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Niteshade_Rune · **12-21-2014, 02:36 PM**

Ive been considering some new additions to my gaming rig and was planning a new SSD for some additional storage space and boosts to some load times.

Ive got a good SSD in with my normal hdds now for gaming, but Ive been gifted a bit of $ toward acquiring a new one to expand with an additional drive.

Ive narrowed down my choices to the Samsung line for SSDs(my current 256 being an OCZ)
I was hoping to get a bit of input from some of you that may have a bit more on hand knowledge, regarding things like the differences/pros/cons between TLC and MLC
I know the most obvious is a price difference. I've also read with some of my own research that MLC seemingly are a bit better then the TLC and possibly have more lifetime to them.
Tho I see between the 2 models I'm considering theres only a smidge of a difference between read times , tho a bit less power consumption on the MLC. theres almost a 100$ difference in pricing.

SSD comparison

Coatleque · **12-21-2014, 03:07 PM**

SSD's really come down to does it work, or is it DOA?
If it works out of the box, you'll probably be very happy with it. Just like a thumb drive.

And for all the rumors you hear about them having a low lifetime? Look at the data sheet. The MTFB (mean time before failure) is listed at 1500000 hours. That is 171 YEARS of continuous operation.

I don't know about the Samsungs, but here's what I have myself:

Intel 520 Series 240 GB
Intel 530 Series 240 GB

I use these in a Stripe configuration for a 480 GB drive. OS and games installed.
As a secondary drive I have two 500 GB single platter 7200 RPM drives in a mirror configuration.

If what you are going for is performance over storage space, I would consider getting multiple smaller drives and setting up a stripe rather than one large drive.

Also, if your motherboard doesn't have SATA III, I would consider upgrading it as well. SATA II used with SSD has the potential to max the bandwidth on the buss, in which case your SSD performance will be much slower than expected.

Coatleque · **12-21-2014, 05:04 PM**

If you are absolutely paranoid about SSD performance vs longevity because of the "limited write cycles" fear that people have, here is a tweak guide for Windows 7 to either disable or off-load some unnecessary system tasks to a second drive.

I've been running my stripe with Windows 7/8 for over a year now without most of these tweaks and have no issues. Intel's SSD Toolbox still shows drive health at 100% for each disk.

http://www.computing.net/howtos/show/sol...7/552.html

**Unnamed Mercenary** · **12-22-2014, 12:54 PM**

Samsung is definitely nice.Â

I had an OCZ drive that failed/RMAed/failed again 3 times. Or if anything, never trust the OCZ Vertex line. They have a history with controllers going into "panic mode", which cannot be unlocked by users. (Data = GONE)

I've currently got a Samsung Pro 840, which has been a really nice drive. It's been reliable and came with decent software to migrate over the boot drive, which worked pretty well for situations where I'm not going to just reinstall.

Also had good luck with Kingston and Adata drives in the past.Â

I'd also mirror what Crofte said though. Chances are, you'll get bottlenecked by something else even with a single SSD, but if you're going for big storage, multiple small ones in a raid will outperform a single, expensive, big SSD. I'd would probbaly recommend going the cheaper option unless you're doing something really I/O intensive that will benefit from the slightly better performance.

Niteshade_Rune · **12-27-2014, 08:08 PM**

I didnt remember hearing bad things about the OCZ line. The SSD i'm using now was an OCZ vertex and its been holding up well since I got it. If when its all said and done the TLC Samsung I was looking at holds out as long as and performs just about on pair with the MLC one then for almost 100$ cheaper I probably would be fine just getting the TLC one. Some games enjoy quicker load times more noticeably then others but even if its not a top tier SSD they are still likely to notice the difference in the end lol.

FreelanceWizard · **12-27-2014, 08:11 PM**

For what it's worth, I use a pair of 512Gb Crucial MX100s in a RAID 1 configuration. I generally recommend SSDs be run in some sort of RAID setup, because an SSD that fails typically just vanishes; unlike a hard drive, which can have data extracted from it in the event of a failure, a dead SSD just goes "poof."

The MX100 is pretty inexpensive, crazy fast like all SSDs (really, other than in artificial benchmarks, one is not likely to notice the difference among brands Smile

), and seems to be pretty reliable thus far.

**Unnamed Mercenary** · **12-27-2014, 08:20 PM**

OCZ had bad rep for SSDs that would fail because the power state of the computer wasn't compatible with the drive itself. Mine would fail if I put the laptop I had in to sleep/hibernation.

It was apparently a document issue. I'll link some of the resources if I can find them.

(bit really, for the computers that didn't have the issue, it was great!)

Coatleque · **12-27-2014, 08:29 PM**

(12-27-2014, 08:11 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: I generally recommend SSDs be run in some sort of RAID setup, because an SSD that fails typically just vanishes; unlike a hard drive, which can have data extracted from it in the event of a failure, a dead SSD just goes "poof."

I would also recommend this for anyone who's overly concerned with not losing data, or who does not have a secondary drive for storage.

Personally I have nothing saved on the SSD that I need to keep. If it dies, I just replace and reload the OS fresh (which is why I have them striped rather than mirrored). I do that every 3 months anyway so it's not really a big deal in my case.

Niteshade_Rune · **12-29-2014, 12:27 PM**

(12-27-2014, 08:29 PM)Coatleque Wrote:
(12-27-2014, 08:11 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: I generally recommend SSDs be run in some sort of RAID setup, because an SSD that fails typically just vanishes; unlike a hard drive, which can have data extracted from it in the event of a failure, a dead SSD just goes "poof."

I would also recommend this for anyone who's overly concerned with not losing data, or who does not have a secondary drive for storage.

Personally I have nothing saved on the SSD that I need to keep. If it dies, I just replace and reload the OS fresh (which is why I have them striped rather than mirrored). I do that every 3 months anyway so it's not really a big deal in my case.

I'll have to keep that in mind when I do pick up a second SSD, never really thought about it to much, but I also have 2 other normal hdds in the rig plus a 2tb and 4tb external used for backup/storage purposes and try to copy my primary files over periodically for back up purposes. Occasionally worrying if those die if i should look into some sort of cloud backup lol.

I know about as much about RAID setup and configuration as I do with heavy network tweaking( essentially nil)
Something I'll have to look into tho when I pick up my next SSD

Coatleque · **12-29-2014, 12:42 PM**

(12-29-2014, 12:27 PM)Niteshade0 Wrote: I know about as much about RAID setup and configuration as I do with heavy network tweaking( essentially nil)

Initiating crash-course in basic RAID setup...

Luckily with the latest boards from Intel, their integrated controller is sufficient for any home use application.

After you have everything hooked up and you boot the computer, go into your BIOS and find the IDE Drive controller settings. Change it to RAID mode (not IDE or AHCI). When you reboot, hit Ctrl+I when it prompts (during the controller's boot-up sequence). From there you just follow the on-screen instructions. Pick the drives you want to add, create the array, and give it a name.

There are really only two modes to concern yourself with.
RAID 0 - This is a disk stripe. It has no redundancy, so if one drive dies you lose EVERYTHING. The benefit here is that all disks will read/write at the same time, in sync, so you get VERY fast speeds in this configuration. All drive space is combined as well, so you have full storage capacity.

RAID 1 - This is a mirror. Both drives have the exact same data written to each, so if one drive dies the system kicks over to the functional one. You gain no performance in this setup, just data redundancy. You also lose the storage capacity of the 2nd drive since they are both used for the same data.

Any other configuration requires 3+ drives.

After the array is setup all you need to do is reboot and install windows. It should see the array as one hard drive. Depending on how new your motherboard is you -may- need drivers for the chipset before Windows recognizes the array. If that is the case, setup will prompt you that it cannot find a suitable drive. Just have your Motherboard drives ready beforehand on a flash drive.

One other thing of note, the Intel on-board SATA controller will automatically down-clock your SATA 3 ports if you combine drives from the SATA 2 bus into a RAID array. If you only use drives on the SATA 3 bus, it will run at full speed. So if you have 3 drives and the first 2 are a mirror on SATA 3, it will run at full speed while the 3rd drive will run at its own speed as a second drive.

Aya · **12-29-2014, 12:58 PM**

I have run three SSDs, in every case I only run the operating system and specific software that I desire to load quickly from the SSD, and everything else (especially data storage) is offloaded to traditional hard drives.

I've had one of these fail, and it failed sequentially slow enough that I was able to get most everything I wanted to off of it (I booted up, and things were behaving strangely, and I was worried it was the SSD so I immediately began backing up everything I could.Â When I rebooted again the SSD was dead).

That's just an anecdote, but I certainly take the concerns about their durability to heart.Â Wonderful devices but I do not trust them as much as an HD, and you can't even trust HD's terribly well :-]

Looking for some SSD input

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes