Samsung Brings Multi-terabyte SSDs at Accessible Price with 860 QVO

[bcredeur97]

QLC might actually not be bad if you get a drive that has like 2+ TB of space. 

I'd still stick with TLC for anything less than that tho...

[LAwLz]

This product seems like a stillbirth to me.

The sequential write speeds are worse than hard drives (although the other metrics are far better), a risk that the endurance is actually at a point where it is so low it starts mattering (it hasn't before) and the price isn't any better than already existing TLC solutions.

The prices on these QLC drives will have to go down quite a bit more before they become worth buying.

 

 

15 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Dont abuse the term MLC. Your evo uses TLC.

He used it correctly though. QLC is a type of MLC. But I don't think it means what he thinks it means anyway, because pretty much all drives these days use some form of MLC.

 

15 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

At least I call it QLC. I even call 2 bit MLC (Pro models) DLC, even though people start the 'pay and download more SSD' joke

But why? Why make up your own acronyms? It just creates confusion.

 

15 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Not that QLC tells anything at all to an average consumer who only looks at sequential speed and price only...

 

People like me who do extensive research and then pull a trigger on a 800€ SSD already know how to make research to find things out even if they are called QVO instead of QLC.

 

Fact is, 2TB SSD from Samsung for $300 is pretty damn sweet. Sure it's QLC, but it'll only suffer if you do ridiculous writes. Which is nothing casual users will ever experience.

I wouldn't call a >6GB write "ridiculous". It's not super common in everyday use, but it's not exactly uncommon either.

As for doing extensive research before buying something, we already have 2TB SSDs with higher performance and better endurance for 300 dollars.

 

 

13 hours ago, jasonvp said:

Have they announced the pricing for the other two drives?  I'm keenly interested in the 4TB one, but have only seen the $150 price listed for the 1TB.  Did I miss it somewhere?

600 dollars MSRP for the 4TB one.

 

10 hours ago, yian88 said:

Garbage because SATA unless NVMe. 

This drive would most likely not benefit much from NVMe, and that interface would make it a pain in the ass to use in NASes.

[mr moose]

I don't waste my time looking into SSD's anymore, I just buy the cheapest SSD in the size I want.  As an average pc user I don't seem to really notice.

[captain_to_fire]

8 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

 

The 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO NVMe version was the same price as the SATA version throughout this Black Friday sale. It might still be in some places.

I don’t think the 860 Evo has a NVME version but just M.2. 

[leadeater]

39 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

But why? Why make up your own acronyms? It just creates confusion.

Calling it 4bit MLC is actually more correct than calling it QLC anyway, QLC is the common man term, the marketing term to make more of a written word difference so it's easier to see that it is different than 3bit MLC because that difference is a heck of a lot more important than it might seem to those unaware.

 

39 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I wouldn't call a >6GB write "ridiculous". It's not super common in everyday use, but it's not exactly uncommon either.

The fast write buffers on these are 43GB and 78GB as well, for consumer usage it seems like a good fit for laptops to cover off those final ones that still use HDDs. Though Samsung didn't really develop QLC for consumer SSDs, it'll be used more in the enterprise space when they release the 32TB to over 100TB stuff that'll go in to big archive storage platforms and write once read many applications (CDN caches for example, Netflix).

 

I know I won't be buying any QLC SSDs from anyone though, I still pay the premium for Samsung Pro SSDs or buy used server SSDs on ebay. 

[RejZoR]

@LAwLz

Only if you're absolutely maxing out the drive, preventing it from recycling the write capacity while it's doing writes. Unless your line is ridiculously fast allowing you to max out SATA3 port or always copying files larger than caching mechanism allows. How often that realistically happens?

[Mihle]

10 hours ago, Agost said:

Sorry but I'm not going to buy a QLC drive. TLC already has a quite lor P/E cycle rating, QLC is below 1000. 

Future SSD-only systems (like 1TB standard SSD in laptops) will need enough reliability to enable the average user to have a good life expectancy from their drives; most people don't even know that SSDs have limited lifespan, let alone ways to reduce the writes on them.

TLC average lifetime is still usually longer life on consumer level than HDDs, capacity would get lower after a while right?, but it would still work.

 

That said my 5 year old 256 GB TLC SSD that I use for OS and programs have 18 TB written and work just fine. As far as I can see it is full capacity and Samsung SSD magician says it's good health

[LAwLz]

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The fast write buffers on these are 43GB and 78GB as well, for consumer usage it seems like a good fit for laptops to cover off those final ones that still use HDDs. Though Samsung didn't really develop QLC for consumer SSDs, it'll be used more in the enterprise space when they release the 32TB to over 100TB stuff that'll go in to big archive storage platforms and write once read many applications (CDN caches for example, Netflix).

Oh, I missed that the cache size varied with free capacity. I just saw 6GB SLC cache (which is the minimum) and though "well that sucks".

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Oh, I missed that the cache size varied with free capacity. I just saw 6GB SLC cache (which is the minimum) and though "well that sucks".

I still agree with your assessment of these though, really mediocre if you care more about performance. I don't like the idea of the potential to go from "Everything is fine" to "OMG this is awful, worse than an HDD" with no actual good way of telling if and when that'll happen. I mean how quickly do those fast write buffers actually empty out ready for more usage?

[jasonvp]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

600 dollars MSRP for the 4TB one.

So some $200-300 less than the EVO 4TB.  Not bad.  Though given the performance specs, not great, either.

[Doobeedoo]

Very good to see 1TB SSD becoming more affordable, but I see QVO getting more cheaper eventually after better yealds and so. It should be quite a bit cheaper than EVO which already is priced really good. 

So yeah larger capacity SSDs becoming more mainstream is great, but what I want is to see is Samsung Pro series getting a decent price cut across the board. They're much more expensive, much more that initially so quite a price gap. Always looked forward for cheaper and larger capacity SSD but for my case the top tier ones.

[The Benjamins]

Wish these also had M.2 version, I don't think I will buy sata SSD anymore if I don't have too.

[Agosto]

11 hours ago, Mihle said:

TLC average lifetime is still usually longer life on consumer level than HDDs, capacity would get lower after a while right?, but it would still work.

 

That said my 5 year old 256 GB TLC SSD that I use for OS and programs have 18 TB written and work just fine. As far as I can see it is full capacity and Samsung SSD magician says it's good health

Well it depends on how much stuff you put on it. I've seen a lot of full HDDs on other people's computers, which would be detrimental for SSD, especially considering that stuff like hibernation files and page file would be active (since most people don't even know what they are)

SSDs don't lose capacity, wear leveling algorhitms distribute writes all over the chips in order to avoid that. So many drives will quickly become read only or useless after the available P/E cycles are over

What's you SSD? I don't recall any samsung 256 TLC SSD.  They've usually been 250 since the original 840 "basic" (and those drives pretty much sucked). 840 EVOs had some issues too

[porina]

On 11/28/2018 at 7:04 PM, williamcll said:

Is it possible to buy SLC SSDs on the market these days or are all TLC/QLCs are the SATA ssds and the MLCs are the NVMEs?

Assuming you're looking at SLC for performance and don't care about price, might as well go Optane at that point.

[Mihle]

21 hours ago, Agost said:

Well it depends on how much stuff you put on it. I've seen a lot of full HDDs on other people's computers, which would be detrimental for SSD, especially considering that stuff like hibernation files and page file would be active (since most people don't even know what they are)

SSDs don't lose capacity, wear leveling algorhitms distribute writes all over the chips in order to avoid that. So many drives will quickly become read only or useless after the available P/E cycles are over

What's you SSD? I don't recall any samsung 256 TLC SSD.  They've usually been 250 since the original 840 "basic" (and those drives pretty much sucked). 840 EVOs had some issues too

Informative, forgot SSDs balanced itself.... 

 

It's 250 yes, I just forgot. And it has 27 TB written, not 17 I said earlier. I know it isn't the best but still better than a HDD for just having windows. It is still good health.

[kuddlesworth9419]

I'm very interested, I've been looking to go full SSD but I can't really warrant spending 1k on SSD's at least now it will be cheaper. Just a little worried about the longevity of these drives and the actual real world performance. I only plan to store media on them though but they need to be 100% reliable for at least a decade.

[WereCatf]

QLC-drives will possibly make for great bulk-storage, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on them in case their prices drop low enough for me to start buying them for my NAS instead.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

25 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

QLC-drives will possibly make for great bulk-storage, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on them in case their prices drop low enough for me to start buying them for my NAS instead.

 

32 minutes ago, kuddlesworth9419 said:

I'm very interested, I've been looking to go full SSD but I can't really warrant spending 1k on SSD's at least now it will be cheaper. Just a little worried about the longevity of these drives and the actual real world performance. I only plan to store media on them though but they need to be 100% reliable for at least a decade.

Yeah, the cost of SSDs for mass storage can be staggering.

 

One thing to keep in mind when considering SSDs for data storage is that, when powered down, the cells will slowly lose the charge that represents the data. The higher the number of levels in a cell, the faster it will bleed down. How long that will take depends on how long an SSD is kept powered down, the age of the SSD, how many writes remain, the quality of the SSD, and how full it is. This can range to a few months to a year or more.

 

HDDs or still superior when it comes to "cold storage": drives that get put on a shelf and forgotten for monts to years. Even they should be powered up and read once in a while to keep the drive motor and the head arms "limbered up" but they are still far more forgiving of being ignored for long periods than SSDs.

 

I'm using SSDs to store my media on and for backups. I'm not worried about losing data on the backups because the onsite backups and the offsite backups get swapped out at least once a month and are updated before and after the swaps, whether they need it or not. This forces every cell to get read at least once a month, ensuring the charge will be maintained. This takes far less time than you would think.

[WereCatf]

1 hour ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

 

Yeah, the cost of SSDs for mass storage can be staggering.

 

One thing to keep in mind when considering SSDs for data storage is that, when powered down, the cells will slowly lose the charge that represents the data. The higher the number of levels in a cell, the faster it will bleed down. How long that will take depends on how long an SSD is kept powered down, the age of the SSD, how many writes remain, the quality of the SSD, and how full it is. This can range to a few months to a year or more.

 

HDDs or still superior when it comes to "cold storage": drives that get put on a shelf and forgotten for monts to years. Even they should be powered up and read once in a while to keep the drive motor and the head arms "limbered up" but they are still far more forgiving of being ignored for long periods than SSDs.

 

I'm using SSDs to store my media on and for backups. I'm not worried about losing data on the backups because the onsite backups and the offsite backups get swapped out at least once a month and are updated before and after the swaps, whether they need it or not. This forces every cell to get read at least once a month, ensuring the charge will be maintained. This takes far less time than you would think.

Wouldn't be a concern for me, I have scheduled a RAID-scrub once a month.

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

 

Yeah, the cost of SSDs for mass storage can be staggering.

 

One thing to keep in mind when considering SSDs for data storage is that, when powered down, the cells will slowly lose the charge that represents the data. The higher the number of levels in a cell, the faster it will bleed down. How long that will take depends on how long an SSD is kept powered down, the age of the SSD, how many writes remain, the quality of the SSD, and how full it is. This can range to a few months to a year or more.

 

That's only a concern if you use the SSD for cold storage, if it's connected to a PC that gets powered up with any regularity, it will never be a problem. Also the flash memory is rated for data retention at the end of its lifespan; when it still has most of its write endurance left, data retention will be significantly better.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

3 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

That's only a concern if you use the SSD for cold storage, if it's connected to a PC that gets powered up with any regularity, it will never be a problem. Also the flash memory is rated for data retention at the end of its lifespan; when it still has most of its write endurance left, data retention will be significantly better.

That's pretty much what I said. Thanks for clarifying it.

[kuddlesworth9419]

Still HDD's are more then 4 times cheaper then even these SSD's. Really annoying because I want the 4TB model but it's going to cost me about £500 when I can pick up a 4TB HDD for like £90. I really want the 4TB model but if it's not at least £300 I can't afford spending nearly £500 on a fucking SSD it's just crazy how much they cost. It's a real shame because I really really want to ditch my HDD's and go full SSD but it's still too much money.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, James Evens said:

160€ MSRP is totally not exciting. 1 TB QLC SSDs are now for 110€ available.

Keep in mind that MSRP is Manufacturer SUGGESTED Retail Price. Actual price is often less.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 minute ago, James Evens said:

What do you expect when it goes on sale/launch? The ADATA SU630 is 110€ preorder (will be delivered this month). Unless samsungs SSDs enters the market at 120€ it is not a good price.

You're comparing apples to kumquats. ADATA are lower quality drives compared to the Samsungs.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

You all can speculate until the cows come home but we aren't going to know anything until the new drives have been released and in the hands of users for a while. They may turn out to be great or they may be another 750 EVO but, until then, we simply won't know.