Crucial vs Samsung Solid State Drives

[ascalice]

These are the two biggest SSD makes. A lot of people prefer Samsung, a lot of others prefer Crucial. Which one do you prefer when it comes to...

-Performance
-Reliability
-Satisfaction
-Price

 

[yhelothar]

I recently bought the crucial 480GB after doing about 30mins of research.
The M500 is cheaper than the Samsung EVO and uses MLC NAND as opposed to the less durable TLC NAND Samsung uses in their EVO. Samsung's MLC NAND comes in their pro trim that costs significantly more - and that's with the EVO already costing more than the M500.

Samsung's EVO is faster than Crucial at capacities lower than 480GB. but at 480GB, Crucial was as fast, but more reliable and cheaper.

 

[Coup27]

but more reliable

Do you have any data to backup this statement? AFAIK, neither drive has had any major problems in the wild.

For my personal builds, I go with Samsung purely because they are a little bit faster and my builds are not budget sensitive. I also only need a 120/128GB SSD and at that capacity, Samsung is faster.

I have started putting the M500 in more cost sensitive builds as a cheaper but still solid and reliable alternative.

Apart from my first SSD which was an X25-M G2, every other SSD I have bought has been Samsung or Crucial. I'm just not interested in anything else.

 

[spat55]

I think both are as good as each other, when I was choosing I went with the Evo as it was faster for the same price as the M500 although now the M550 has closed the gap.

 

[PliotronX]

TLC has proven pretty reliable, I'd trust the EVO. They're both good choices, I'm just a cheap bastard so I side with the Crucial equivalents

 

[F1shF4t]

Either one is a good choice. Personally I prefer the Crucial due to the power loss protection built in.

 

[yhelothar]

TLC has proven pretty reliable, I'd trust the EVO. They're both good choices, I'm just a cheap bastard so I side with the Crucial equivalents

Good link. So is there really a benefit of the Pro vs Evo then?
The Evo is slightly faster, although probably not significantly different. Pro is considerably more expensive and sold itself on the higher durability with the MLC. Or am I missing something here?

 

[Morbus]

They're all the same, it's all gonna be fine, and your gonna put them to rest before they go even slightly wrong.

Eat, drink and forget about your SSD.

 

[PliotronX]

Good link. So is there really a benefit of the Pro vs Evo then?
The Evo is slightly faster, although probably not significantly different. Pro is considerably more expensive and sold itself on the higher durability with the MLC. Or am I missing something here?

The beauty of marketing is you can tell a lie and the truth at the same time I would do as Morbus and have a drink rather than worry about the type of cell my SSD is using. I haven't heard nearly a fraction of (in fact never) the horror stories of certain OCZ and Mushkin models out of the Samsung and Crucial camps. I say if you spot a really good deal on an Evo, congratulations

 

[Cerb]

Crucial, IMO, as long as you ignore the V4, which they should have never even released. Shame on them for that one, especially with the M500 right on the horizon at the time.
- Both the M500 and 840 Evo are moderate performers with good enough performance for most of us. The M500 has quite an edge with more practical random IO, like us IT types do some of, while the 840 Evo excels in light bursty scenarios (IE: notebook/tablet races to idle).
- Both are pretty reliable (I haven't seen one with problems, and reports from users are few and far between).
- The 840 Pro is good for some users, but also has a bit wonky performance sometimes, with so little factory OP; and it costs a lot more for very little benefit, especially when you can usually get the Seagate 600 or Sandisk Extreme II cheaper, if you're looking for higher performance.
- Better GB/$, usually, for the Crucial M500 v. the 840 Evo.
- Why not get MLC, when it's cheaper than TLC? If Samsung is cutting costs to make a TLC drive, I want to see it reflected in the asking price, v. the competition.
- Support that's easy to get to, usually quick to respond, and usually accommodating when needed (FI, they'll do an advance RMA if you need it).

The M500 is definitely not the better choice for long-life notebooks or tablets, however. Samsung and Sandisk have Crucial solidly bested, if getting the most out of a 3-cell battery is of great importance, especially if using an older notebook, where you don't have DIPM. The minor cost increases might be worth it for the long-term battery health.

If you're stuck between the two, either buy Crucial for ease of getting support if it goes TU, Samsung (or Sandisk) if ~1W might make a difference for your battery, or just whichever is cheaper, and move on.

 

[Eug]

Dunno about the Samsung 840 EVO, but I have the Samsung 840 non-Pro, and it died with the 1.01 GB error.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2338861

Kristian said it was likely a sudden power loss issue.

 

[saratoga172]

Whichever is cheaper. Crucial has always had better deals for me and for my company so we've gone with them. Using a few M4's and an M500. Have over 100 M4's in deployment at work and have yet to have one fail.

We have Dell laptops that came with Samsung 830's, probably close to 50, and have yet to have one fail. This is over the last two years roughly.

We have a good sample size and both have been solid.

Seen a handful of lite on and Sandisk and they have been good so far but prefer crucial then samsung.

 

[Turab]

Either one is a good choice. Personally I prefer the Crucial due to the power loss protection built in.

It looks like M500 / 550 is the only consumer SSD with build in supercaps.

But I wonder about how much data can it protect before an sudden power loss ? Because it's supercaps a bit small.

 

[RU482]

I'm liking the sound of the M550 with power loss protection for portable devices, especially at the prices they are targeting.
Had varying luck with Crucial M4 (wound up with a bad batch or something of 32GB mSATA, which had 25%+ fallout...otherwise pretty good. no fallout with 64GB/128GB or 256GB mSATA).
Used a lot of SanDisk U100, X100, and X110 in portable devices also, had very good luck (nil RMA returns).

For a desktop build, I'd go Samsung Pro personally if I were paying for it.

 

[Cerb]

It looks like M500 / 550 is the only consumer SSD with build in supercaps.

Just regular caps, AFAIK.

But I wonder about how much data can it protect before an sudden power loss ?

That's a good question. A little while back, some guy tested a bunch of SSDs trying to corrupt data by power failures. The only survivor was Intel's, with an Intel controller, and caps. Intel/Micron also advertise that they do something in the flash to help keep data from corrupting, so it may not need the degree of external protection other devices do. But they have not been forthcoming with details, and AFAIK, an M500 has not gone through any rigorous 3rd-party testing to see what happens. If equipment and methods can be worked out well enough, it would be a good thing for review sites to add in, and also be helpful for SSD makers, that might not think of every failure mode others can.

 

[Compman55]

I bought the M500 because of price alone, and crucial is not known to make garbage (other than V4). I am partial to Samsung though, and if it were closer in price I would have snagged it.

In todays PC market, power loss is not an issue. Anymore everyone needs to have a UPS, just like everyone needed a surge protector. Our power grid is just too tempromental. I have mine for the reason of power spikes, or voltage dips. Not so much for complete blackouts. If you monitor this over a year, you will be amazed just how bad the power grid is.

 

[Eug]

Personally I think the manufacturers are far, far too focused upon speed. Reliability is much more important.

In fact, I'd be perfectly happy with a drive that's only half as fast as the current speed leaders, as long as it was low power and uber stable.

 

[Compman55]

You are correct.

However back in 2000, I always wondered why they did not invent a card that went into a slot, that would be as fast as ram. They are just now almost there. Speed is important when you have this new generation hardware. Throw an SSD on an old P4. It will blow your mind. And P4's are slow in comparison to todays hardware.

 

[Turab]

If equipment and methods can be worked out well enough, it would be a good thing for review sites to add in, and also be helpful for SSD makers, that might not think of every failure mode others can.

Agree.

Because we may see other manufacturers also to add these capacitors into their new models.

Comay - CoreRise is one of another SSD company that tried to do this in their consumer grade drives. But we did not see any review of it.

 

[bradly1101]

After reading this, I went with Corsair Neutron GTX's for my two builds. Couldn't be happier - my first builds with SSD's!

 

[Turab]

After reading this, I went with Corsair Neutron GTX's for my two builds. Couldn't be happier - my first builds with SSD's!

That is good choice.

It's stability is higher than most of other consumer solutions.

 

[Cerb]

After reading this, I went with Corsair Neutron GTX's for my two builds. Couldn't be happier - my first builds with SSD's!

If looking to expand your flash fleet, the Seagate 600 also uses LAMD's controller (but, Corsair and Seagate use different firmware), and performs nearly as well. It's on sale for almost the cost of the M500 fairly often. The Sandisk Extreme II is also quite fast and consistent, and while it will often lose to the LAMD drives, depending on test, it's a better mobile SSD.

The overall average write speed they got does make one go .

 

[Turab]

Hello Cerb,

Do you have any information about Seagate 600's firmware, is it written by Seagate's itself or ?

Also same question about SanDisk Extreme II too. I know it's firmware certainly not by Marvell. Did SanDisk gaint ability to write its own firmwares yet ?

 

[Cerb]

Hello Cerb,

Do you have any information about Seagate 600's firmware, is it written by Seagate's itself or ?

No more than what they've said in press and to reviewers.

Also same question about SanDisk Extreme II too. I know it's firmware certainly not by Marvell. Did SanDisk gaint ability to write its own firmwares yet ?

Every maker of Marvell-based SSDs does their own firmware.

 

[Turab]

Every maker of Marvell-based SSDs does their own firmware.

I see.

Orico, a Chinese company who manufactures storage oems. They also had an HM-01 named SSD which using Marvell controller. But where did they get the firmware then ? Because their skills on SSDs are too low what I notice.

They maybe borrowed it from an another company. Or relabelled someones drives.



Would like to ask one more question if you do not mind.

What do you think about Plextor's True-Speed technology ? They are saying that their firmware is premium, emphatically. But we see M5P is not quite consistent while it is filled.