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

[Dale]

Andrea Conti wrote:
>> So, before I find a SDD to buy, what are some things I should look for
>> it to have and what are things I should avoid?
>
> I think the single most important thing is buying stuff from a
> reputable brand (there's quite a number of those by now). Look at
> reviews. Top-tier performance probably isn't going to matter much for
> daily use, but I'd still look for a drive with a good warranty and a
> high write endurance rating, even if it commands a premium.
>
> Avoid drives based on QLC flash (they still have reliability and
> performance issues, and frankly prices aren't that great either).
>
> Most NVMe drives can only be booted from in UEFI mode (*), so if for
> any reason you still need to boot from an SSD in legacy BIOS mode --
> stay safe and go for SATA or be sure to buy from a place with a good
> return policy.
>
> (*) boot-time NVMe access relies on a boot ROM carried on the drive,
> and most (all?) drives only have a UEFI ROM. While some UEFI firmwares
> claim to have a "universal NVMe driver", my experience with those has
> not been good.

My mobo is just old enough to not support NVMe drives.  I checked on
that a while back.  It'll be old school SDDs, well, the ones that mount
hardware wise like HDDs anyway.  It's not like SDDs are really that old. 

Avoid flash.  Got it.  A couple I looked at mentioned NAND.  I'm
somewhat familiar with AND/NAND gates so I think those are different
from flash.  That helps.


>
>> While at it, if I look for a NAS type HDD, would all those be PMR
>> instead of SMR?
>
> I would expect any SMR drives sold at retail (i.e. not in USB boxes or
> the like) to be clearly marked as such, since they are a niche product
> with abysmal performance on common workloads.
>
> You're not going to silently get SMR drives in a NAS product line.
>

That's why I'm searching for a NAS drive.  I figure that should weed out
SMR drives pretty quickly.  I don't mind it to much on my backup drive
but I'm hoping to get rid of the one I have for /home and expand a bit. 
I may buy a 8TB drive and replace the 6TB drive that I currently have
that is SMR.  Later, I'll replace the 3TB with either a 6TB or 8TB
drive.  Since my external drive is 8TBs, I may have to recompute my
backup drive situation.  I'm likely to hit a few walls on that. 

Plus, NAS drives are designed more for my usage anyway.  I have my
system on 24/7.  It's rare that I reboot since I run my TV off this rig
plus am always downloading stuff.  Heck, if it wasn't for updates to KDE
and friends, I wouldn't even logout very often. 


>>   From my understanding that should be correct.  Mostly I
>> buy WD, Seagate and Samsung.  I've had a WD fail, I've had a Seagate
>> fail. I'm not looking for a HDD flame up.  O_o  I'm starting to look at
>> HGST.  I think I got the spelling correct.  Never had one tho.
>
> While Seagate seems to be the current leader in selling crap, I've had
> all kind of drives die on me. Most notable are a couple of high-end
> WDs literally going up in smoke some years ago, and an HGST going
> belly up with a good impression of a machine gun just the other day.
>
> In general I've had good luck with 3TB HGST and Toshiba drives, though
> the Toshibas I have are really HGST drives rebranded following a round
> of company mergers and subsequent antitrust-driven spinoffs.
>
> WD Enterprise drives are quite good, but they do command a sizable
> premium.
>
> I've not had any experience with "NAS" drives, nor with modern
> helium-filled high-capacity drives. Apart from the unit price, I don't
> need that much space and I'm not particularly keen on having that much
> data go poof if a single device decides to stop working.
>
> andrea
>
>

Yea, I've experienced the same here.  What I've learned about hard
drives is this, they break, regardless of brands.  That said, there is
some batches that prove to be problems but other than that, it's just a
matter of time.  None of them are designed to last forever.  Even tho
I've had a WD fail before, I still think they are very good.  I just
avoid those that are not made to handle my usage, being on 24/7 plus
lots of read/writes.

Thanks much for the info.  Avoid flash.  NAS should avoid SMR drives. 

Dale

:-)  :-)