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How Not to Buy a SSD

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Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#141

Post by GauntletWizard »

morninglight wrote: post #109
p1mrx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ValiDrive is Windows-only and closed source. Does it have any advantages over https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3 ?

ValiDrive was designed to be fast and nondestructive - In a random, non-repeating sequence, at each of 576 separate evenly spread locations on any drive, ValiDrive reads the current contents of that region. It then fills that region with random “data noise” then reads back the region's contents to verify that the “data noise” was actually stored. ValiDrive then always rewrites the region's original data to restore wh…

> In a random, non-repeating sequence, at each of 576 separate evenly spread locations on any drive, ValiDrive reads the current contents of that region. It then fills that region with random “data noise” then reads back the region's contents to verify that the “data noise” was actually stored. ValiDrive then always rewrites the region's original data to restore whatever data may have been originally stored there.

Does this test actually spot modern fakes? My understanding was that they typically used simple modulo addressing such that any write was immediately readable, and even large continuous chunks operated perfectly fine, it just also "overwrote" that address every 4GB or whatever.

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#142

Post by Dylan16807 »

moepstar wrote: post #9
jchw wrote: post #4

In general I am afraid to buy storage devices except directly from the vendor at the moment. I've heard that there's also lots of fraudulent HDDs being sold with botched SMART data, even on Amazon, even marked as "New", even sold by Amazon. Scary proposition unless you're dying to test out your RAID array redundancy.

> even sold by Amazon Honest question: after all the reports of co-mingled inventory, plain fakes etc. being sold by Amazon - for years i might add - do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket? I went from spending > 10k€ per year to less than 5%, probably not even that, on there, all by their own fault. And i see no reason to buy there anymore: - the defau…

> after all the reports of co-mingled inventory, plain fakes etc. being sold by Amazon - for years i might add

If we're putting co-mingling into its own category, I don't remember any reports of fakes being sold by Amazon. Do you have any links?

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#143

Post by nfriedly »

yonatan8070 wrote: post #58
encrypted_bird wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the name of the retailer?

KSP https://ksp.co.il/

When I click that I just get a giant error page from cloudfront saying that I have been blocked. Do they block all non-Israeli IPs or am I special?

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#144

Post by hangonhn »

dotancohen wrote: post #48
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I began noticing this about seven or eight years ago when the oil filters I bought changed from official ones to obvious counterfeits (certain pieces were missing entirely + media was much thinner than the real ones). Had to switch to a local auto parts supplier to guarantee the correct part.

How did you notice that the media was thinner? On passenger vehicles at least, the filter media is in a stainless steel cup that precludes examination.

BMW at least has the media completely exposed. There is no canister like you might find on Honda oil filters. Basically on BMWs the oil filter housing is permanent. I don't think it's a BMW specific thing. Might be a German car thing?

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#145

Post by hangonhn »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #138
bullen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No MLC lasts 5 years tops. I have 5x SLC (40-60GB) drives from 2010 still running. Not a single SLC has failed for me ever. I also have 5x MLC (120-400GB ones) drives that failed. All MLC have failed for me. The stats don't look too good.

Depends on the usage and the initial claimed DWPD. I've seen Samsung 860 Pro (DWPD of 0.6 ) doing fine after years under LUKS (the worst case for SSD). As soon as you go for DWPD > 1 (real or effective) the wearout is not a problem.

Why is LUKS bad fro SSDs? I'm thinking of using LUKS for my USB thumb drive.

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#146

Post by mmmlinux »

frantathefranta wrote: post #122
RankingMember wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of Microcenter for this kind of stuff and hope they can hang on (I was disappointed to see one of the ones near me reducing its store footprint).

I like Microcenter a lot but this reminded me that the one thing I had issues with was buying a 256GB M.2 SSD there (I think from their in-store Inland brand) and it only ever showed up as 1GB. I don't know if it was a QA issue or a RMA swap but who knows. Obviously they were fine with me returning it and hopefully they didn't put it back on the shelf.

nah it goes on those discount wire rack shelves they have sprinkled throughout the store.

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#147

Post by thfuran »

traceroute66 wrote: post #45
moepstar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even sold by Amazon Honest question: after all the reports of co-mingled inventory, plain fakes etc. being sold by Amazon - for years i might add - do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket? I went from spending > 10k€ per year to less than 5%, probably not even that, on there, all by their own fault. And i see no reason to buy there anymore: - the defau…

> do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket? Not the person you're asking, but yes, I do. You know the biggest reason wny ? Their no-bullshit returns policy. Seriously. Click button, get your returns label. The refund is sent to you as soon as the courier or post office has scanned the barcode. Hell, sometimes Amazon just refund you and don't even want the…

That they'll give you your money back after you call them on scamming you doesn't make them a reliable source.

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#148

Post by Dylan16807 »

bullen wrote: post #131
Havoc wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big fan of 2nd hand enterprise SSDs strategy too but wow not like that. The slightly more modern intel MLCs like S3700 crush the early SLCs across the board - including endurance. Would have cost you 1/3rd the price for vastly superior specs.

No MLC lasts 5 years tops. I have 5x SLC (40-60GB) drives from 2010 still running. Not a single SLC has failed for me ever. I also have 5x MLC (120-400GB ones) drives that failed. All MLC have failed for me. The stats don't look too good.

How much are you writing to those drives?

Have you tried any drives that will extend their pseudo-SLC cache across the entire space, and then only partitioned 25-30% of the nameplate capacity? That'll get you a terabyte for less than $300.

Personally I've had two SSDs in active use and both have done a lot better than that. One was MLC and died after 13 years, and the other is TLC and still working after 10 years.

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#150

Post by Havoc »

bullen wrote: post #131
Havoc wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big fan of 2nd hand enterprise SSDs strategy too but wow not like that. The slightly more modern intel MLCs like S3700 crush the early SLCs across the board - including endurance. Would have cost you 1/3rd the price for vastly superior specs.

No MLC lasts 5 years tops. I have 5x SLC (40-60GB) drives from 2010 still running. Not a single SLC has failed for me ever. I also have 5x MLC (120-400GB ones) drives that failed. All MLC have failed for me. The stats don't look too good.

>No MLC lasts 5 years tops.

A 64gb Intel’s X25-E is rated for about 2 PB of TBW.

A S3700 (400gb) is rated for 7 PB TBW range and gets you 400gb not 64gb usable space.

>The stats don't look too good.

It seems to me that you're trying very hard to not look at stats and insist on extrapolating your small sample personal experiences?

Frankly for 3k you could have built a pure optane rig of equivalent capacity that would have crushed both your X-25E suggestion and my S3700 if you're really obsessed on endurance.

I'm generally of the meet people where they are and support their journey persuasion but when someone says 64GB SATA v2 drive with no trim and really bad metrics across the board is their best ssd buy I gotta say something

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