Explaining SSDs: The Price/Performance Trade-off 

Thanks.

This man is a treasure. But so disappointing to hear about what manufacturers are dumping on us. Scary.

​@@ExplainingComputersso Chris, I assume one should use HDD as NAS or backup devices instead of SSD'S?

​@@ExplainingComputersby the way great information video. Didn't know all the difference in SSD'S

Agreed He definitely has some of the best RU-vid tech videos that are not only informative and entertaining but you don't get a whole lot of bias it's just straight his opinions based on his findings nothing more nothing less than I can always appreciate that in a RU-vid channel Thank you for reading this and thank you for your content sir I hope you're having a good day God bless you and your family God bless you Jeremy Scruggs

Thanks, appreciated. :)

@@ExplainingComputers I await your "water cooling Mr.Scissors using a swimming pool" video with much anticipation, Chris. Just kidding. I do enjoy LTT. But, like, you go to them for computer-based silly entertainment, you come here to actually learn something.

@@klaxoncow But its not that deep enough, to reveal some non-obvious details: for example Anandtech benchmarks many HMB SSDs. But there is no hint how to query the state of the HMB buffer state (enabled or disabled?). As you can even disable HMB comoletely, then the performance drops down to prev. gen. DRAMless level. How much RAM has been allocated to the HMB buffer? As it can also vary!

That's true and they where (Linus tech tips) suggesting major SSD manufacturers where involved in "bait and switch" tactics but I don't believe industry to be anywhere near that cynical...if drive speeds fall short of claims then i'm sure there's some other reasoning for that perhaps its industries hierarchical order the available quality of materials or supply chain issues but not outright swindlers as Linus has once boldly claimed..

@@ricsip I've looked it up for the Crucial P3 1TB, a cheap PCIe Gen 3 SSD. It apparently uses 64MB of system RAM as HMB. Even if another model used let's say 4x the amount that's not a lot on a rig with 16GB plus.

Thanks my friend. :)

Exactly. I thought I knew it all. But no🙂

@@tvsmed Nobody knows it all. Stay humble.

Oh hello Mr. Muggie! And how is my favorite FreeBSD RU-vidr?

@@esra_erimez You know how to say all the right things....🙂 Things are fine, and yourself this fine sunny October day? (here in the UK at least......)

Many thanks for your kind feedback. :)

A Christopher Barnatt 301, 401 and 501 course at college/university level, with lectures, workshops and internships... You should make sure you have adequate security when you register! Crowds and waiting lists... !

Professor Barnatt in my book top video as always Chris

Probably the missing part is to talk about how HDD also has a controller (many people don't realize how everything abstracted) and that both SSD and USB-flash drive sticks are both flash-based and basically the same thing. The differences are in the number of chips, etc. and how fast & smart the controllers are.

isa.. lol bin awhile since I heard that. still going though.. started with a 8088 too.. in fact I still got 4 working ones :-\ what's with old techs keeping old as stuff... whats this... a voodoo 3dfx ..... oh come on LOL

Wow, thanks!

I couldn't agree more! (From Montréal!)

Aye, but it's not something generally listed in specs

In general I agree with you. Some ssd controller chips actually have a fair bit of dram built in. I'm not quite sure if they count as dram less because I think all controllers have at least some dram built in. The wd blue blue in particular seems to never get bogged down the way some other discount drives do - tho its maximum bandwidth is pretty limited , it does at least perform consistently

Yes, they're horrible. Worst is that manufacturers can still report really good speeds, but not revealing what amount of data it was done. Also this definitely should be mentioned in datasheets. WD I bought didn't have this on data sheet 🤬

They're OK in some cases. The DRAMless Silicon Power mSATA drives are often cheaper than a flash drive in the same size. I would also stick one in an old computer. I don't ever use them as my main drive in my laptop or desktop.

@@kattz753 Well I gave review for vendor that it's ok for NAS usage to ie. view/listen media over network or possibly as gamers data storage drive. But absolute garbage for usage were there's a lot of writes happening.

Ah yes, things keep coming around! :)

Thanks. :)

I wish but doubtful, HDDs are still KING for storage. Seagate just released 24TB drives and roadmap is 40TB drives in 2 yrs

@@Argedis But, they're Seagate...

​@@FlyboyHelosimSeagate's high end drives are fine. If you don't like Seagate you can always try Toshiba.

24 TB for SSD is easy to achieve but price .... 2.5 case you can easily make ssd of size 100 TB @@Argedis

@@FlyboyHelosim but HOPEFULLY they are! In Seagate, in last years, they have demonstrated that seriousness is something that worth it to be put within products and market(ing). Western Digital continues to make errors without exiting the mud pool in which they put themselves into, with a lot of scandals. Personally, I had always been using WD, but when I arrived to the point that the second, then the third, and then the fourth WD RED HDDs went to be get rid off because they were completely unusable after 1-2 years, and subsequently the CMR/SMR scandal went clear, can you imagine my feelings about WD... I still use with proficiency and satisfaction my Seagate's HDDs, with some of them being also (very) old but stil performing very well and SMART values still in good shape. I must 'disclaim' about two things: I am still talking about 3.5" and rotational HDD; and no SSDs of mine are from either WD or Seagate. I use the most Crucial, Samsung and Kingston. Sometimes cheap Silicon Power's one, which I find are a bargain in price/quality ratio. Please be gentle with my not first-language explanations...

Wow, thanks!

You can check how many terabytes you have written via software. In my case, I'd have to use my PC for at least the next 30 years every day to hit the TBW, and realistically much longer than that.

Now this is a great point -- which I guess only applies to the new generation of DRAM-less drives (as those that store their map in their NAND flash should work in an enclosure).

it's a bit extreme to say that you shouldn't by drives without a dram cache just because you can't use them in external enclosures. the savings can be very much worth it, it's just something to be aware of, just like the potential speed difference.

@shade221 obviously people can do whatever they want, it's their money, but I won't rich them with a 10 foot pole.

@@kurtisrinker1202 very few people at the moment are going to use an SSD in an external enclosure. the potential speed difference is a way bigger factor for most people.

Really? Is this new? I have never seen a working drive I couldn't access through my SATA to USB or M.2 NVMe to USB adapters. ... any specific models?

Thanks Alan. :)

Those MX 500 drives are actually very consistent if you can afford to stay below 1/3 capacity. Still cheaper than enterprise drives but with the low utilization they're only writing to the SLC pages and never need to garbage collect

@@shanent5793 yes I like them very much

The question is, who except for professional video editors is gonna do that regularly? If you download a game for Steam the drive transfer speed won't be the bottleneck, and even if you record let's say a 30 min gaming session in FHD as a background for some kind of talking video putting a new audio track on a 20GB file won't overwhelm even cheaper PCIe drives.

Greetings!

That would be a very useful table! :)

My old NVMe i still use, 2 Tb 9800 by Samsung, cheaper, i can see that ! why all channels say cheap now ? Need it, how many NVMe slots on i7 ?, need i9 cheap now ?

Thanks for your very generous support. :)

Thanks. :)

Sadly so.

This is what stops me ever buying another Apple product. They are built to fail.

So you don't want to use (external) HMB SSDs, as they further increase the wear on your Mac's SSD

​@@cromulenceyou shouldn't have said that 😂😂😂

@@Super8Rescue They're so concerned about the environment, though... /s

Thanks for watching. :)

It doesn’t matter anyways. The SN850X would obviously not be able to take advantage of the full speed with thunderbolt 3/4, much less 10gbps usb 3.1.

Interesting. I have experienced similar problems with a SN850X 1TB in three separate external enclosures with my M1 Air and M2 Mini. Oddly enough it seemed to work fine in external exclosures with my Windows machine (in eXFAT). On the Macs, in the midst of large-ish file transfers it would start rapidly disconnecting/reconnecting frequently and I generally had to reformat.