Samsung 840's Longevity and Reliability

[As Seen on TV]

I am seriously considering getting a 500GB Samsung 840 (not Pro) being offered at $310 on Adorama.com. My worry is that reviews point to their uncertainty with the longevity and reliability of the drive.

Does anyone have any hard data on this or this just overzealous cautiousness? 3 years warranty's fine with me as I plan to upgrade to a larger, faster, cheaper and better SSD by that time.

 

[kleinkinstein]

The undercurrent behind all the nay-saying centers around the NAND used in the pro and 830, MLC (tried, tested and proven) vs. TLC in the 840 vanilla which will inherently experience EOL sooner.

To clarify, where are you seeing $310? I see $365.

 

[As Seen on TV]

The undercurrent behind all the nay-saying centers around the NAND used in the pro and 830, MLC (tried, tested and proven) vs. TLC in the 840 vanilla which will inherently experience EOL sooner.

To clarify, where are you seeing $310? I see $365.

Crap price went up. >.< I guess it expired at 11AM NYC.

BH Photo's selling it for $320. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...ries_2_5_.html

 

[OlafSicky]

With the firmware problems I would stay away from the 840 looks like Samsung is pulling an OCZ.

 

[aviator78]

With the firmware problems I would stay away from the 840 looks like Samsung is pulling an OCZ.

Which FW Problem do you mean? The one when SSD died on reviews? This was an beta SSD for early reviews.

"The initial reports of firmware issues turned out to be SSDs shipped early to reviewers and industry partners. This early firmware was in effect a Beta, and the bugs have since been corrected in all shipping versions of the SSDs. Samsung has publicly given assurances that no SSDs were shipped to market with the buggy firmware."

as it can be read here:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/12/10/samsung_840_pro_ssd_review/10

The Samsungs 840s are good SSDs for the $s. And the 840 PRO is one of the best as stated in many reviews.

 

[Hellhammer]

Okay, time to clear some misinformation.

NAND endurance won't be an issue unless your workload is very write intensive. For consumers this is unlikely but it's possible in a workstation or enterprise environment. Especially with the 500GB model you have nothing to worry about.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand

The firmware issues were also limited to the pre-production samples that were shipped to reviewers (like us) - no retail sample has shipped with the broken firmware.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6503/second-update-on-samsung-ssd-840840-pro-failures

 

[bbinnard]

Thanks Hellhammer, you have done a nice job on identifying and explaining the Samsung SSD firmware problems. I held off buying my 840 Pro pending resolution of this issue - I've had the drive for a couple of weeks now and it's terrific. Your info should help a lot of people decide on what drive is best for them. It sure helped me a lot.

 

[hhhd1]

Facts:
1. The TLC have 1000 rated write cycles, the usual MLC have 3000.
2. an SSD that is from the same model but has double size, then it can have double the amount of data written.


so we can say that:

samsung 840 tlc 500 has 2/3 (0.666) of the endurance of a 256gb mlc ssd
samsung 840 tlc 500 has 4/3 (1.333) of the endurance of a 128gb mlc ssd
samsung 840 tlc 500 has 8/3 (2.666) of the endurance of a 64gb mlc ssd

samsung 840 tlc 250 has 2/3 (0.666) of the endurance of a 128gb mlc ssd
samsung 840 tlc 250 has 4/3 (1.333) of the endurance of a 64gb mlc ssd

samsung 840 tlc 120 has 2/3 (0.666) of the endurance of a 64gb mlc ssd


I am yet to see someone using more than 10% of the endurance of any MLC drive, except when being: 1. tortured, 2. used for special software, 3. used as cache drive with no overprovission.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

Wear leveling will allow that 500GB drive to last a long time as far as endurance goes, even with 10-20GBs written *per day*. It'll be fine, As Seen.

 

[VirtualLarry]

NAND endurance won't be an issue unless your workload is very write intensive. For consumers this is unlikely but it's possible in a workstation or enterprise environment. Especially with the 500GB model you have nothing to worry about.

Running distributed computing, especially through BOINC, will wear down an SSD rather quickly. The default settings are to checkpoint (auto-save WU progress) every 60 seconds or so. Those writes add up quickly, if you don't change the defaults.

I had a 30GB Agility (1.7 firmware) go down to like 74% health after 2-3 months of running BOINC. Then again, those Barefoot drives had pretty bad WA anyways, but still.

Edit: Total writes was something like 9TB.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Wear leveling only works on unused space, doesnt it?

 

[cytg111]

hehe

 

[Coup27]

Wear leveling only works on unused space, doesnt it?

It is my understanding that wear levelling works across the whole SSD. It moves around static data (eg OS install) to ensure that all cells are wrote to evenly regardless of the actual data being stored on those cells.

 

[josephjpeters]

Facts:
1. The TLC have 1000 rated write cycles, the usual MLC have 3000.
2. an SSD that is from the same model but has double size, then it can have double the amount of data written.


so we can say that:

samsung 840 tlc 500 has 2/3 (0.666) of the endurance of a 256gb mlc ssd
samsung 840 tlc 500 has 4/3 (1.333) of the endurance of a 128gb mlc ssd
samsung 840 tlc 500 has 8/3 (2.666) of the endurance of a 64gb mlc ssd

samsung 840 tlc 250 has 2/3 (0.666) of the endurance of a 128gb mlc ssd
samsung 840 tlc 250 has 4/3 (1.333) of the endurance of a 64gb mlc ssd

samsung 840 tlc 120 has 2/3 (0.666) of the endurance of a 64gb mlc ssd


I am yet to see someone using more than 10% of the endurance of any MLC drive, except when being: 1. tortured, 2. used for special software, 3. used as cache drive with no overprovission.

This. Lots of work has been done to reduce write amplification and there are technologies that allow the drive endurance to exceed the rated P/E cycles of the raw NAND. see: Adaptive DSP