Question I'd like a suggestion for an all-purpose 2TB SSD

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swapjim

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Nov 16, 2015
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I want to get a 2TB SSD to use as my main storage and I'm here to get a few suggestions on what I should be looking at.

I will use the drive to:
  1. Store and access files
  2. Run VirtualBox VMs
  3. Run apps (most of my apps are portable)
  4. Do image processing (Lightroom)
  5. Do video editing (Sony Vegas)
  6. Watch films
  7. Play non-demanding games like Counter-Strike 2 and Magic The Gathering Arena
I don't expect that I will frequently do large transfers, after the initial transfer of all my files but it would be nice to have a fast enough SSD that can handle that as well. I will be backing up (sync) at least once a day to 4 platter drives.

I have an old rig from 2016 which serves me pretty well and I don't plan to upgrade any time soon. It's an i7-6700 CPU on an Asus H170-Pro motherboard. There is one M.2 PCIe 3.0 port and a 5Gbps USB-C port.

I also intend to encrypt the partition with VeraCrypt, for privacy, in case I ever need to RMA the drive. I've tested this and the CPU can handle the load.

Stability and reliability are very important to me.

I'm considering Samsung T7, Crucial X8, Crucial x10, Samsung 980 Pro, Western Digital SN850X or SN770, with, perhaps a USB enclosure. I'd like to stay away from SanDisk drives.

My first pointer is a 2020 AnandTech review of the T7 and X8, which deems the X8 better than the T7.

I'm open to ideas, suggestions, and opinions.
 
M

manly

Lifer
Jan 25, 2000
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For your use cases, I'd skip external USB.

The drives you listed are good choices, but I wouldn't pay a premium for PCIe 4.0. Right now, Amazon is selling the Crucial P3 Plus 2TB for $90 - $15 clippable coupon.
For that platform, I'd definitely stay under the $90 mark. For the budget conscious, the Solidigm P41 Plus or Intel 670p go on sale every so often.
 
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Super Spartan

Super Spartan

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Aug 1, 2020
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swapjim said:
I want to get a 2TB SSD to use as my main storage and I'm here to get a few suggestions on what I should be looking at.

I will use the drive to:
  1. Store and access files
  2. Run VirtualBox VMs
  3. Run apps (most of my apps are portable)
  4. Do image processing (Lightroom)
  5. Do video editing (Sony Vegas)
  6. Watch films
  7. Play non-demanding games like Counter-Strike 2 and Magic The Gathering Arena
I don't expect that I will frequently do large transfers, after the initial transfer of all my files but it would be nice to have a fast enough SSD that can handle that as well. I will be backing up (sync) at least once a day to 4 platter drives.

I have an old rig from 2016 which serves me pretty well and I don't plan to upgrade any time soon. It's an i7-6700 CPU on an Asus H170-Pro motherboard. There is one M.2 PCIe 3.0 port and a 5Gbps USB-C port.

I also intend to encrypt the partition with VeraCrypt, for privacy, in case I ever need to RMA the drive. I've tested this and the CPU can handle the load.

Stability and reliability are very important to me.

I'm considering Samsung T7, Crucial X8, Crucial x10, Samsung 980 Pro, Western Digital SN850X or SN770, with, perhaps a USB enclosure. I'd like to stay away from SanDisk drives.

My first pointer is a 2020 AnandTech review of the T7 and X8, which deems the X8 better than the T7.

I'm open to ideas, suggestions, and opinions.
Click to expand...
Recently bought a Crucial X10 PRO, it made my laptop boot time 15 seconds slower, the laptop would just sit there at the BIOS splash screen for 15 seconds or so before the boot process starts. Boot priority was set to the Windows Boot ?Manager but something was weird with that drive as I never had any issues with boot time with any external SSD or HDD for that matter. After copying my 3TB worth of data to it, next morning the drive just died on my asking me to format it, barely used it for 24 hours so I returned it and got a refund.

I then got a Samsung T7 Shield 4TB which was cheaper and I've had no issues with boot time speed.

One thing to note, random data read/write were similar between my previous Samsung T5 Portable SSD and the Crucial X10 which was about 20MB/S only. The T7 gave me around 30 MB/S read and 40 MB/S write

Samsung T7 Shield 4TB SSD CrystalDiskMark.png


Samsung T5 2TB CrystalDiskMark.png

Crucial X10 Pro 4TB SSD.png


Edit: sorry, I thought you wanted an external from the thread title. I then read the actual post, please ignore this.
 
Super Spartan

Super Spartan

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Aug 1, 2020
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@swapjim

Here are the benchmarks from my WD_Black SN850X and SN770M

WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB SSD.png

WD_BLACK SN850X 4TB SSD.png

WD_BLACK SN770M 2TB SSD.png

Love these WD_Black SSDs and I really like the Western Digital Dashboard more than any other SSD utility. It allows easy firmware upgrades even for the boot drive on the fly
 
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swapjim

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Nov 16, 2015
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I am aware that WD owns SanDisk and it's quite possible that SanDisk manufactures the WD drives but I mostly want to stay away from their USB SSDs which I have seen have many problems. I rarely see a WD M.2 SSD with issues. Maybe they use a different process.

I am still considering everything you told me and I agree that it's a waste to invest in a PCIe 4.0 drive but I plan to buy from specific local (brick and mortar) stores that I prefer because RMA is going to be easier if I ever need one; so my choices are kind of limited. Are the Samsung 970 Evo Plus and Samsung 980 Pro any good?

And one more thing. If I understand correctly an M.2 NVMe drive on PCIe 3.0 gives me about 985 MB/sec, right?
 
Shmee

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
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swapjim said:
I am aware that WD owns SanDisk and it's quite possible that SanDisk manufactures the WD drives but I mostly want to stay away from their USB SSDs which I have seen have many problems. I rarely see a WD M.2 SSD with issues. Maybe they use a different process.

I am still considering everything you told me and I agree that it's a waste to invest in a PCIe 4.0 drive but I plan to buy from specific local (brick and mortar) stores that I prefer because RMA is going to be easier if I ever need one; so my choices are kind of limited. Are the Samsung 970 Evo Plus and Samsung 980 Pro any good?

And one more thing. If I understand correctly an M.2 NVMe drive on PCIe 3.0 gives me about 985 MB/sec, right?
Click to expand...
On PCIe 3.0, a good drive will get around 3500MB/s or so, though you may be quoting the transfer rate of a single lane. Keep in mind most m.2 NVMe drives have 4 lanes.

Depending on the prices where you shop, you may want to just get a PCIe gen 4 drive if they aren't too much more than the PCIe gen 3 options. The 980 Pro is a great drive, the 970 Evo Plus is pretty good too. Obviously PCIe gen 4 drives will be limited to PCIe gen 3 on said motherboard.
 
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swapjim

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I thought that M.2 used one lane. That's great to hear! Having 3.5GB/sec speed is going to be great boost over the 70MB/sec I'm getting now from my platter disk now.

One more question - Is the 970 a drive of less quality or consistency, or is it just slower?
 
In2Photos

In2Photos

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The 970 is a Gen3 drive, 980 is Gen4. On your system you will not see a speed difference as you are limited to Gen 3 speeds. But judging by the price on the 2 drives I'd buy the 980 with the mindset that it is a newer drive and if you upgrade your system at some point you will be able to take advantage of the faster speeds.
 
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Seba

Seba

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Samsung 980 Pro is no longer a "Pro" version. It no longer uses MLC (like for instance 970 Pro had), but slower TLC and relies on its SLC cache for good results in benchmarks (until the SLC cache is filled, then the transfer speed drops massively).

Samsung 970 Evo Plus (which also uses TLC) should be much cheaper for the same capacity, so I would consider it a better deal between these two.

The PCIe 3.0 vs. PCIe 4.0 is almost insignificant for these two drives.

One more thing:
If you go for the 980, make sure it is 980 Pro. Samsung also makes a 980 (without any suffix), which is a TLC and DRAM-less drive (this one could still be a good choice if the price/capacity is more important).
 
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swapjim

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Seba said:
Samsung 980 Pro is no longer a "Pro" version. It no longer uses MLC (like for instance 970 Pro had), but slower TLC and relies on its SLC cache for good results in benchmarks (until the SLC cache is filled, then the transfer speed drops massively).

Samsung 970 Evo Plus (which also uses TLC) should be much cheaper for the same capacity, so I would consider it a better deal between these two.

The PCIe 3.0 vs. PCIe 4.0 is almost insignificant for these two drives.

One more thing:
If you go for the 980, make sure it is 980 Pro. Samsung also makes a 980 (without any suffix), which is a TLC and DRAM-less drive (this one could still be a good choice if the price/capacity is more important).
Click to expand...

This is interesting. What is the sustained speed for 980 Pro and 970 Evo Plus? Does Samsung have an MLC M.2 drive today?

Is there a place I can look at drives who use MLC?
 
Hail The Brain Slug

Hail The Brain Slug

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swapjim said:
This is interesting. What is the sustained speed for 980 Pro and 970 Evo Plus? Does Samsung have an MLC M.2 drive today?

Is there a place I can look at drives who use MLC?
Click to expand...
There are no longer any consumer platform MLC drives. The 970 Pro was the last.

The vast majority of datacenter and enterprise migrated to TLC as well. MLC has practically gone the way of SLC.
 
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Seba

Seba

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Last edited:
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igor_kavinski

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I'm "concerned" that Crucial P5 Plus doesn't get mentioned around here. Why? Why do people choose Samsung over Crucial? Samsung has had too many bad firmware issues publicized in the news.


88% five(!) star reviews.
 
Seba

Seba

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Possibly because he restricts his purchase to a certain brick and mortar local shop.
 
In2Photos

In2Photos

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igor_kavinski said:
I'm "concerned" that Crucial P5 Plus doesn't get mentioned around here. Why? Why do people choose Samsung over Crucial? Samsung has had too many bad firmware issues publicized in the news.


88% five(!) star reviews.
Click to expand...
As I've mentioned in other threads before I have never had a Samsung drive fail, probably used 10 or so throughout the years. I bought 1 Crucial drive and it failed after a few months. I still think Crucial makes good drives, but everyone has their own experiences that aren't always reflected in Amazon reviews.
 
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swapjim

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Nov 16, 2015
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For the 980 Pro, a sustained write performance of 1.9GB/sec is still great. The SN850 has a larger SLC cache but lower sustained performance, at 1GB/sec. I now understand the value of cache: most of our day-to-day operations are within cache size so the drive is effectively that fast.

Prices for the 970 Evo Plus and the 980 Pro are similar in where I am living so I am leaning towards the 980 Pro.

I am a bit concerned about the temperature and the longevity of the drive. Will this drive do okay without a fan nearby?
 
In2Photos

In2Photos

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swapjim said:
For the 980 Pro, a sustained write performance of 1.9GB/sec is still great. The SN850 has a larger SLC cache but lower sustained performance, at 1GB/sec. I now understand the value of cache: most of our day-to-day operations are within cache size so the drive is effectively that fast.

Prices for the 970 Evo Plus and the 980 Pro are similar in where I am living so I am leaning towards the 980 Pro.

I am a bit concerned about the temperature and the longevity of the drive. Will this drive do okay without a fan nearby?
Click to expand...
I have 3 980 Pro drives in my system, all under motherboard heatsinks. I never see high temps, but I don't do a lot of file transfers. I use the system for gaming and photo editing. I don't think I have seen temps over 55C. I rely on only the case fans for air flow, granted I have 9 of them, but they typically run at lower speeds as temps in my whole system are pretty good.
 
Seba

Seba

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swapjim said:
I now understand the value of cache: most of our day-to-day operations are within cache size so the drive is effectively that fast.
Click to expand...
Take note that it's a pseudo-SLC cache (it is not a separate actual SLC NAND chip on the SSD PCB). It is a dynamic cache (some drives have a small static pseudo-SLC cache and a larger dynamic pseudo-SLC cache). A portion of the TLC operates in "SLC mode" as a fast(er) cache. And its size is dynamic. When the drive has lower free space size, the SLC cache size decreases as a consequence of this (due to lack of available space). So the performance drop will came sooner when the drive is close(er) to full.
 
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karyno

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FWIW - The 980 Pro 2TB is failing on me now after about 1.5 years of use. I don't think a firmware update will fix the issues (mixed reports) - there are a ton of reports of failures through which I didn't know about until mine joined the crowd. :-(

Not sure where to go next for a replacement. Leaning towards a Nextorage new G Series 2TB model (Japanese company) I'm guessing reliability (and support) is potentially better. (The 980 Pro speed as a boot drive in a Thunderbolt 3/4 ACASIS 40Gbps enclosure was nice!)
 
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