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Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

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Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#51

Post by nh2 »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #24
whitepoplar wrote: post #17

Do these drives feature power-loss capacitors? I'm still wondering why most manufacturers think it's okay to offer SSDs that lose data on power loss (!!)

I wish reviews started taking reliability into account. The only report on power loss effects on actual hardware I could find is from 2014 [0]. http://lkcl.net/reports/ssd_analysis.html

That article said back in the day

> Right now, there is only one reliable SSD manufacturer: Intel.

Indeed I find it very hard to figure out for other vendors whether they have power loss protection or not.

Intel makes this easy to check: Each drive has a YES/NO for "Enhanced Power Loss Data Protection" which is described as

> ... prepares the SSD for unexpected system power loss by minimizing data in transition in temporary buffers, and uses on-board power-loss protection capacitance to provide enough energy for the SSD firmware to move data from the transfer buffer and other temporary buffers to the NAND, thus protecting system and user data.

They also have a list showing all Intel SSDs that have this feature:

https://ark.intel.com/Search/FeatureFilter?productType=solid...

Would be nice if other vendors had that too.

Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#52

Post by jerf »

eumoria wrote: post #46
jerf wrote: post #37

On an only sort-of related note, has anyone found a USB (or anything else external) adapter that can read these yet? I know why it's hard, and I know about the ones that read that form factor but not NVMe drives, and why that is. Just curious if my searches are coming up dry because they don't exist or because they're getting flooded by the results that match the search but don't work. I enjoy the performance of the…

As another user stated Startech makes one and I use it as a technician. It's not fast at all... it's mainly for recovery when you don't have a motherboard with an available M.2 slot you can still pull the data off it. For that purpose it does the trick. The drive is capable of speeds 100x above USB 3.0 so there really isn't good to use that bus for anything other than emergency. - Here is an image of the circuit it u…

Does anyone have a link? I'm still only pulling up results that either the description says they don't work with this type of drive, or the answered questions say they don't.

AFAIK, a decent proxy is "Does it work with the Samsung 950 pro?", which has been out long enough to be in the answers section for most of these things. These new drives won't be. (And I've got a Toshiba, but it's the same basic tech.)

Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#53

Post by [deleted] »

mindslight wrote: post #43
whitepoplar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power-loss capacitors are needed because without them, flush commands issued by the OS return bogus values. Write confirmations are meaningless if the data isn't actually written to disk.

It's actually even worse than this, in that long-ago written data could be in the process of being refreshed/remapped when power is lost. The drive's software should be designed to work atomically to prevent this, but that's a whole lot of edge testing we're hoping a company will do on its closed software. Which is why things like cheap SD cards are notoriously unreliable, whereas Samsung SSDs are seen as decently re…

[deleted]

Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#54

Post by vatueil »

jerf wrote: post #37

On an only sort-of related note, has anyone found a USB (or anything else external) adapter that can read these yet? I know why it's hard, and I know about the ones that read that form factor but not NVMe drives, and why that is. Just curious if my searches are coming up dry because they don't exist or because they're getting flooded by the results that match the search but don't work. I enjoy the performance of the…

There are Thunderbolt 3 external SSDs that have an M.2 NVME SSD inside. You could probably open them up and swap your own SSD in. Bare enclosures without an included SSD appear to be less common.

- Netstor enclosure with 2xM.2 NVME slots and Thunderbolt 3 daisy chaining, no SSD included ($360): https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/netstor-na611tb3-thunde...

- LaCie Bolt^3, similar features as above but with 2x1TB SSDs ($2000): https://www.anandtech.com/show/10801/lacie-announces-bolt3-2...

- Plugable 480GB Thunderbolt 3 SSD ($400): https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8514/plugable-thunderbolt-...

- Patriot EVLVR Thunderbolt 3 SSD, 256GB ($200): https://www.anandtech.com/show/12257/patriot-announces-evlvr...

Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#55

Post by the8472 »

dragontamer wrote: post #49
the8472 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PCIe SSD cards can provide more bandwidth and IOPS, but for those prices you might as well RAID0 several M.2 sticks.

Your terminology is slightly off, so I'm not entirely sure what you mean. M.2 is a form-factor, which can be NVMe (PCIe-based) or SATA-based. Yeah, a bit confusing but M.2 supports two different protocols. If you mean RAID0 SATA drives (in the M.2 form factor), well the processor's south-bridge has a lower limit compared to the direct-to-CPU connections most NVMe drives get. SATA is great for bulk storage: either che…

I am aware of the distinctions, I thought it would be obvious from the context.

I meant to compare a 2x m.2 NVMe RAID0 with dedicated NVMe add-in cards, e.g. a kingston dcp1000. The latter can outperform the former per unit but seem more expensive even when you adjust for the higher stats.

Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#56

Post by Rafuino »

baldfat wrote: post #47
copperx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about the specs required to edit raw 4K video. What's your workstation order like?

Here is a great article for Davinci Resolve (Industry standard for color grading) https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-1... The issue is after you have done a few processes on the video for color balance and grade things can just grind to a halt.

I searched through the article and didn't see much discussion at all on storage as a bottleneck. If it actually is a bottleneck, is color grading more of a sequential or random data access workload?

Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#57

Post by dragontamer »

the8472 wrote: post #55
dragontamer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your terminology is slightly off, so I'm not entirely sure what you mean. M.2 is a form-factor, which can be NVMe (PCIe-based) or SATA-based. Yeah, a bit confusing but M.2 supports two different protocols. If you mean RAID0 SATA drives (in the M.2 form factor), well the processor's south-bridge has a lower limit compared to the direct-to-CPU connections most NVMe drives get. SATA is great for bulk storage: either che…

I am aware of the distinctions, I thought it would be obvious from the context. I meant to compare a 2x m.2 NVMe RAID0 with dedicated NVMe add-in cards, e.g. a kingston dcp1000. The latter can outperform the former per unit but seem more expensive even when you adjust for the higher stats.

I think I see what you mean now.

M.2 NVMe drives are electrically PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes. Since laptops are such a popular form factor, it seems like all the best technology and mass-production is favoring M.2 drives. Its clear to me that older physical PCIe drives are just going obsolete in terms of price/performance now.

PCIe drives (the ones that physically went into a x4, x8, or x16 slot) are a dinosaur at this point. It seems like the "serious" datacenter technology is converging upon U.2 drives (which are also PCIe 3.0 x4 slots, except over a cable).

Its been a bit rocky these past few years: Sata-Express (2x PCIe), U.2, M.2 SATA, M.2 NVMe, and "physical PCIe" SSDs. But the industry is finally converging into something of a standard.

M.2 NVMe is the high-performance part for consumers, especially the laptop market. While U.2 for servers who need large capacity and benefit from the physical presence of a wire connection.

Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#58

Post by kevarh »

eumoria wrote: post #46
jerf wrote: post #37

On an only sort-of related note, has anyone found a USB (or anything else external) adapter that can read these yet? I know why it's hard, and I know about the ones that read that form factor but not NVMe drives, and why that is. Just curious if my searches are coming up dry because they don't exist or because they're getting flooded by the results that match the search but don't work. I enjoy the performance of the…

As another user stated Startech makes one and I use it as a technician. It's not fast at all... it's mainly for recovery when you don't have a motherboard with an available M.2 slot you can still pull the data off it. For that purpose it does the trick. The drive is capable of speeds 100x above USB 3.0 so there really isn't good to use that bus for anything other than emergency. - Here is an image of the circuit it u…

Do you have a product number for the Startech adapter? The reviews I can find for current products say they do not work with the PCIe based Evo SSDs.

> PCI-E to USB 3.0 host bridge

Close, but this is the other direction, from PCI to USB.

Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#59

Post by kevarh »

kevarh wrote: post #58
eumoria wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another user stated Startech makes one and I use it as a technician. It's not fast at all... it's mainly for recovery when you don't have a motherboard with an available M.2 slot you can still pull the data off it. For that purpose it does the trick. The drive is capable of speeds 100x above USB 3.0 so there really isn't good to use that bus for anything other than emergency. - Here is an image of the circuit it u…

Do you have a product number for the Startech adapter? The reviews I can find for current products say they do not work with the PCIe based Evo SSDs. > PCI-E to USB 3.0 host bridge Close, but this is the other direction, from PCI to USB.

No cigar, it's a USB -> SATA interface, the newer drives would need a USB -> PCIe. https://web.archive.org/web/20170706000700/http://www.asmedi...

Re: Samsung's 970 EVO SSDs Reviewed – 500GB and 1TB

#60

Post by TwoNineFive »

whitepoplar wrote: post #17

Do these drives feature power-loss capacitors? I'm still wondering why most manufacturers think it's okay to offer SSDs that lose data on power loss (!!)

No, and for numerous reasons. Capacitors are relatively large and bulky. The specifications for SSD size doesn't leave a lot of room, and the type of surface mount electrostatic capacitors which would be needed are both expensive and take up a lot of space.

Even in the enterprise market, M2 form factor SSDs rarely have these capacitors, because they don't really help. They are more common on PCIE-card devices.

The on-disk/flash format that these drives use has a journaling system much like modern filesystems do, so they know if blocks were not fully written. This feature alone almost completely negates any need for

I have committed patches and code to UBIFS and I am very familiar with how modern flash filesystems work at the hardware level. Backup caps are just not really needed.

PS: The double exclamation point and whiney-blamey statement really added to your immature hyperbolicity.

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