Mini Review on the Micron 1100 SSD

[Hi-Fi Man]

On Ebay from the same seller for $280+tax (CA)

https://slickdeals.net/f/11496371-m...6gbs-2-5-inch-mtfddak2t0tbn-1ar1zabyy-280?v=1

Just bought two of those bad boys. Going to stripe them with Windows for games, will report back with results.

Did some digging around and apparently these use the same controller and NAND as the Crucial MX300s. They're just provisioned differently and may have different firmware.

 

[whm1974]

What TLC vs MLC? It is my understanding that MLC is still greatly preferred over TLC?

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

What TLC vs MLC? It is my understanding that MLC is still greatly preferred over TLC?

Here's an explanation from Anandtech on some of the differences.

 

[UsandThem]

What TLC vs MLC? It is my understanding that MLC is still greatly preferred over TLC?

Some people will only use drives with MLC, but drives that use MLC are becoming less and less. With 3d NAND being a mature process at this point, it does not concern me personally. Write endurance used to be very low with the first several generations of TLC NAND (race to the bottom), but that's not a concern with Toshiba/Hynix \Crucial \Samsung all producing current gen NAND.

 

[whm1974]

Some people will only use drives with MLC, but drives that use MLC are becoming less and less. With 3d NAND being a mature process at this point, it does not concern me personally. Write endurance used to be very low with the first several generations of TLC NAND (race to the bottom), but that's not a concern with Toshiba/Hynix \Crucial \Samsung all producing current gen NAND.

Thanks. I am concern with mostly write endurance and the durability of TLC vs MLC NAND.

 

[UsandThem]

Thanks. I am concern with mostly write endurance and the durability of TLC vs MLC NAND.

MLC is usually higher, but even drives that still use MLC, (like the 960 PRO) have reduced their warranties by half of what they used to be (now 5 years instead of 10).

Drives like the Western Digital 3D, Intel 545s, and Crucial MX500 that use modern 3D NAND all come with 5 years warranty too. In fact, most people will replace these current gen drives as being obsolete long before bricking it from writes. SATA is tapped out performance wise, people have to move to PCIe drives now to get performance.

 

[Engineer]

For $270.33 through Platnium Micro at Rakuten using 15% off coupon (SAVE15).

https://www.rakuten.com/shop/platinum-micro/product/CCMTFDDAK2T0TBN1AR1ZABYY/

Damn, that's tempting!

 

[theanti]

Hmm... no images are showing up, but if I go to the site, it shows it, so, I guess these guys have hotlinking "protection" as well?

MLC is usually higher, but even drives that still use MLC, (like the 960 PRO) have reduced their warranties by half of what they used to be (now 5 years instead of 10).

Drives like the Western Digital 3D, Intel 545s, and Crucial MX500 that use modern 3D NAND all come with 5 years warranty too. In fact, most people will replace these current gen drives as being obsolete long before bricking it from writes. SATA is tapped out performance wise, people have to move to PCIe drives now to get performance.

Elixer / UsandThem sorry to (kind of) interrupt in here but I've been following some of your posts these days and I do think you both have a solid idea as far as SSDs are concerned.

Provided the info online in the specifics of this matter is blurry at the very least (add to the mixer the amount of bribing websites receive and how badly they perform their tests and we've got true crap as a result), I would like to ask you which one of these two NVMe SSD's, (which I reckon are the best out there price/performance) do you consider best and what opinion do you have on both, specially the Kingston, as it is a (to me) surprisingly cheap one being MLC and having massive durability (300/550/800TBW) which I much rather prefer over -even better- speeds.

Kingston KC1000
(WD Black 2018 / Sandisk Extreme Pro)

What is your opinion on MLC vs 3D TLC? As far as I know the 960 EVO uses the latter and it is complete garbage, as it might fire off 3 or 4 GB of very decent speed through the caché, but after it's gone the speeds drop dramatically, thing that doesn't (right?) happen on MLC, not to mention thrice the reliability on the MLC.

Am I more or less correct? That's it, simply wanted to hear you both out there.

I do believe it would actually be nice to work out a "SSD consensus thread" like long ago they worked out a PSU one in the Overclockers forum that very much was the seed of the reason nowadays almost everyone finally knows what a good psu is, what OEMs are the best and so on.

Thanks. Regards.

 

[UsandThem]

Kingston KC1000
(WD Black 2018 / Sandisk Extreme Pro)

What is your opinion on MLC vs 3D TLC? As far as I know the 960 EVO uses the latter and it is complete garbage, as it might fire off 3 or 4 GB of very decent speed through the caché, but after it's gone the speeds drop dramatically, thing that doesn't (right?) happen on MLC, not to mention thrice the reliability on the MLC.

Am I more or less correct? That's it, simply wanted to hear you both out there.

I do believe it would actually be nice to work out a "SSD consensus thread" like long ago they worked out a PSU one in the Overclockers forum that very much was the seed of the reason nowadays almost everyone finally knows what a good psu is, what OEMs are the best and so on.
Thanks. Regards.

A drive being MLC/3D NAND doesn't matter much to me. The smaller capacity NVMe drives are the ones that suffer the most with large writes. For the 960 EVO (or the 970 EVO now), I would never go with one under 500GB because of the small SLC amount (Tom'sHardware actually slams the 250GB 960 EVO in their review). You are correct once that is filled, the drive performance suffers for most 3D NAND drives.

So if you want to stay with a small capacity drive, I would get one that features MLC (and has good reviews on legit websites). As long as the sites you read have similar results to others, it is probably legit.

 

[Engineer]

For $270.33 through Platnium Micro at Rakuten using 15% off coupon (SAVE15).

https://www.rakuten.com/shop/platinum-micro/product/CCMTFDDAK2T0TBN1AR1ZABYY/

Damn, that's tempting!

Back again at same price with same coupon.

 

[whm1974]

A drive being MLC/3D NAND doesn't matter much to me. The smaller capacity NVMe drives are the ones that suffer the most with large writes. For the 960 EVO (or the 970 EVO now), I would never go with one under 500GB because of the small SLC amount (Tom'sHardware actually slams the 250GB 960 EVO in their review). You are correct once that is filled, the drive performance suffers for most 3D NAND drives.

So if you want to stay with a small capacity drive, I would get one that features MLC (and has good reviews on legit websites). As long as the sites you read have similar results to others, it is probably legit.

So it best with TLC SSDs to get the largest size you can afford?

 

[UsandThem]

So it best with TLC SSDs to get the largest size you can afford?

Yup. Night and day difference with most of them, of course it can vary depending on SLC amount, controller used, etc.

When it comes to the 960/970 EVO, I wouldn't buy either one under 500GB. The 250GB variations of those drives does not warrant the price premium.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-960-evo-nvme-ssd-review,4802-4.html

250 GB conclusion:

Everyone has done something that they regretted as soon as they took the action. Samsung may feel that way about the 960 EVO 250GB because it took the low-capacity model down one step too far. Using lower density flash should have helped, but the final result doesn't match our, or your, EVO series expectations.

The 960 EVO 250GB at $129 is a wash. The drive is not competitive against the MyDigitalSSD BPX that costs less. The fact that we had to put the Intel 600p and Samsung 960 EVO in the same sentence during comparative analysis should be embarrassing. Millions of these drives will ship, and hundreds of thousands of users will be disappointed. The 250GB 960 EVO doesn't represent NVMe performance in much the same way that "hard disk replacement" SSDs don't represent SSD performance. The drive is cheap, you get what you pay for, and there are no EVO-like miracles there.

 

[whm1974]

Yup. Night and day difference with most of them, of course it can vary depending on SLC amount, controller used, etc.

When it comes to the 960/970 EVO, I wouldn't buy either one under 500GB. The 250GB variations of those drives does not warrant the price premium.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-960-evo-nvme-ssd-review,4802-4.html

250 GB conclusion:

Well in that case If I need to buy another SSD and if its TLC, then I would get 2TB to be on the safe side.

 

[theanti]

MLC is usually higher, but even drives that still use MLC, (like the 960 PRO) have reduced their warranties by half of what they used to be (now 5 years instead of 10).

Drives like the Western Digital 3D, Intel 545s, and Crucial MX500 that use modern 3D NAND all come with 5 years warranty too. In fact, most people will replace these current gen drives as being obsolete long before bricking it from writes. SATA is tapped out performance wise, people have to move to PCIe drives now to get performance.

Well in that case If I need to buy another SSD and if its TLC, then I would get 2TB to be on the safe side.

@whm1974
The problem there however will be price. Still, prices as they are today, I see almost absolutely no reason not to go with an M2 NVMe over a SATA drive, as the worst that can happen (referencing the 960EVO) is that, under some tasks, the NVMe drive performs 'as bad' as a SATA. For the rest of it, the NVMe drive is simply better and faster in almost all regards. Almost same price, way smaller, no cables, etc (although MUCH hotter, bear in mind).

Makes sense now according to what UsandThem said that drive prices skyrocket so much as capacity goes up, as they're exponentially better (not just more capacity).


@UsandThem
That said it is clear to me now a low capacity (250GB) MLC is the way to go and just as I had been thinking, the Kingston KC1000 should be the undebatable king. I am however still in doubt as to how well (or badly) does said KC1000 fare against the newer -WD Black/Sandisk Extreme Pro- on 500TB and 1TB capacities.

Problem is there's, good or not, almost no reviews at all on the Kingston KC1000, it's like it almost does not exist, which does really surprise me as I find it to be one of the very best NVMe drives out there (do you share this opinion? What do you think of it?).

I've been sold (through websearching, informing myself and reading) into thinking the -WD Black / Sandisk Extreme Pro- is the best drive out there, even better than the 960EVO/970EVO but then again and here goes my last and simple question: if you can get the very same capacity at the very same price, and turn it into MLC, shouldn't it simply be better? (despite the drive having slower speeds which is the sole and only drawback [is this correct?], thing that I do not care much about as we're already talking beyond 2000MBps overkill).

 

[UsandThem]

@whm1974
Problem is there's, good or not, almost no reviews at all on the Kingston KC1000, it's like it almost does not exist, which does really surprise me as I find it to be one of the very best NVMe drives out there (do you share this opinion? What do you think of it?).

The reason for lack of reviews (especially on the 240 GB version) are:

1. Kingston is not a big SSD player compared to other companies.
2. They would send out their larger versions of the drive to be tested as it offers the best performance.

Anyways, I found a review of the 240GB version at TechPowerUp, and they rate it as a good drive for it's size:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Kingston/KC1000_240_GB/16.html

Performance wise, it's not one of the best out there in the 240 GB size, but smaller drives rarely are. It runs hot and is prone to thermal throttling because lack of heatsinks. Otherwise, move up into the 500 GB range where you have a multitude of choices that offer better performance. The Samsung 970 EVO and 960 EVO, Intel 760p, WD Black, OCZ RD400, etc.

Anyways, if you need any further help, or have more questions, please create your own thread so this thread about the Micron 1100 doesn't keep getting derailed.

 

[whm1974]

@whm1974
The problem there however will be price. Still, prices as they are today, I see almost absolutely no reason not to go with an M2 NVMe over a SATA drive, as the worst that can happen (referencing the 960EVO) is that, under some tasks, the NVMe drive performs 'as bad' as a SATA. For the rest of it, the NVMe drive is simply better and faster in almost all regards. Almost same price, way smaller, no cables, etc (although MUCH hotter, bear in mind).

Makes sense now according to what UsandThem said that drive prices skyrocket so much as capacity goes up, as they're exponentially better (not just more capacity).

I would still prefer 2.5" drives as they run a bit cooler, still cheaper, and I have an older system with no M.2 or PCIe x4 slots.

 

[Kylinblue]

Just bought the 2TB 1100 and it is on the way. Will bench it once it arrives. Edit: I also bought MX500 2TB will compare it .

I read the reviews on Amazon mention that NTFS will cause this SSD to underperform. Formatting it to exFAT will improve it by aprx 20% over NTFS .

 

[John1234]

Has anyone monitor the temperature while writing a couple hundred GBs, not sure if mine is defective but the temperature soars over 60 Celsius. I think this is too hot. SSD is just sitting in a flat docking station with no fan, open to room temperature. Please let me know what anyone experiences are with this SSD. At these high temperatures I don't see this drive lasting very long.

 

[Kylinblue]

Has anyone monitor the temperature while writing a couple hundred GBs, not sure if mine is defective but the temperature soars over 60 Celsius. I think this is too hot. SSD is just sitting in a flat docking station with no fan, open to room temperature. Please let me know what anyone experiences are with this SSD. At these high temperatures I don't see this drive lasting very long.

Wouldn't think 60C is too high under that type of load. My MX300 M.2 SATA has been as high as 72C in laptop when I'm gaming, even the drive is not under heavy load. Samsung has their NVME drivers set 0-70C as safe working temp. NAND chips should be safe up to 100C or beyond just like other memory chips iirc. Correct me if I'm wrong.

"
When the device temperature falls below 73°C, normal operation will continue without
induced delays. If the temperature continues to rise above the temperature target and
exceeds a hardware-dependent critical threshold, the device will abort host commands
to prevent component damage. The critical threshold values have a 5°C margin on top
of the target threshold of 85°C."

Data sheet page 10: https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/data-sheet/ssd/1100_ssd.pdf

 

[StinkyPinky]

Re: 960 Evo 250G.....I have this drive and I agree that is is underwhelming considering the price. Would avoid, I should have done better research.

About these micron drives, I heard they are cheap because of some failed array setup that fell through? In that sense I guess they won't be available for order long term? Am looking for a larger capacity drive to replace my old 500 GB 840 Evo for game storage as I find it annoying having to delete games all the time.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Just got my two drives recently. I striped them using Windows 10 Disk Management which is much faster than forced striping in Storage Spaces.

Here are the results:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.2 Shizuku Edition x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1033.389 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 984.897 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 161.381 MB/s [ 39399.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 152.992 MB/s [ 37351.6 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 757.294 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 944.620 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 26.687 MB/s [ 6515.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 81.142 MB/s [ 19810.1 IOPS]

Test : 500 MiB [E: 38.8% (1479.5/3815.2 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2018/05/12 11:41:21
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 16299] (x64)

Not too bad I think. Anybody know how Intel fakeRAID compares?

 

[John1234]

Wouldn't think 60C is too high under that type of load. My MX300 M.2 SATA has been as high as 72C in laptop when I'm gaming, even the drive is not under heavy load. Samsung has their NVME drivers set 0-70C as safe working temp. NAND chips should be safe up to 100C or beyond just like other memory chips iirc. Correct me if I'm wrong.

"
When the device temperature falls below 73°C, normal operation will continue without
induced delays. If the temperature continues to rise above the temperature target and
exceeds a hardware-dependent critical threshold, the device will abort host commands
to prevent component damage. The critical threshold values have a 5°C margin on top
of the target threshold of 85°C."

Data sheet page 10: https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/data-sheet/ssd/1100_ssd.pdf

Looks like 60 C is on the higher end, I just saw proof from my Micron drive. Once it reached 64 C the drive went from 300MB/s write, down to 100MB/s write. Oh well, I guess this is why the drive is around half the price of the Samsung. My 1TB Samsung does not even go pass 50 C in the same docking station with the same test. I guess I better baby this drive, or it will not survive. Heat is the enemy of all SSD drives.

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

Looks like 60 C is on the higher end, I just saw proof from my Micron drive. Once it reached 64 C the drive went from 300MB/s write, down to 100MB/s write. Oh well, I guess this is why the drive is around half the price of the Samsung. My 1TB Samsung does not even go pass 50 C in the same docking station with the same test. I guess I better baby this drive, or it will not survive. Heat is the enemy of all SSD drives.

That seems a bit early for it to start to throttle though different models differ on that a bit.
Also the drop may perhaps in part be due to the SLC-cache running out which can happen if you write a lot of data to it - resulting in slower write speeds - though 100MB/s is a tad low.

Can mention that my drives fairly often idle at 40-50 degrees so a drive reaching 60 degrees when in use doesn't sound that high to me.

 

[John1234]

That seems a bit early for it to start to throttle though different models differ on that a bit.
Also the drop may perhaps in part be due to the SLC-cache running out which can happen if you write a lot of data to it - resulting in slower write speeds - though 100MB/s is a tad low.

Can mention that my drives fairly often idle at 40-50 degrees so a drive reaching 60 degrees when in use doesn't sound that high to me.

Thanks for the info, looks like all drive are not created equally. I will have to change my setup to have the Samsung drive do more of the heavy lifting.

 

[whm1974]

Just bought the 2TB 1100 and it is on the way. Will bench it once it arrives. Edit: I also bought MX500 2TB will compare it .

I read the reviews on Amazon mention that NTFS will cause this SSD to underperform. Formatting it to exFAT will improve it by aprx 20% over NTFS .

Well If I brought either one, I would be using the Ext4 filesystem since I'm using Linux. Maybe the NTFS vs exFAT issue is due to exFAT being much simpler then NTFS or being designed with FLASH storage in mind?