2tb SSD: Samsung EVO vs PRO for Video Editing drive?

[dsc106]

I want to have a main video edit drive for whatever current project I am working on. Will store all source footage and assets there (and maybe project files? or could put project files on a seperate HDD, or SSD if better).

Anyway, will the EVO vs PRO make a difference for me? What would the extra $250 get me for going with the $1000 Pro model over the $750 Evo model? Worth it?

EVO:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-...id=1499578981&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+evo+2tb

PRO:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-...id=1499578992&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+pro+2tb

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I would say no on the face of it.

The $250 buy you a bit of extra performance, and longer warranty(?*). The extra performance is not really noticeable for what you'll be using it for, and warranty will only get you a new drive. It will not save your data if the drive dies.

*not really sure about american rules for that sort of thing.

 

[deustroop]

The 850 Pro is a faster drive and the difference in price reflects the fact. While both will get the job done very well, you could not fail to notice the comparative performance . It is my favorite Sammy other than the M2 960 Pro and yes I would take the 850 Pro over the M2 960 Evo all day. But is performance worth the price to you ?
So now its all about you and your budget.Most opinions here are about saving money where possible and bang/buck analysis. If you keep the drive for 5 years, that's $50 more per year for the Pro. Are you a saver or a dbanger?

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

I want to have a main video edit drive for whatever current project I am working on. Will store all source footage and assets there (and maybe project files? or could put project files on a seperate HDD, or SSD if better).

Anyway, will the EVO vs PRO make a difference for me? What would the extra $250 get me for going with the $1000 Pro model over the $750 Evo model? Worth it?

EVO:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-...id=1499578981&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+evo+2tb

PRO:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-...id=1499578992&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+pro+2tb

At such capacities the difference in performance should be pretty minimal, see Anandtechs results: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1537?vs=1536

Warranty is 10 years instead of five but both are generous.

The endurance for the 850 Pro is higher but even with the 850 EVO it should take around a PB of writes (though that depends on the WA) to use up 25% of its P/E cycles.
So I would say that the 850 EVO is the better choice here.

 

[Yakk]

EVO uses TLC NAND, while the PRO uses MLC NAND.

Endurance is the main difference, also slightly faster speed. In a professional environment the higher Endurance PRO makes sense because downtime can be extremely expensive. For home use it's more an indulgence because people usually want to change (or "upgrade") a lot more often so imho is a waste of money.

 

[dsc106]

It is for professional use for my video production business. It's not used day in/day out with constant transfer. Maybe add a few hundred gigabytes every week, then delete and reload the whole drive every few months when a project completes. But the drive would be in use maybe every other day for editing the stored video files and project file in premiere.

6% speed boost I am skeptical to notice difference. I might have 1.5tb of video files stored, one project file with it. There is definitely so jumping around within 12+ hours of footage, where I move down the timeline, etc. but it's not thousands of small files for the random reads.

Budget is not a problem for the PRO and I always favor quality when it is worth it, but I am not into wasting resources if I would never approach the needed endurance or perceive the speed changes.

Given this, any opinions change?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It is for professional use for my video production business. It's not used day in/day out with constant transfer. Maybe add a few hundred gigabytes every week, then delete and reload the whole drive every few months when a project completes. But the drive would be in use maybe every other day for editing the stored video files and project file in premiere.

Lets do the math on that. If we assume 200GB of writes a week, that translates into 10400GB in a year (200*52). So you'd be writing 10.4TB a year, well within the endurance rating for almost all drives. If you keep the 850EVO for the warranty period, that's still only 52TB of writes. Further you have 2TB of NAND to spread those writes over, you'd only use 26 P/E cycles.

In short, its nothing to worry about.

Given this, any opinions change?

No, not really. Samsung 3D NAND seems pretty resilient, an 850 PRO survived 9100PB (that's petabyte, or thousands of terabytes) of writes, and that was only a 250GB drive...

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

It is for professional use for my video production business. It's not used day in/day out with constant transfer. Maybe add a few hundred gigabytes every week, then delete and reload the whole drive every few months when a project completes. But the drive would be in use maybe every other day for editing the stored video files and project file in premiere.

6% speed boost I am skeptical to notice difference. I might have 1.5tb of video files stored, one project file with it. There is definitely so jumping around within 12+ hours of footage, where I move down the timeline, etc. but it's not thousands of small files for the random reads.

Budget is not a problem for the PRO and I always favor quality when it is worth it, but I am not into wasting resources if I would never approach the needed endurance or perceive the speed changes.

Given this, any opinions change?

Not really.
Like, if you wrote around 500GB to the drive every day for five years then you would reach about 1PB of writes by that time (depending on WA) or around 25% of its rated P/E cycles so I doubt that endurance would be an issue for you.
The warranty will have expired long before you would reach 1PB though since it covers just 300TB.

Samsung 3D NAND seems pretty resilient, an 850 PRO survived 9100PB (that's petabyte, or thousands of terabytes) of writes, and that was only a 250GB drive...

First of all it was 9100TB.
Secondly that kind of testing disregards the impact wear can have on retention meaning that the drive may survive thousands of TB when performing constant writes but may stop working after but a short time without power.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

First of all it was 9100TB.
Secondly that kind of testing disregards the impact wear can have on retention meaning that the drive may survive thousands of TB when performing constant writes but may stop working after but a short time without power.

Mistake... Should have been 9.1PB. -wipes egg off face-

You're right it would cause data retention problems, but that test also way beyond an extreme case.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would go with the Pro drive, for the 3D MLC.

Also, Mushkin now makes the Enhanced Reactor Armor3D SSD, in 500GB capacity for $150-160, which is 3D MLC as well. Seems quite affordable. But if you need 2TB, I would go with the Samsung.

 

[dsc106]

Thank you for all the help. Here is a question I did not think to ask:

In actual practice, is the SSD worth it in over a fast, quality HDD (such as the WD Black or HGST Ultrastar?). These are what I am currently using.

For large projects with hours of footage, jumping around long timelines, playing back at 100%, etc. Sometimes I notice seek times seem to be a bit slow, or things can take some time to load up or fill in on a project. I'd love to eliminate that and keep it super snappy, but not sure if the SSD will do that for me or not. It is a lot to spend, so want to be sure the performance gain will actually be worth it and felt in Premiere.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

In actual practice, is the SSD worth it in over a fast, quality HDD (such as the WD Black or HGST Ultrastar?). These are what I am currently using.

No question. If you've never used a system with an SSD, you'll be shocked at just how much the perceptible performance increases. The downside is you'll never want to use a HDD as a system drive ever again.

 

[dsc106]

No, my system has SSDs. Boot drive and a immediacies drive for video editing. My laptops and second PC also operate with SSDs, so I'm well aware the performance difference.

I am specifically talking about storing/editing large amounts (1TB+) LONG-GOP video files on it for editing. It's a specific I/O bandwidth bottleneck question on this use case, and if for these files in Adobe Premiere, there will be a significant difference in performance.

 

[deustroop]

Well, on the "pro" side,you have my opinion (an actual user of both) that you will notice the difference and you have the test result that Glaring_Mistake provided which shows a small but significant advantage to the Pro ( he calls it a minimal difference).

Con, like I said,is the opinion that the qualitative difference may not be noticeable nor worth the increase in cost ( wasting resources as you describe it).

So what else do you want ?

Go ahead, Go Evo, Save that one dollar a week, Buy your self a better ..., well there is nothing you can do with the saving !

 

[dsc106]

I believe you have misread my (new) second question. I am talking about *NO* SSD vs an SSD specifically for LONG-GOP video file editing. I am reading mixed things online, with some saying there would be minimal performance gain because the bottleneck for large LONG-GOP video files is not the SSD.