Are SSDs getting WORSE??

[andyme]

these nvme's will be made redundant with faster cheaper ways to make and produce like every other tech item in history so now real surprise to Intel making money off this 

[JCHelios]

Quote

I haven't seen anything about this drive to suggest that it won't do a good job for its intended audience.  

Ahhh, but its intended audience isn't savvy enough to realize that the reason their computer is running like molasses is because their C:\ drive has filled up.  They'll just run out and buy a new computer... with another Intel CPU and SSD.  

Pretty tricksy, Intel!  Please send those dubiously-gained pesos to Raja Koduri to speed up the production of awesome consumer graphics cards.  

[Guest]

2 hours ago, nicklmg said:

 

Sacrificing your image/legacy

Can you clarify what you mean by that? Is it just the titles and thumbnails, or do you feel like the content is doing this?... And if you think the content is, can you provide a couple examples that are egregious examples to you?

 

Tell u what LTT has gone from informative and cool with a nice casual twist to a meme box. Settle down with the editing a little bit for some of the videos - keep it professional ae. A title should also be informative whilst introducing the content properly. Saying "Are SSDs Getting WORSE??" is too much. It's just unprofessional and there is some clear clickbait. I get you're trying to get more views but don't lose your integrity. Try, "Are SSDs no longer reliable?" (I'm not a writer). This means a lot more because only an idiot would think SSDs have gotten worse - what does that suggest to your audience?

 

It seems to me the through process is that I'm thinking, "settle ya kettle there Linus thats not right" immediately when I see the title and I'll supposedly click on it. I'm not interested in learning about stuff I already know, so why would I watch it with already knowing the result? 

 

Bit ranty I know so take it with a grain of salt, and I do like watching the LTT videos. All the best for your work. 

[Spotty]

9 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Saying "Are SSDs Getting WORSE??" is too much. It's just unprofessional and there is some clear clickbait. I get you're trying to get more views but don't lose your integrity. Try, "Are SSDs no longer reliable?" (I'm not a writer). This means a lot more because only an idiot would think SSDs have gotten worse - what does that suggest to your audience?

"Intel's 660p new QLC SSD" instead of "INTEL is DOING WHAT!?!? WITH ITS SSDS!? OMG!"
"New QLC SSD from Intel" instead of "OMG YOU WONT BELIEVE WHAT IS INSIDE THIS SSD!"
"The new Quad Level Cell SSD from Intel!" instead of "Intel put HOW MANY levels in to their SSD?!?"

"What are QLC SSDs, and should you want it?" instead of "WHO are all these cells for!?"
"New SSDs - Increased density, but at what cost?" instead of "Top 10 FORTNITE FAILS! Number 6 will make you ROFLMFAO! WIN FREE VBUCKS"

"QLC SSDs finally for consumers, but should you buy it?" instead of "We did WHAT to Linus' storage??"

 

Out of curiosity, what was the title used for the Floatplane video?

[Hunter259]

2 hours ago, BuckGup said:

So this is where it gets weird. In terms of production value it's pretty damn good. You have incorporated actors to portray ideas and metaphors, in the most recent acer video the b-roll after the intro paired with the music was very nice and added a quality feeling to introduce the product and let the viewer know it's time to dig in, and just the overall set design as improved vastly. The part that is sorta unconventional is how Youtube works compared to other ways of consuming media. In deciding to watch a movie I will most likely watch a trailer, see an actor I like, and look at it's name/movie poster. With youtube you don't get a preview. It's just based upon the title, name, and who's in it. It would seem like the thumbnail doesn't matter as the person will enjoy the high quality video once they start watching it but you need them to click the video. The videos feel as if the audience has shifted to younger or less educated in the tech realm. Those who just know SSDs are better than an HDD and that's it, see Linus is saying SSDs are bad and demand to know if this is true as it goes against the one thing they know. Someone who is highly investing in technology would be keeping track of the market and know that SSD technology has allowed higher capacities at the cost of performance but this is only a specific technology type and it doesn't apply to all SSDs. If the title was Intel 660P SSD review with a nice high resolution picture of the SSD in the thumbnail it would make me watch the video no questions asked even though I am not remotely interesting in buying it or have a need. I would just watch it to learn about it and become more educated with what's on the market. Seeing Linus make some crazy face with a clickbait title about SSDs I have no clue what's it's truly about. Based upon the title it seems like the whole market is scamming people or there's some massive scheme happening without people noticing. But it's just a review of the Intel 660P with Linus talking about the trade off of price, speed, and capacity. It boils down to I don't have to time to watch a video for 2-3 minutes trying to figure out what it's about. I will watch it because I specifically was searching for it. 

I'm fairly sure Linus has said something about the very thing you are talking about. LTT has shifted HARD toward the entertainment side of tech youtube instead of staying more toward the middle. It's something I've come to accept but have never exactly been happy about. I don't believe that we will ever really go back to the LTT of 2+ years ago. Unfortunately those days are long past.

[Senkon]

On 11/12/2018 at 3:27 PM, RorzNZ said:

Tell u what LTT has gone from informative and cool with a nice casual twist to a meme box. Settle down with the editing a little bit for some of the videos - keep it professional ae. A title should also be informative whilst introducing the content properly. Saying "Are SSDs Getting WORSE??" is too much. It's just unprofessional and there is some clear clickbait. I get you're trying to get more views but don't lose your integrity. Try, "Are SSDs no longer reliable?" (I'm not a writer). This means a lot more because only an idiot would think SSDs have gotten worse - what does that suggest to your audience?

 

It seems to me the through process is that I'm thinking, "settle ya kettle there Linus thats not right" immediately when I see the title and I'll supposedly click on it. I'm not interested in learning about stuff I already know, so why would I watch it with already knowing the result? 

 

Bit ranty I know so take it with a grain of salt, and I do like watching the LTT videos. All the best for your work. 

 

Do not assume everyone knows what you know.  There are BILLIONS of people around the world who don't have a clue.

 

While the title is click-batey, this last SSD video isn't necessarily incorrect.  Depending on how you look at it, the more value oriented SSD's are qualitatively worse.  If your a consumer who doesn't care, or doesn't know, then you wouldn't mind.

 

That being said, as an IT Technician at Fry's Electronics, I deal with customers who don't know anything about computers each and every day, and I dread having to explain to customers the reason why their SSD's failed in a couple years, and I will say, "because the quality, for a while at lease, went down."  Assuming that future SSD R&D moves in a different direction, which I doubt.

[Egg-Roll]

 Clickbait? Meh.... I gave up on that argument....

 

 

Anyhow more importantly.... only 200TB data write? For me it would last about 20 years based on current figures from HDS, but I have 8 other drives connected to my computer which take a good portion of the grunt work off the drive... One drive (the poor poor lil old green getting physically abused ) does 5.5GB+ per day alone (based on POH and total written)... Another drive that can take the abuse, has about 10Tb/yr writes, tho I have slowly stopped using said drive so I'm assuming the write/yr would be greatly higher

 

I wouldn't trust it, lets just say that... Plus anyone who watches youtube in 1080 or 4K guess what? You writes are going to be bad, if you set everything to one drive because you only have one drive (this is why I yell at someone for downloading files to the SSD when they have a perfectly good HDD that will work just as well), your drive will have a very high write rate/yr. Everything you do has some sort of write accompanied to it, regardless if it is a 1 byte file or a 1gb cache of NASA's YouTube space porn in 8K

 

 

[joeyjojo123]

4 hours ago, Hunter259 said:

That is the worst title I think I have ever seen from you guys.

Long time watcher, and I had to sign up for the LMG forums with a 10minutemail throwaway account just to make this post, and I agree.

 

While the video does eventually come around to the real conclusion that any downfall associated with QLC just does not matter (at least for the vast majority of cases that an end consumer shopping for SSD storage in this price bracket would do), over half the video is spent peddling around the same "science" (ie: theories which fail to really show a noticeable impact in day-to-day usage) before coming to the conclusion in the last minute or so that "oh yeah, but for most people they wouldn't even notice the difference since it's just as fast as any other drive in game/software load tests".

 

Nothing annoys me more than whiners of technology. I often see the same whining about technology day after day. "What the heck!? The ~e~n~d~u~r~a~n~c~e~ on this thing sucks! TLC is garbage, where's the SLC?! QLC has TERRIBLE cold storage uses, why would ANYONE ever buy this if you can lose your data from your PC being off for more than 3 months?"

 

Here's the facts:

The bulk of SSD purchases go to PCs used by either enterprise (the tippity top end) or by laymen (the bottom end) customers. Enterprise users are buying enterprise grade storage drives with adequate performance characteristics for their extreme use cases. They also pay an arm and a leg more for those specs. Laymen just want a PC that boots up fast, opens Chrome, and surfs Facebook to post about politics or family pictures (to the annoyance of everyone else). QLC drives are targeted in a price bracket compatible with laymen PCs, have use-cases that are more than adequate for their needs, and perform perfectly fine. At the end of the day QLC is providing larger storage capacity opportunities for lower costs to these users, while retaining the same speeds for the majority of all their use time on their PC.

 

If you decided that you're too cool for QLC/TLC/MLC memes and you're hardcore and can only ever justify using SLC for opening the Windows Calculator or playing FartNight, then the product you want is out there for you: sell a kidney and buy enterprise storage drives. It's similar to being a car enthusiast and complaining that Firestone is coming to market with a new all-weather tire design for trucks and complaining that these tires don't have the speed/traction on tarmac racing courses; buy some sticky racing slicks for track days for your sports car. In other words, buy the right tool for the right job. Don't complain that products are being developed for use-cases that you decided you're too good for.

 

There's a lot of nerd-knowledge-superiority-complex flexing on enthusiast discussion boards for SSDs, and this video spends way too much time validating their theory craft garbage, when at the end of the day "endurance" ratings absolutely do not freaking matter to enthusiast PC builders who do lots of gaming or casual PC use. TechReport had a torture test 24/7 for over year that showed that the endurance ratings on SSDs are extremely conservative and some wrote for OVER one petabyte before their NAND flash wearing out. (read: https://techreport.com/discussion/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead) The storage drive would be absolutely obsolete by the time its NAND flash wears out with normal usage characteristics and it'd be best replaced by a newer/faster/larger volume alternative by that point. The best indicator for an SSD's quality for long-term use is the manufacturer's warranty period for the product, which is basically the cutoff point where they're confident that their product should last to. Instead we have way too many memesters drooling for ~real~world~endurance~ratings~ for SSDs.

 

What would I have rather seen from this video?

Instead of rambling about meme SSD specs that people pay too much focus on like endurance for over 5 minutes, an actual video dedicated to debunking common enthusiast misconceptions on what _really_ matters for their SSD purchases. A much more adequate spin to this video would've been "Debunking SSD Metrics, featuring Intel's QLC 660p". While you eventually came to that conclusion in the script, the script should really have had more time focused on the metrics of SSD performance that don't matter. But what we got instead was rambling that "these specs matter a lot, here's the science" and then at the end "well, actually the science doesn't really support most real world use cases and QLC's fine for common PC users".

 

And yes, this was worth typing an essay and signing up for a throwaway account to make a post that wouldn't get drowned in YouTube comment garbage, even after all the meme clickbait thumbnails and titles LMG has been pushing towards for the past few years, along with doing sponsored content with disreputable tech companies (ex: Facebook) because LMG just apparently doesn't understand their audience.

 

Just get it together, guys.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Senkon said:

 

Do not assume everyone knows what you know.  There are BILLIONS of people around the world who don't have a clue.

 

While the title is click-batey, this last SSD video isn't necessarily incorrect.  Depending on how you look at it, the more value oriented SSD's are qualitatively worse.  If your a consumer who doesn't care, or doesn't know, then you wouldn't mind.

 

That being said, as an IT Technician at Fry's Electronics, I deal with customers who don't know anything about computers each and every day, and I dred having to explain to customers the reason why their SSD's failed in a couple years, and I will say, "because the quality, for a while at lease, went down."  Assuming that future SSD R&D moves in a different direction, which I doubt.

Theres a big difference in misinformation and something that isn't quite correct. 

[Squirrelthroat]

in contrast to most of the answers to this topic I’ve got a real question about the topic. 

Linus mentioned in the video, that the 4LC SSDs are not suitable for NAS caches because of the obvious reasons.  

But which SSDs would be the best for that scenario? 

I would need a M.2 SLC SSD. Does anyone know a list or something like that where you can compare the options? Or at least find different brands?

 

The I imagine the most common SLC M.2 would be the WD green one. But those only get about 500mbps read speeds -> no nvme. 

 

Are there any M.2 SLC NVME SSDs?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, Squirrelthroat said:

in contrast to most of the answers to this topic I’ve got a real question about the topic. 

Linus mentioned in the video, that the 4LC SSDs are not suitable for NAS caches because of the obvious reasons.  

But which SSDs would be the best for that scenario? 

I would need a M.2 SLC SSD. Does anyone know a list or something like that where you can compare the options? Or at least find different brands?

 

The I imagine the most common SLC M.2 would be the WD green one. But those only get about 500mbps read speeds -> no nvme. 

 

Are there any M.2 SLC NVME SSDs?

 

The only SLC SSDs still being sold are strictly for Enterprise applications and are no longer available to consumers.

 

The WD Green SSDs are poor quality TLC. MLC is the best consumer grade one can get and even that may be overkill for most people.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

23 hours ago, Senkon said:

So its explained, and re-confirmed that the what I call 50% rule; if more than 50% of your HDD/SSD's space is utilized, than your performance will go down, also applies to SSD's.  Thats something great to know, but I have a question on that topic.

 

Will under partitioning your SSD, IE, only partitioning 500GB of 1TB SSD, and filling 50% of the 500GB also cause a performance drop or will under partitioning your SSD compensate for the performance loss at that 50% mark?

That's the kind of testing that Luke used to do for a while.  Stuff like this would be right up his alley. 

 

Looking at the "videos" tab on the LTT Youtube channel, In the past 2 months ALL that I see is basically advertisements, sponsored reviews and the occasional funny/foolish stuff (like the DIY Lithium battery, and even that one is basically a product review). 

But really informative videos that were made for that exact purpose?  That's a loooooong time ago.  Nowadays it's a tiny bit of info here and there buried somewhere in a 10-15 minute advertisement.

 

Ignoring the gaming on Linux stuff and the iMac Pro debacle due to them being too niche, the first properly informative video I find is "Is Your Gaming Rig Being Bottlenecked?"  That's August 5th.

The next one I see is the conclusion of the airflow experiment.  That's February 27th. 

 

 

 

I still watch the occasional LTT video (1-2 vids per week) and will always watch the WAN show (usually live).  But 3-4 years ago I used to watch almost every single video they released. 

Maybe it's also because I'm not getting any younger while LMG is clearly targeting an audience that is.  You can't please everyone, I'm well aware of that.  The clickbait was a real turn-off and I did voice my opinion loud and clear on that BITD, so I'll not bring all that up again.  However I will point out that it's only getting worse with these outright misleading titles. 

 

EDIT : looking at the Videos page, I see that the title of this video has changed to "How SSD Technology Keeps Getting WORSE! - Intel 660p".  That's a lot better.  Personally I'd go with "Does new SSD Technology really affect performance? - Intel 660p", but that's just me.

[BuckGup]

21 hours ago, Spotty said:

"Intel's 660p new QLC SSD" instead of "INTEL is DOING WHAT!?!? WITH ITS SSDS!? OMG!"
"New QLC SSD from Intel" instead of "OMG YOU WONT BELIEVE WHAT IS INSIDE THIS SSD!"
"The new Quad Level Cell SSD from Intel!" instead of "Intel put HOW MANY levels in to their SSD?!?"

"What are QLC SSDs, and should you want it?" instead of "WHO are all these cells for!?"
"New SSDs - Increased density, but at what cost?" instead of "Top 10 FORTNITE FAILS! Number 6 will make you ROFLMFAO! WIN FREE VBUCKS"

"QLC SSDs finally for consumers, but should you buy it?" instead of "We did WHAT to Linus' storage??"

 

Out of curiosity, what was the title used for the Floatplane video?

SSDs keep getting WORSE!! - Intel 660p QLC SSD

[BuckGup]

4 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

That's the kind of testing that Luke used to do for a while.  Stuff like this would be right up his alley. 

 

Looking at the "videos" tab on the LTT Youtube channel, In the past 2 months ALL that I see is basically advertisements, sponsored reviews and the occasional funny/foolish stuff (like the DIY Lithium battery, and even that one is basically a product review). 

But really informative videos that were made for that exact purpose?  That's a loooooong time ago.  Nowadays it's a tiny bit of info here and there buried somewhere in a 10-15 minute advertisement.

 

Ignoring the gaming on Linux stuff and the iMac Pro debacle due to them being too niche, the first properly informative video I find is "Is Your Gaming Rig Being Bottlenecked?"  That's August 5th.

The next one I see is the conclusion of the airflow experiment.  That's February 27th. 

 

 

 

I still watch the occasional LTT video (1-2 vids per week) and will always watch the WAN show (usually live).  But 3-4 years ago I used to watch almost every single video they released. 

Maybe it's also because I'm not getting any younger while LTT is clearly targeting an audience that is.  You can't please everyone, I'm well aware of that.  The clickbait was a real turn-off and I did voice my opinion loud and clear on that BITD, so I'll not bring all that up again.  However I will point out that it's only getting worse with these outright misleading titles. 

I'm right here with you man. Have been watching for many years and feel the same. They are going to turn into a Tek Syndicate 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

4 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

They are going to turn into a Tek Syndicate 

I'll wait for Luke to start blinking S.O.S. during the WAN show then.

[BuckGup]

1 hour ago, Captain Chaos said:

I'll wait for Luke to start blinking S.O.S. during the WAN show then.

Well he's technically gone from LTT so maybe it's in the html of the floatplane website

[Squirrelthroat]

13 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

 

The only SLC SSDs still being sold are strictly for Enterprise applications and are no longer available to consumers.

 

The WD Green SSDs are poor quality TLC. MLC is the best consumer grade one can get and even that may be overkill for most people.

Ok. So Samsung 970 pro over 970 Evo because of 2 layer vs 3 layer MLC

[Lady Fitzgerald]

39 minutes ago, Squirrelthroat said:

Ok. So Samsung 970 pro over 970 Evo because of 2 layer vs 3 layer MLC

Sigh! You do not understand what certain terms are and are mixing them up. SLC is Single Layer Cell. MLC is Multi Layer Cell and refers two layers. TLC is Triple Layer Cell and QLC is Quad Layer Cell. Everything else being equal, the fewer the layers, the faster and longer lasting the SSD will be. However, SSD technology has been steadily improving overall so that, often, later models with more cell layers may be as good as earlier models with fewer layers. An example is the Samsung 840 Pros compared to the 850 EVOs. The 850 EVOS were a better buy than the older 840 Pros when the 850s came out since the newer 850EVOs were faster than the older 840 EVOs, had fewer problems, and were close enough to the 840 Pros in speed and write life to give them more bang for the buck.

 

For the past few years, the quality of the SSDs have increased enough that the much higher cost of SLCs can't be justified by consumers anymore and are now limited to the enterprise market that can justify their higher price. MLC is now the top end for the consumer market.

 

In Samsung SSDs, the Pros are MLC and the EVOs are TLC. 

[Squirrelthroat]

On 11/14/2018 at 11:59 AM, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Sigh! You do not understand what certain terms are and are mixing them up. SLC is Single Layer Cell. MLC is Multi Layer Cell and refers two layers. TLC is Triple Layer Cell and QLC is Quad Layer Cell. Everything else being equal, the fewer the layers, the faster and longer lasting the SSD will be. However, SSD technology has been steadily improving overall so that, often, later models with more cell layers may be as good as earlier models with fewer layers. An example is the Samsung 840 Pros compared to the 850 EVOs. The 850 EVOS were a better buy than the older 840 Pros when the 850s came out since the newer 850EVOs were faster than the older 840 EVOs, had fewer problems, and were close enough to the 840 Pros in speed and write life to give them more bang for the buck.

 

For the past few years, the quality of the SSDs have increased enough that the much higher cost of SLCs can't be justified by consumers anymore and are now limited to the enterprise market that can justify their higher price. MLC is now the top end for the consumer market.

 

In Samsung SSDs, the Pros are MLC and the EVOs are TLC. 

I understood that already. 

Technically TLC and QLC are both variants of MLC. Multi does not specify how many. 

I just copied from a comparison sheet where Samsung compared the pro vs. Evo and called both MLC just with varying counts of layers. 

Wikipedia states the same:

“in electronics, a multi-level cell (MLC) is a memory element capable of storing more than a single bit of information, compared to a single-level cell (SLC) which can store only one bit per memory element.

Triple-level cells (TLC) and quad-level cells(QLC) are versions of MLC memory, which can store 3 and 4 bits per cell, respectively. Note that due to the convention, the name "multi-level cell" is sometimes used specifically to refer to the "two-level cell", which is slightly )

 

sorry if I have been misleading

[Lady Fitzgerald]

3 hours ago, Squirrelthroat said:

I understood that already. 

Technically TLC and QLC are both variants of MLC. Multi does not specify how many. 

I just copied from a comparison sheet where Samsung compared the pro vs. Evo and called both MLC just with varying counts of layers. 

Wikipedia states the same:

“in electronics, a multi-level cell (MLC) is a memory element capable of storing more than a single bit of information, compared to a single-level cell (SLC) which can store only one bit per memory element.

Triple-level cells (TLC) and quad-level cells(QLC) are versions of MLC memory, which can store 3 and 4 bits per cell, respectively. Note that due to the convention, the name "multi-level cell" is sometimes used specifically to refer to the "two-level cell", which is slightly )

 

sorry if I have been misleading

You still aren't getting it. In the early days of SSDs, there were only SLC and MLC. While that definition of MLC back then was more than 2 bits per cell, it was because SSDs only had up to two bits per cell.Tthat changed with the introduction of TLC. Every time I've seen MLC used in the past several years, it was referring to only 2 bits per cell. I've never seen TLC referred to as MLC (and I would like to see that Samsung comparison sheet calling EVO MLC; btw, that link called "electronics" is broken.)

[joesiv]

On 11/12/2018 at 4:33 PM, Egg-Roll said:

Anyhow more importantly.... only 200TB data write? For me it would last about 20 years based on current figures from HDS, but I have 8 other drives connected to my computer which take a good portion of the grunt work off the drive... One drive (the poor poor lil old green getting physically abused ) does 5.5GB+ per day alone (based on POH and total written)... Another drive that can take the abuse, has about 10Tb/yr writes, tho I have slowly stopped using said drive so I'm assuming the write/yr would be greatly higher

 

One thing that bothers me about SSD's is their specs for lifetime writes, or drive writes per day.  rated for 200TB's?  Is it really?  What does that mean?  

You would think that doing the math is simple, you take what you typically write to disk, and extrapolate how many years it would take to write that much data?  

You'd be wrong!

 

Fact is, what you "write", or commit to disk, is never 1:1 what the SSD, or controller/firmware is writing to NAND.  And that's the key, the total drive writes per day on the specs is based on NAND writes.  

 

Problem is, depending on the controller, and often more importantly the firmware, the results can vary wildly.  

One of the most simple examles is a user writing a small 1K update to a file.  1K, easy... NOPE, problem is NAND writes are done on a page by page basis... so even for the smallest write, you still have to write a whole page.  How big is a page?  usually 512KB.  So the user writes 1KB, but the NAND writes 512.... That's just one example.

 

Firmware also has garbage collection, and other features which optimize your wear, not only as you write, but to clean up, which leads to more writes, without you actually doing any writes. 

 

This is often called Write Amplification Factor (WAF), it's not uncommon to have 8x's WAF, of course this is highly dependent on workload.  

 

I was tasked to evaluate several SSD's from various manufactures, and they all had similar specs, however, the firmware was what killed it for most of the drives.  Some vendors seem to have very buggy firmwares, and typically go through many iterations before they get it right... on shipping products... Another vendor a tier one memory company had great specs, but for the life of us we could get the life expectancy that they were claiming, something weird in their firmware. 

 

This is something that I find noone talks about, and they just assume, wow I can get 2 whole drive writes per day!  I wish linus would have touched on that...

 

If you want to really get a sense of how your SSD is doing, and maybe it's doing fine, look at your SMART data, look up the documentation for your SSD, and look for "Average Block Erase Count", it will be a different attribute number depending on the vendor/drive, but most have it.  Some you have to decode, which is pretty simple with windows calculator.  Then take the rated Cycle count for the NAND, for MLC it's often like 3000 writes (sometimes listed in the specs, but you might need to dig, or talk to the vendor, another thing I wish the reviewers would touch on).  Wait a week or something, take another reading.  Then start doing some math.  If your average block erase count has went up by X amount in 1 week, calculate out how long it will take for that count to get to 3000, easy peasy.... it will likely be a lot less time than you first estimated.

 

(edit) You may be tempted to use some SMART attributes like Total Writes, but usually that is what is commited to the controller, not what is actually sent to NAND, some vendors will have something like FTL_writes, which is NAND writes, but there is no standard, and sometimes aren't exposed at all, and you have to talk to your vendor to really find out what the various SMART attributes mean, as often they aren't documented in the SMART literature for the drive)

\rant

 

Oh, on the actual topic, I would be scared even using TLC SSD's, man SSD's are complicated animals, they seem simple, just write to a chip, simpler than spinning drives right?  It seems the SSD market really is the wild west, whether it be pushing for greater capacities for cheaper (at the expense of endurance), big storage space numbers sell I guess, or the firmwares that actually do the heavy lifting, and which can make or break (literally) a drive in terms of life expectancy and performance (are we trading off performance for endurance here too?) Performance sells afterall...  I think things are getting much more mature on the firmware side of things, but the hardware, we are really getting nowhere, since you are sacrificing life for space... it makes me sad.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

20 minutes ago, joesiv said:

...Firmware also has garbage collection, and other features which optimize your wear, not only as you write, but to clean up, which leads to more writes, without you actually doing any writes. 

 

This is often called Write Amplification Factor (WAF), it's not uncommon to have 8x's WAF, of course this is highly dependent on workload...

Garbage Collection and Write Amplification are the primary reason why at least 20-25% of an SSD to be kept empty (in addition to factory overprovisioning), something many people have trouble grasping. Wear leveling is another reason for the empty space.

[Sakkura]

On 11/16/2018 at 2:17 AM, Lady Fitzgerald said:

You still aren't getting it. In the early days of SSDs, there were only SLC and MLC. While that definition of MLC back then was more than 2 bits per cell, it was because SSDs only had up to two bits per cell.Tthat changed with the introduction of TLC. Every time I've seen MLC used in the past several years, it was referring to only 2 bits per cell. I've never seen TLC referred to as MLC (and I would like to see that Samsung comparison sheet calling EVO MLC; btw, that link called "electronics" is broken.)

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/970evo/

 

Quote

STORAGE MEMORY

Samsung V-NAND 3-bit MLC

3-bit MLC is not unusual terminology.

[williamcll]

Would common files like videos and photos be considered sequential?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

2 hours ago, Sakkura said:

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/970evo/

 

3-bit MLC is not unusual terminology.

I stand sit corrected...up to a point. Most, if not all, websites that define the various types of NAND--SLC, MLC, TLC, and (sonmetimes) QLC defne MLC as two level or two bit. Even reiewers of Samsung 3-bit SSDs refer to them as TLC. Samsung seems to be the only manufacturer that defines their three level NAND as 3-bit MLC, which is using the original, and now archaic, definition of MLC as being two or more levels that no one else uses anymore. However, at no time do they refer to it as just MLC (I checked Samsung's specs for several models); they always have the qualifier 3-bit. 

 

The fact remains, using MLC when referring to TLC is confusing.