Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.

[David Haller]

Hello, an addendum without digging up the details ...

On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, David Haller wrote:
>On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Grant Edwards wrote:
>>I've put five Samsung SATA drives into various things in the past few
>>years with flawless results.  Samsung is one of the big manufacturers
>>of flash chips, so I figure they should always end up with 1st choice
>>quality chips in their own drives...
>
>And they produce and use their own controllers, so they additionally
>know the ins and outs of those, i.e. they can easily optimize the
>whole SSD from Flash-Chip over controller up to the firmware...
[..]
>AFAIgathered, Samsung is the only one producing the whole product.

I guess Intel did (still does?) that too, but you'll have to check
that, ISTR that Intel now sells SSDs with non-Intel controllers and/or
non-Intel/"IM-Flash" flash-chips... Oh, wait, yes, Intel still does,
but those "pure Intel" SSDs come with a *very* hefty price (like 4
times as much) and all the "normal" priced ones are those with either
and/or non Intel flash-chips and/or -controllers... But please go
check that yourselves though!

The second thing I remembered: the german "c't"[2] magazine did a
torture test in late 2018 (IIRC), basically grabbing a few then
current SSDs and run their own testtool[1] on them until they died. Or
so was the plan. That was a "write till it dies" test.

First of all: all SSD exceeded their specs, some IIRC just barely. The
bulk by a factor of 2 or more. ISTR some of those "just barely", but
wont name them without digging out the actual results, which I'll do
upon requests.

The test had one problem though: a (IIRC) Samsung 850 Pro just refused
to die ;) They aborted the test after something like over 4 months
(all other drives had died inside of about a month) of _continous_
writes (or write-verify cycles) to that one remaining SSD, which was
still happily chugging along...

I do remember though, that even the Samsung EVO came out at the top of
the bunch

(Note: c't does not award a "test-winner" or anything. Just data and
an conclusion aka "Fazit", the reader has to digest the data and make
up his own mind for _her/his_ own usecase).

All IIRC, I can dig out and translate the details though! (and it's
month's later followup on what became of that Samsung ;)

HTH, and please do PM (no need to clog the ML) if you want me to go
digging for the details,
-dnh

[1] which name escapes me ATM, but tried and tested since 199[0-5] or
    so ;)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%27t (that page is sadly woefully
    outdated)

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