Question Big SSD, 1TB or 2TB, for copying large video files

Scour

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Aug 13, 2008
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Hello!

I need a big SSD, 1TB or 2TB, for copying large video files, often 200-300GB in a row. Should I care about DRAM or not?

These SSDs are in my (price-)scope

Kingston A400

Patriot P200

Sandisk SSD Plus

WD Green

I´m not sure about the Sandisk, but the Patriot seems to be the only one of them with 3D-NAND,
 

mxnerd

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Copying files uses very little RAM. Windows / File Explorer just read a portion of the source file (probably a cluster on the disk) and then copies it out immediately to the destination file.
 

VirtualLarry

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Well, large file-copies DO use the file-cache RAM in Windows. You can see that in action, in Windows 10, if you open Task Manager, and click on Memory, you can see "In Use" "Compressed" and "Cached", along with "Available". Note that the "Cached" is part of "Available" - if an application requests that memory, Windows will flush it out of the file-cache.

As for the SSDs, most modern SSDs use a portion of the drive for SLC cache. When that SLC cache is exceeded for writing, they slow WAY down, until the writes let up, and they have had time to recovery and re-balance and garbage-collect.

If you are going to be pummeling the SSD with constant writes, or constantly writing large files, consider an MLC SSD, such as the 850 PRO (SATA) or 970 PRO (M.2 NVMe). Not the 860 EVO (TLC) or 970 EVO / EVO Plus (TLC).
 

mxnerd

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I copied a 22GB from one HDD to another HDD earlier and the In Use memory usage almost stay the same from start to the end. At most 10MB up or down.

==

OK. I admit I rarely check my memory uusage.

But this is weird. I've got 24GB for my PC.

I got about 4.4 GB in use before copying the 22GB file.

The in use memory stay almost the same from beginning to the end.

The cached memory did jumped about 8 GB however and stay at 20GB, even more than 18.5GB that's available? How?

And when the job is complete, available & cached memory both are at 20GB.

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Scour

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Aug 13, 2008
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Thanks for the answers

Was not sure about DRAM, but you tell me what I thought :) . In most fora all users go beserk if someone want to buy a DRAM-less SSD ;)

I´m very familar with all types of NANDs, I know TLC isn´t that fast like MLC ;)

But a 2TB-SSD with MLC start with prices at ca. 480€, that´s much more than the than the prices for a TLC-drive. I avoid to buy QLC for my usage, but the question is: Which TLC-drives are not totally worse?

Maybe the old ones are better because of more NAND-chips than the newer SSDs

Sadly it´s hard to find a review with a sequential write test for whole capacity, mostly only a few GB was tested, and in this case the SLC-cache was used.
 

UsandThem

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May 4, 2000
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Hello!

I need a big SSD, 1TB or 2TB, for copying large video files, often 200-300GB in a row. Should I care about DRAM or not?

These SSDs are in my (price-)scope

Kingston A400

Patriot P200

Sandisk SSD Plus

WD Green

I´m not sure about the Sandisk, but the Patriot seems to be the only one of them with 3D-NAND,
IMO, those are all terrible choices for SSDs. They are the bottom performing SSDs in every day use, let alone copying huge data amounts.

At least go with something like the Crucial MX500, WD Blue 3D NAND, Sandisk Ultra 3D, WD Red SA500, Samsung 860 EVO, etc.
 
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Scour

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Really so bad?

The MX500 is the next in price, then the Adata SU650, WD 3D, Barracuda 120.

Maybe I find some info/reviews about these SSDs
 

piokos

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Nov 2, 2018
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I need a big SSD, 1TB or 2TB, for copying large video files, often 200-300GB in a row.
I don't understand the workflow. You'll be copying to that SSD or from it?
Is this just for downloading video files from flash cards?

You're going to edit video on this drive or is it just for storage?
Should I care about DRAM or not?
Probably not. Copying files takes some RAM (like any CPU task), but it's related to transfer rate, not file size.

Unless it's some very limited machine (RPi or something), you'll be fine.
These SSDs are in my (price-)scope
All drives you've mentioned would be sufficient for downloading large files from flash (even with fast cards, e.g.. 300MB/s).
But there are better all-round SSDs.
My vote also goes to MX500.
 

Dranoche

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Jul 6, 2009
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OK. I admit I rarely check my memory uusage.

But this is weird. I've got 24GB for my PC.

I got about 4.4 GB in use before copying the 22GB file.

The in use memory stay almost the same from beginning to the end.

The cached memory did jumped about 8 GB however and stay at 20GB, even more than 18.5GB that's available? How?

And when the job is complete, available & cached memory both are at 20GB.

I believe Windows generally maintains what's in memory until it needs that memory for something else. It's not actively in use, but it doesn't clear it until it needs it. Some processes might be tentatively holding on to bits of it, resulting in some of the odd reporting.

As for the OP, some more specifics on the primary use case would be useful. I'll also throw in a vote for the MX500.
 

aigomorla

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Are these for archival purposes like storage or you using it as a Temp dump?
How long do you need the data to sit in dump if its a dump? Is this for like a encoding drive, where you will encode a file and have it save onto that before you move it to archive?

How big of a capacity we talking about before you are done editing it and moving it over?

I would probably max out your ram capacity and install ImDisk, make your ram a virtual HDD.
The biggest drawback is power loss, and PC reboots where you will lose all the data on that dump unless you back it up.

That way you don't need to worry about how many TB write life the storage dump has unless again, its for archival purposes, which then i have to say, that is one hell of a premium archive storage, and i probably wouldn't advise it, as your better off going a redundant raid array with spinners for a media library storage.
 

piokos

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I would probably max out your ram capacity and install ImDisk, make your ram a virtual HDD.
He said he needs to copy 200-300GB. :)
Hard to say if it's 200GB per file or 200GB of files in total. RAM disk makes no sense either way.

But I agree some details of workflow would be useful.
 

aigomorla

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He said he needs to copy 200-300GB. :)
Hard to say if it's 200GB per file or 200GB of files in total. RAM disk makes no sense either way.

But I agree some details of workflow would be useful.

Then he's looking at the wrong SSD's period.
He will wear out the cells, and he should really be looking for eMLC or enterprise variants.
But those cost money.

I think we require more info, but SSD route is definitely not the route to go with data dumps that large.
I would probably build a dedicated NAS/SAN with a 12G SAS controller + 10/40 GBe, as you can get pretty good file transfer speeds off Raid0 / Raid10 / or RaidZ even over 10Gbe averaging at about 400-600mb/s from pc to pc on the 10Gbe switch.
 
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ElFenix

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am i going crazy here or is the OP asking about DRAM cache on SSDs and y'all are talking about main system DRAM?
 

aigomorla

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am i going crazy here or is the OP asking about DRAM cache on SSDs and y'all are talking about main system DRAM?

we dont know exactly what he is asking for.
I missed the point where he wanted 200-300GB of storage space to transfer.
But we don't know if its temp dump or a cache storage, where he will be encoding something first, then transferring it to archive, or if its a storage center where he moves a file there, and has other PC's on network access storage.

If it was a simple dump, i was going to suggest he just max out ram and use ImDisk, which is basically a ramdisk, so he could use it as a dump and not worry about the TBW all SSD's have.
But again, i missed the fact he wanted 200-300GB... like piokos states, is it per file or total, which again he is correct, it would completely invalidate a ramdisk option as it would be uber expensive to run a system with 512gb of ram. (possible, but extremely costly)

We need more info on exactly what s/he wants to do with this storage... if its a dump / repository / archive of some kind.
Because if its 300GB per file, and most SSD's that are TLC have a TBW of 400TB... he will probably go though that fast as in less then 1yr just doing 3 x 300GB write transfers daily.
 

UsandThem

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am i going crazy here or is the OP asking about DRAM cache on SSDs and y'all are talking about main system DRAM?
Based on the drive choices they listed in their OP, I took as meaning DRAMless drives.

A WD Green SSD? Nope. :p

There are some better DRAMless drives when it comes to NVMe SSDs, but the price difference between those and a drive like the WD SN750 isn't that much at all.
 

Scour

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Aug 13, 2008
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@piokos / @aigomorla

I copy from external SSDs (recordings on digital Setboxes) to an internal SSD for cutting/editing. Mostly 200-300GB in a row, filesizes from less than a GB to 30GB, so the SLC-Cache of newer SSDs aren´t big enough to do it in a good speed.

This don´t happens everyday, only all 2-3 weeks, depending on how many recordings I made.

I have SSDs at work which are wrote 90TB and more and still works flawless, it should work some years with my amount of data

If the internal SSD is full, I copy it to HDDs for storage

@micromd
I live in germany, the S31 is not available here.
 

VirtualLarry

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I have SSDs at work which are wrote 90TB and more and still works flawless, it should work some years with my amount of data
Which ones are those? Certainly not the bottom-of-the-barrel ones that you listed in OP. Mostly likely, they are enterprise MLC models. Which is what @aigomorla suggested (and I hinted at).
 

Scour

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Yeah, that´s older SSDs with MLC:

Intel SSD535 120GB
Lite-on M6S 256GB
Sandisk X110 128GB
OCZ Agility 3 120GB

I think not all ppl know about real TBW, here are some results from german c´t magazine, they tested two samples of some SSDs:

Crucial BX200 240GB 187TB/280TB

Samsung 750 Evo 250GB 1,2PB

Samsung 850 Pro 256GB 9,1PB

Sandisk Extreme Pro 256GB 2,2PB

Note: A voltage peak killed one Sandisk Extreme Pro 256GB and Samsung 850 Pro 256GB.

So the worst SSD in test still wrote 187TB with 2D-NAND TLC
 

piokos

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Nov 2, 2018
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Which ones are those? Certainly not the bottom-of-the-barrel ones that you listed in OP. Mostly likely, they are enterprise MLC models. Which is what @aigomorla suggested (and I hinted at).
You guys got too dramatic.
It's a disk. It wears out and you replace it.

300GB every 2-3 weeks => 7TB/year.
Any SSD will last him for years.
Yeah, that´s older SSDs with MLC:
Seriously, with your needs, buy whatever you want. :)
People get carried away overthinking such things. You asked on a PC enthusiast forum, you got PC enthusiasts' answers. :)

Which doesn't change the fact that the SSDs you've mentioned in the first post aren't the best in the price range. Get the MX500.
 

VirtualLarry

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You guys got too dramatic.
It's a disk. It wears out and you replace it.

300GB every 2-3 weeks => 7TB/year.
Any SSD will last him for years.
Seriously, with your needs, buy whatever you want. :)
People get carried away overthinking such things. You asked on a PC enthusiast forum, you got PC enthusiasts' answers. :)

Which doesn't change the fact that the SSDs you've mentioned in the first post aren't the best in the price range. Get the MX500.
You missed the point entirely. I wasn't so much suggesting MLC for the longevity, but the steady write performance.

For example, my 128GB Adata SU800 Ultimate SATA 2.5" SSD. One of the very first SATA 3D-NAND SSDs, and with SLC cache. Performance was AWESOME... well, until you exhausted the SLC cache. Then the write speed fluctuated between 30MB/sec and 35MB/sec. 3x SLOWER than a HDD.

So that's why I was suggesting MLC, rather than a TLC SSD with SLC cache. Writing 300GB will almost certainly exhaust the SLC cache portion of the drive, and then the OP will be sitting there waiting for his copy to complete, at some lower fraction of the performance, and they will be unhappy about it.
 
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Scour

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Well, the S3610 cost (cheapest) 499€ in Germany, that´s ~ 567$

I think I will go for the MX500, WD or Sandisk 3D

Thanks to all who helped me :)