Quick question on an SSD.

[jaycub]

I'm considering a new SSD, currently have an OCZ Octane which I got back in March 2011.
125G, runs well so far.
http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_octane_ssd_review

I'm not very tech-savvy when it comes to specs, but I'm considering getting a new drive for two reasons, mine is currently running at near full capacity and read that isn't good for perforamnce.
Secondy, a close friend's drive crashed, he's been out a computer for awhile and I thought this would be a perfect since he doesn't need a whole lot of space and I just need 40Gs more.
He's short on cash, I need a bit more space, swap it out.

But in comparison to my Octane, how much increase in performance would I notice with an Samsung EVO 850 256G?
http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_ssd_850_pro_review

With the Octane I see the write speed is "up to"
Up to 400MB/s Write (512GB and 1TB Capacity) and I'm that's with a 512GB, whereas I have a 128G.
Safe to assume my write speeds would be much lower at the moment?

Is it worth the upgrade to the EVO right now?

Thanks.

 

[john3850]

I have samsungs 830,840,850evo,Seagate600 and few crucials and I can not feel or tell any difference between them except for benchmarks.
You need to go with a NVMe Intel 750 PCIe or samsung 950 NVMe if you want to get a nice performance boost.

 

[Elixer]

As for your current SSD, it is what, 5 years old now, tech has come a long way, and you might be able to tell in some circumstances that a EVO is faster, but other times, it will seem the same.
Really depends on your work load, and what you are doing.

Going by the age of that SSD, I would think that the lifespan of that SSD is almost up, so, not sure giving it to someone else is a good idea. You might be able to check how much life is left on it wit crystaldiskinfo, and see if the SMART stats say anything.

As John was saying, you would need to go to a PCIe based SSD to get much faster speeds that you would notice all the time, but, not many people can afford that solution yet.

 

[nerp]

I wouldn't say the lifespan is up. It could last 10 years with no issue, unless I'm missing something.

Others are correct, you won't see a massive improvement with a new SSD. What you do get with a newer SSD is a better drive controller, better memory chips and improvements to how the drive manages everything. Things like background garbage collection and intelligent management of the storage medium to prolong life and stuff like that. And like anything over the past five years that has been revised, the newest models use a little less power.

 

[Erithan13]

I doubt the lifespan will be a problem, I had a OCZ Vertex 2 60GB that had seen 5 years of use, all the drive health indicators were still fine with the reported life at 99%. Gave it away to a friend and it's still going no problems. The concern over SSDs wearing out is seriously overblown, the amount of writes required is much higher than any remotely normal usage scenario. That said SSDs of any kind and age can brick themselves without warning so usual recommendation about the importance of backups etc.

The perceivable difference between any of the modern SSDs is going to be practically nothing for most people, myself included. When you get to the very cheap end of the market there are some duds to be aware of (Crucial BX200, it's not a bad drive as such, just outclassed by drives costing a tiny fraction more). I'd take my pick from the 850 Evo, Sandisk Ultra/SSD Plus or Crucial BX100, whichever is cheapest.

 

[john3850]

Durning 3 years I lost one spindle and 2 ssd drives for no apperant reason.
Most ssds die without any warning or no bad health indicators at all.

 

[Elixer]

I should have said, depending on OP's workload, it could be up.
Who knows how much data he is writing to it.
Crystaldiskinfo should paint a better picture of the status of that SSD, if he posts a pic of it.

 

[jaycub]

Here's a screen grab of the readout with CrystalDisk
http://i.imgur.com/t3oM0DO.jpg

No clue as to what's bad, what's good, anything.

 

[coercitiv]

Here's a screen grab of the readout with CrystalDisk
http://i.imgur.com/t3oM0DO.jpg

No clue as to what's bad, what's good, anything.

Your current SSD seems to be in good order. It has a very small number of reallocated sectors and ~10TB of written data. All things being equal it should last for quite a few more years from now.

Back to your original question, Anandtech has both SSDs you're comparing in their database: comparison here. In some use cases the difference will be visible, in some it will not. The most relevant benchmark for you is the "Light workload", and it shows a notable increase, though you can be sure it won't feel as another jump from HDD to SSD in terms of relative performance. Just a bit more snappy, a bit more consistent.

However, if your current SSD is almost full, moving to a larger SSD might give you a bigger benefit than benchmarks show, since most full SSDs show somewhat degraded performance, and the Octane does not seem to be particularly resilient to this effect, in fact you may experience the opposite.

If you intend to use even more space in the near future, upgrade. If not, try to slim your data so that you end up with 10GB+ of free space, and give the controller some breathing room.

 

[bonehead123]

Like others have said, if you REALLY want a serious performance increase, go for a nvme drive.... I did and my read/write speeds went from ~550mb/s to ~2880mb/s.......this is with 950 Evo pro 256 and 512's....

Yes they are a bit more $$ (they are slowly beginning to drop now), but the extra cost is worth it to me, as I demand top performance from my pc's at all times.

 

[JimmiG]

Like others have said, if you REALLY want a serious performance increase, go for a nvme drive.... I did and my read/write speeds went from ~550mb/s to ~2880mb/s.......this is with 950 Evo pro 256 and 512's....

Yes they are a bit more $$ (they are slowly beginning to drop now), but the extra cost is worth it to me, as I demand top performance from my pc's at all times.

Do you really notice the difference during normal use? Using Performance Monitor etc. I rarely see my SSD's hit their performance ceiling. Games for example don't just load files, the game data is de-compressed and the game level is "built" on the fly, so performance is held back by the CPU and RAM as much as the storage device. Sometimes there isn't even a noticable improvement in the loading time compared to an old HDD.

 

[coercitiv]

Yes they are a bit more $$ (they are slowly beginning to drop now), but the extra cost is worth it to me, as I demand top performance from my pc's at all times.

They are 2x more $$, it may be completely worth to you or other enthusiast/professional user. The OP is neither of that, puts emphasis on performance/$.