Are those huge TBW ratings real? Or these companies don't really test their products?

[Filingo]

For reference, some realistic TBW ratings:

- Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB - 600 TBW

- Intel 670p 1TB - 370 TBW

 

But then you have drives like TeamGroup MP34 that has 1660 TBW rating for the 1TB version.

 

Do you think it's real? Or they just don't care to actually test them because realistically no 1 will get even close to actual TBW rating?

 

I've been using my Samsung 970 Evo for 2 years almost with around 25 TBW

[Dedayog]

2 minutes ago, Filingo said:

For reference, some realistic TBW ratings:

- Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB - 600 TBW

- Intel 670p 1TB - 370 TBW

 

But then you have drives like TeamGroup MP34 that has 1660 TBW rating for the 1TB version.

 

Do you think it's real? Or they just don't care to actually test them because realistically no 1 will get even close to actual TBW rating?

 

I've been using my Samsung 970 Evo for 2 years almost with around 25 TBW

Well, testing actual TBW is about impossible as writing to a drive has a set max speed. Trying to write 600TB to it would take a decade, and then we'd be at Gen 17 by then.

 

So they test a little, and extrapolate the wear.  If I write 60 TB and it looks like 10% wear... then sure 600TBW or about.  It's not that simple and has a boatload more factors, but it's a best guess average basically.

 

 

[ZetZet]

3 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Well, testing actual TBW is about impossible as writing to a drive has a set max speed. Trying to write 600TB to it would take a decade, and then we'd be at Gen 17 by then.

 

So they test a little, and extrapolate the wear.  If I write 60 TB and it looks like 10% wear... then sure 600TBW or about.  It's not that simple and has a boatload more factors, but it's a best guess average basically.

If the drive has 500MB/s+ sustained writes like 970 Evo Plus it would only take two weeks to write 600 TB into it.

[Filingo]

9 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Well, testing actual TBW is about impossible as writing to a drive has a set max speed. Trying to write 600TB to it would take a decade, and then we'd be at Gen 17 by then.

 

So they test a little, and extrapolate the wear.  If I write 60 TB and it looks like 10% wear... then sure 600TBW or about.  It's not that simple and has a boatload more factors, but it's a best guess average basically.

 

 

But these drives are really fast, for example the 970 Evo Plus writes at over 600 MB/s sustained: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-970-evo-plus-ssd,5608-2.html

 

Wouldn't it take it around 12-13 days at this speed to reach 600 TBW?

[Dedayog]

5 minutes ago, ZetZet said:

If the drive has 500MB/s+ sustained writes like 970 Evo Plus it would only take two weeks to write 600 TB into it.

 

Just now, Filingo said:

But these drives are really fast, for example the 970 Evo Plus writes at over 600 MB/s sustained: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-970-evo-plus-ssd,5608-2.html

 

Wouldn't it take it around 12-13 days at this speed to reach 600 TBW?

Yes, I was talking about actual real world usage for us. To get actual failure rates for consumers.

 

I am sure they do it within a few weeks but it's not apples to apples. Just like running a car around a track doesn't mirror actual driving usage.

 

But yes, you're correct.

[ZetZet]

1 minute ago, Dedayog said:

I am sure they do it within a few weeks but it's not apples to apples. Just like running a car around a track doesn't mirror actual driving usage.

Yeah, so they probably test to the point where they start getting corrupted data and then rate the drive for a little bit under that value.

[manikyath]

i'm weary of 'team group' mostly because of the name.

 

but.. if they have plenty of spare nand to account for failures, and assume writing until it's stone dead.. i suppose those numbers could be possible.

that comes down to how optimistic the company is. samsung and intel can rely on brand name to imply reliability, 'team group' has to rely on sharp pricing and big specs to get a foot in the market.

[Rysters Tech]

Some do, some dont, its not a long process except on some low chip count QLC drives. You will almost never hit the TBW rating in a consumer usecase in the lifetime of that consumer, especially on a high-capacity drive with many chips or a samsung pro drive with MLC instead of TLC and QLC (QLC is fine for the vast majority of desktops workloads) 

Its much harder to screw up ssd longevity than it is HDD longevity, as long as your controller's firmware isnt just stupid and you use quality NAND, you won't have an issue in terms of longevity. I've been using a WD Black SSD for 500+ power-on hours (not consecutive, I'm not insane) and still had 96% of its life left and haven't used any of its spare cells yet. It has written 34.39 terabytes of data over its life running windows 10 and 11. 

[Rysters Tech]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i'm weary of 'team group' mostly because of the name.

 

but.. if they have plenty of spare nand to account for failures, and assume writing until it's stone dead.. i suppose those numbers could be possible.

that comes down to how optimistic the company is. samsung and intel can rely on brand name to imply reliability, 'team group' has to rely on sharp pricing and big specs to get a foot in the market.

Team group is a reputable brand that has been around long enough to be trustworthy, but always RESEARCH BEFORE YOU BUY ANYTHING!!!  Seagate is a reputable brand yet i had 5 Firecuda SSHD's fail in a little over a year.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, SiliconMagician said:

Team group is a reputable brand that has been around long enough to be trustworthy, but always RESEARCH BEFORE YOU BUY ANYTHING!!! 

yeah sure, but given identical price and specs, would you buy teamgroup or samsung?

 

brand name is more than age.

 

also, "shenzhen optoelectronics co.ltd." is a reputable brand too, but given the choice if it's next to a box that says 'philips' i guarantee you poeople will buy the philips unless the shenzhen is clearly the better deal.

[Rysters Tech]

5 minutes ago, manikyath said:

yeah sure, but given identical price and specs, would you buy teamgroup or samsung?

 

brand name is more than age.

 

also, "shenzhen optoelectronics co.ltd." is a reputable brand too, but given the choice if it's next to a box that says 'philips' i guarantee you poeople will buy the philips unless the shenzhen is clearly the better deal.

i would buy samsung, but teamgroup ssds are nothing to run away from, i know many people use them in their builds, if it werent for the fact samsung ssd's do everything in-house, i wouldnt buy from them, manufactures bait and swich ssd controllers and nand flash(to worse ones after the launch) without a model number revision, samsung does everything themselves so they have no reason to do this.

[NewMaxx]

5 hours ago, Filingo said:

But then you have drives like TeamGroup MP34 that has 1660 TBW rating for the 1TB version.

 

Do you think it's real? Or they just don't care to actually test them because realistically no 1 will get even close to actual TBW rating?

The consumer TLC utilized on many of these drives is rated for up to 3000 PEC (program/erase cycles) typically. If the TBW refers to NAND writes, not host writes, 1660 TBW is quite realistic. It's not unusual for the flash to survive past its PEC rating since that rating is conservative. There are grades of flash with lower PEC, of course. The flash is tested with a given level of error correction (ECC), for example having different ratings for BCH and LDPC, although generally we're assuming LDPC now.

 

On the other hand, you see this as much higher than the 970 EVO Plus, which is of course ridiculous. Samsung's 3D TLC has very high endurance due to its architecture. The reasoning can be seen in the materials Samsung put out for the 980 Pro: that also has relatively low PEC and went to 3-bit MLC (TLC) from 2-bit MLC (970 Pro). They stated that only 1% of 970 Pro users exceeded its TBW, and that on a drive designed for sustained writes. TBW is therefore often a bit arbitrary and the high TBW on E12/E16-based drives is essentially meaningless.

[Filingo]

7 minutes ago, NewMaxx said:

The consumer TLC utilized on many of these drives is rated for up to 3000 PEC (program/erase cycles) typically. If the TBW refers to NAND writes, not host writes, 1660 TBW is quite realistic. It's not unusual for the flash to survive past its PEC rating since that rating is conservative. There are grades of flash with lower PEC, of course. The flash is tested with a given level of error correction (ECC), for example having different ratings for BCH and LDPC, although generally we're assuming LDPC now.

 

On the other hand, you see this as much higher than the 970 EVO Plus, which is of course ridiculous. Samsung's 3D TLC has very high endurance due to its architecture. The reasoning can be seen in the materials Samsung put out for the 980 Pro: that also has relatively low PEC and went to 3-bit MLC (TLC) from 2-bit MLC (970 Pro). They stated that only 1% of 970 Pro users exceeded its TBW, and that on a drive designed for sustained writes. TBW is therefore often a bit arbitrary and the high TBW on E12/E16-based drives is essentially meaningless.

I just saw some brands claiming 1600 TBW then lowering it to 360 TBW so that was suspicious

[NewMaxx]

1 minute ago, Filingo said:

I just saw some brands claiming 1600 TBW then lowering it to 360 TBW so that was suspicious

Many of these drives used different flash and even hardware, for example E12 drives moved to E12S (smaller controller) with less DRAM and entirely different flash (e.g. 64L BiCS3 -> 96L FG TLC from IMFT) while maintaining the same TBW. Others reduced their TBW due to Chia warranty fears despite keeping the same hardware. I could go deeper into that, but the summary at the end of the day is that it just doesn't mean a whole lot. 99%+ of people will run out of warranty period, first, with normal usage.

[Doobeedoo]

Those TBW ratings are what is at minimum expected for a drive to last with no issue, but can probably work decently above it.

I have 850 Pro for like a decade.

[Filingo]

2 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Those TBW ratings are what is at minimum expected for a drive to last with no issue, but can probably work decently above it.

I have 850 Pro for like a decade.

 

But how much TBW does it have now? I also have a Samsung SSD for many years with barely any TBW written to it

[Doobeedoo]

14 minutes ago, Filingo said:

 

But how much TBW does it have now? I also have a Samsung SSD for many years with barely any TBW written to it

Haven't even use half of it's TBW though. 

[Filingo]

45 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Haven't even use half of it's TBW though. 

yea so that's why real TBW ratings are important

 

Because from what I know - the flash has physical limit, unlike MTBF where it can randomly die, but when you pass certain TBW, you're at a point where you want to look for a replacement SSD already.

 

But when some brands put 1600 TBW (and then of course reduce it to a real TBW of 360), you might lose data if you're unaware

 

But again, I guess most people won't ever get close to that

[Doobeedoo]

30 minutes ago, Filingo said:

yea so that's why real TBW ratings are important

 

Because from what I know - the flash has physical limit, unlike MTBF where it can randomly die, but when you pass certain TBW, you're at a point where you want to look for a replacement SSD already.

 

But when some brands put 1600 TBW (and then of course reduce it to a real TBW of 360), you might lose data if you're unaware

 

But again, I guess most people won't ever get close to that

It does, so if you say hit that limit just make sure to save important data, but the drive will probably still work properly for a while before it starts warning you slowly with more errors and such. 

 

Then again 1600 TBW doesn't seem abnormal really, especially for multi TB SSD for example. Not sure about that case you talk though.

 

And yeah, no people won't get close to it, HDDs would fail before and nobody talked about that really.

[Filingo]

10 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

It does, so if you say hit that limit just make sure to save important data, but the drive will probably still work properly for a while before it starts warning you slowly with more errors and such. 

 

Then again 1600 TBW doesn't seem abnormal really, especially for multi TB SSD for example. Not sure about that case you talk though.

 

And yeah, no people won't get close to it, HDDs would fail before and nobody talked about that really.

This is the case I saw: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/pny-xlr8-cs-3030-ssd-endurance-reduced-almost-80-percent

[Doobeedoo]

7 minutes ago, Filingo said:

This is the case I saw: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/pny-xlr8-cs-3030-ssd-endurance-reduced-almost-80-percent

Ahh, yeah if some manufacturers swapped components like different flash to keep the cost down, but not under different model it's lame. So something definitely to be aware.

But, even with this, those are still solid TBW really. Something I'd not worry about that would be reached. Unless if you're using that drive for a scratch disk or constant writes for some operations and such. Then again you wouldn't get when it dies for such work, you'd get a new one by then.