
Portable SSD is another one, since this in a USB3.2 external enclosure will be one of the cheapest ways to carry around this capacity in relative safety.

The real issue is that 2.5" is a dying form factor. ATX cases are getting bigger, ridiculously so, and laptops are getting so thin that most of them ditch 2.5" bays for a second M.2 slot instead. So this Sandisk Ultra 4TB is useful in a few scenarios but I think we'd all like to see WD/Sandisk bump up their WD Green (SATA) M.2 drive to larger capacities. The M.2 2280 WD Green tops out at a paltry 480GB and the only M.2 drive under the Sandisk brand is the X600 which tops out at 2TB also.

 

[bonehead123]

2.5" is a dying form factor

2.5" ummm... WHAHDATIZ ???? Hehehehehe...

Seriously, I have not owned or used a 2.5" drive since m.2's became available back in 2014-15 ....

 

[duynguyenle]

But 1440 TBW vs. 600!

If your sole concern is write endurance and you're happy with 100MB/s write speeds, you're better off buying an old-fashioned spinning rust hard disk, then it's infinite TBW! (not accounting for mechanical/PCB failures of course). Most modern hard drives will have no issues getting more than 100MB/s sequential writes (again your usage may differ, SSDs are beneficial in random I/O scenarios)

I think it's fairly common knowledge that the TBW specs on SSDs are fairly conservative, no? Especially when you compare TLC drives to QLC ones. It's likely SanDisk are just rating the drive conservatively while Samsung are a lot less so with their QVO. TechReport did an excellent experiment a few years ago showing most SSDs writing well above their rated TBW endurance, but that site is dead now. RIP

 

[bug]

2.5" ummm... WHAHDATIZ ???? Hehehehehe...

Seriously, I have not owned or used a 2.5" drive since m.2's became available back in 2014-15 ....

Your system specs say otherwise

 

[W1zzard]

But 1440 TBW vs. 600!

You will never reach either of those

 

[bug]

You

You will never reach either of those

You could, if you did a lot of 4k video editing. Even so, I'd still more at ease with the TLC drive.

 

[W1zzard]

You

You could, if you did a lot of 4k video editing. Even so, I'd still more at ease with the TLC drive.

"Could" sure, in reality, no.

Challenge for you people out there: find me someone who did.

Check your own TBW stats and you'll be amazed

 

[Anymal]

After 7 years, why not?

 

[newtekie1]

Sandisk 4TB , 600 TBW = $390 , Relative Performance = 100%
Samsung 870 QVO 4TB , 1440 TBW = $399 ( amazon ) , Relative Performance = 79% ( Only 1TB tested )

Which one ?

SanDisk Ultra 3D Write Speed = 441MB/s
Samsung 870 QVO Write Speed = 116MB/s

Do you understand what the word "performance" means?

"Could" sure, in reality, no.

Challenge for you people out there: find me someone who did.

Check your own TBW stats and you'll be amazed

I've said this countless times. People way overestimate how much they write to their drives.

 

[Chrispy_]

If your sole concern is write endurance and you're happy with 100MB/s write speeds, you're better off buying an old-fashioned spinning rust hard disk, then it's infinite TBW! (not accounting for mechanical/PCB failures of course). Most modern hard drives will have no issues getting more than 100MB/s sequential writes (again your usage may differ, SSDs are beneficial in random I/O scenarios)

I think it's fairly common knowledge that the TBW specs on SSDs are fairly conservative, no? Especially when you compare TLC drives to QLC ones. It's likely SanDisk are just rating the drive conservatively while Samsung are a lot less so with their QVO. TechReport did an excellent experiment a few years ago showing most SSDs writing well above their rated TBW endurance, but that site is dead now. RIP

As much as I agree with you, there is no way I can support any argument condoning the 100MB/s write speed of Samsung's QVO bullshit.

SATA 6Gbps is a minimum target for SSDs. On sequential files (at least) an SSD must be able to deliver 550MB/s. I know that beyond about 1K IOPS transfer rates fall to controller/AHCI overheads, but if I cannot write 1TB of data at more than 500MB/s then it's a failure as an SSD.

My puny synology NAS has Seagate Ironwolves in it. I'm limited to 115MB/s because of the gigabit ethernet but internally those drives shuffle sequential data between themselves at 220-250MB/s. Spinning rust has an IOPS bottleneck but for large volumes dealing with large, sequential files, 250MB/s should be the low bar by which SSDs are measured. At no point EVER should ANY SSD ever fail to meet this performance level. You might as well use a goddamn SD card or EMMC if you aren't looking for at least spinning-rust performance levels!

/rant.

 

[duynguyenle]

As much as I agree with you, there is no way I can support any argument condoning the 100MB/s write speed of Samsung's QVO bullshit.

SATA 6Gbps is a minimum target for SSDs. On sequential files (at least) an SSD must be able to deliver 550MB/s. I know that beyond about 1K IOPS transfer rates fall to controller/AHCI overheads, but if I cannot write 1TB of data at more than 500MB/s then it's a failure as an SSD.

My puny synology NAS has Seagate Ironwolves in it. I'm limited to 115MB/s because of the gigabit ethernet but internally those drives shuffle sequential data between themselves at 220-250MB/s. Spinning rust has an IOPS bottleneck but for large volumes dealing with large, sequential files, 250MB/s should be the low bar by which SSDs are measured. At no point EVER should ANY SSD ever fail to meet this performance level. You might as well use a goddamn SD card or EMMC if you aren't looking for at least spinning-rust performance levels!

/rant.

I'm not sure if you are just misreading my comments? Sounds like you completely agree with my primary point and I am not sure what the rant was about. Let me re-iterate the point I was trying to make: 100MB/s is hard disk-level write performance and is too low for an SSD and if the OP is primarily worried about write endurance, a hard disk will be a better choice in most scenarios (most hard drives will deliver more than 100MB/s sequential writes and the write endurance is only really limited by the mechanical life of the moving parts, the platters can be erased and written over and over almost indefinitely).

The OP was implying he was OK putting up with slow write speed because the Samsung drive 'specifies' a higher endurance and I essentially told him not to waste his time and just get a hard disk instead if that's what he was worried about. Was this not clear in my response?

 

[GabrielLP14]

Awesome review, apparently it has a quite small Static pSLC Cache

 

[Selaya]

Samsung QVO is 100 MB/s, do not buy

I mean, if it were just the bad direct-to-QLC speed that's awful it's kind of a non-issue really but unfortunately your testing shows that the drive also fails to the actual real-world usage tests, so yeah ...