Over the long term, the HDD remains the leader in reliability. Which SSD is better to choose and why Best ssd companies

There is an opinion that one of the most significant disadvantages of solid-state drives is their finite and, moreover, relatively low reliability. Indeed, due to the limited resource of flash memory, which is caused by the gradual degradation of its semiconductor structure, any SSD sooner or later loses its ability to store information. The question of when this can happen remains key for many users, so many buyers, when choosing drives, are guided not so much by their performance as by reliability indicators. Manufacturers themselves add fuel to the fire of doubts, who, for marketing reasons, stipulate relatively low volumes of permitted recording in the warranty conditions for their consumer products.

However, in practice, mass-produced solid-state drives demonstrate more than sufficient reliability so that they can be trusted to store user data. An experiment that showed the absence of real reasons for worrying about the finiteness of their resource was conducted some time ago by the website TechReport. They carried out a test that showed that, despite all the doubts, the endurance of the SSD has already increased so much that you don’t have to think about it at all. As part of the experiment, it was practically confirmed that most models of consumer drives are capable of transferring records of about 1 PB of information before they fail, and especially successful models, like the Samsung 840 Pro, remain alive after digesting 2 PB of data. Such recording volumes are practically unattainable in a conventional personal computer, so the lifespan of a solid-state drive simply cannot come to an end before it becomes completely obsolete and is replaced by a new model.

However, this testing failed to convince skeptics. The fact is that it was carried out in 2013-2014, when solid-state drives based on planar MLC NAND, which is manufactured using a 25-nm process technology, were in use. Such memory before its degradation is capable of withstanding about 3000-5000 programming-erasing cycles, but now completely different technologies are in use. Today, flash memory with a three-bit cell has come to mass-produced SSD models, and modern planar technological processes use a resolution of 15-16 nm. At the same time, flash memory with a fundamentally new three-dimensional structure is becoming widespread. Any of these factors can radically change the reliability situation, and in total, modern flash memory promises only a resource of 500-1500 rewrite cycles. Are drives deteriorating along with memory, and do we need to start worrying about their reliability again?

Most likely no. The fact is that along with changes in semiconductor technologies, there is a continuous improvement of controllers that control flash memory. They introduce more advanced algorithms that should compensate for the changes occurring in NAND. And, as manufacturers promise, current SSD models are at least as reliable as their predecessors. But objective grounds for doubt still remain. Indeed, on a psychological level, drives based on the old 25-nm MLC NAND with 3000 rewrite cycles look much more solid than modern SSD models with 15/16-nm TLC NAND, which, all other things being equal, can guarantee only 500 rewrite cycles. The increasingly popular TLC 3D NAND, which, although produced according to higher technological standards, is also subject to stronger mutual influence of cells, is also not very encouraging.

Taking all this into account, we decided to conduct our own experiment, which would allow us to determine what kind of endurance can be guaranteed by current drive models based on the currently most popular types of flash memory.

Controllers decide

The finite lifespan of drives built on flash memory has not surprised anyone for a long time. Everyone has long been accustomed to the fact that one of the characteristics of NAND memory is a guaranteed number of rewrite cycles, after exceeding which the cells can begin to distort information or simply fail. This is explained by the very principle of operation of such a memory, which is based on capturing electrons and storing charge inside a floating gate. The change in cell states occurs due to the application of relatively high voltages to the floating gate, due to which electrons overcome a thin layer of dielectric in one direction or the other and are retained in the cell.

Semiconductor structure of a NAND cell

However, this movement of electrons is akin to a breakdown - it gradually wears out the insulating material, and ultimately this leads to a breakdown of the entire semiconductor structure. In addition, there is a second problem that entails the gradual deterioration of cell performance - when tunneling occurs, electrons can get stuck in the dielectric layer, preventing the correct recognition of the charge stored in the floating gate. All this means that the moment when flash memory cells stop working normally is inevitable. New technological processes only aggravate the problem: with decreasing production standards, the dielectric layer only becomes thinner, which reduces its resistance to negative influences.

However, to say that there is a direct relationship between the resource of flash memory cells and the life expectancy of modern SSDs would not be entirely correct. The operation of a solid state drive is not a straightforward process of writing and reading to flash memory cells. The fact is that NAND memory has a rather complex organization and special approaches are required to interact with it. Cells are organized into pages, and pages are organized into blocks. Writing data is only possible to blank pages, but in order to clear a page, the entire block must be reset. This means that writing, or even worse, changing data, turns into a complex multi-step process, including reading the page, changing it and re-writing it to free space, which must first be cleared. Moreover, preparing free space is a separate headache, requiring “garbage collection” - the formation and cleaning of blocks from pages that have already been used, but have become irrelevant.

Scheme of operation of flash memory of a solid-state drive

As a result, the actual volume of writes to flash memory may differ significantly from the volume of operations initiated by the user. For example, changing even one byte can entail not only writing an entire page, but even the need to rewrite several pages at once to first free a clean block.

The ratio between the amount of writes performed by the user and the actual load on the flash memory is called write gain. This coefficient is almost always higher than one, and in some cases it is much higher. However, modern controllers, through buffering operations and other intelligent approaches, have learned to effectively reduce write amplification. Technologies useful for extending the life of cells, such as SLC caching and wear leveling, have become widespread. On the one hand, they transfer a small part of the memory into a sparing SLC mode and use it to consolidate small disparate operations. On the other hand, they make the load on the memory array more uniform, preventing unnecessary multiple rewrites of the same area. As a result, storing the same amount of user data on two different drives from the point of view of the flash memory array can cause completely different loads - it all depends on the algorithms used by the controller and firmware in each specific case.

There is another side: garbage collection and TRIM technologies, which, in order to improve performance, pre-prepare clean blocks of flash memory pages and therefore can transfer data from place to place without any user intervention, make an additional and significant contribution to the wear of the NAND array . But the specific implementation of these technologies also largely depends on the controller, so the differences in how SSDs manage their own flash memory resources can be significant here too.

Ultimately, all this means that the practical reliability of two different drives with the same flash memory can differ very noticeably only due to different internal algorithms and optimizations. Therefore, when talking about the resource of a modern SSD, you need to understand that this parameter is determined not only and not so much by the endurance of the memory cells, but by how carefully the controller handles them.

The operating algorithms of SSD controllers are constantly being improved. Developers are not only trying to optimize the volume of write operations in flash memory, but are also introducing more efficient methods of digital signal processing and read error correction. In addition, some of them resort to allocating a large reserve area on the SSD, due to which the load on the NAND cells is further reduced. All this also affects the resource. Thus, SSD manufacturers have a lot of leverage in their hands to influence what final endurance their product will demonstrate, and flash memory resource is only one of the parameters in this equation. This is precisely why conducting endurance tests on modern SSDs is of such interest: despite the widespread introduction of NAND memory with relatively low endurance, current models do not necessarily have to be less reliable than their predecessors. Progress in controllers and the operating methods they use is quite capable of compensating for the flimsiness of modern flash memory. And this is precisely why the study of current consumer SSDs is interesting. Compared to SSDs of previous generations, only one thing remains unchanged: the resource of solid-state drives is finite in any case. But how it has changed in recent years is precisely what our testing should show.

Testing methodology

The essence of SSD endurance testing is very simple: you need to continuously rewrite data in the drives, trying to practically establish the limit of their endurance. However, a simple linear recording does not quite meet the purpose of testing. In the previous section, we talked about the fact that modern drives have a whole bunch of technologies aimed at reducing the write amplification factor, and in addition, they perform garbage collection and wear leveling procedures differently, and also react differently to the TRIM operating system command . That is why the most correct approach is to interact with the SSD through the file system with an approximate repetition of the profile of real operations. Only then can we get a result that ordinary users can consider as a guide.

Therefore, in our endurance test we use drives formatted with the NTFS file system, on which two types of files are continuously and alternately created: small - with a random size from 1 to 128 KB and large - with a random size from 128 KB to 10 MB. During the test, these randomly filled files are multiplied until more than 12 GB of free space remains on the drive; when this threshold is reached, all created files are deleted, a short pause is made, and the process is repeated again. In addition, the tested drives simultaneously contain a third type of file - permanent. Such files with a total volume of 16 GB are not involved in the erase-rewrite process, but are used to check the correct operation of the drives and the stable readability of the stored information: each cycle of filling the SSD, we check the checksum of these files and compare it with a reference, pre-calculated value.

The described test scenario is reproduced by the special program Anvil’s Storage Utilities version 1.1.0; the status of drives is monitored using the CrystalDiskInfo utility version 7.0.2. The test system is a computer with an ASUS B150M Pro Gaming motherboard, a Core i5-6600 processor with integrated Intel HD Graphics 530 and 8 GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM. Drives with a SATA interface are connected to the SATA 6 Gb/s controller built into the motherboard chipset and operate in AHCI mode. The driver used is Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) 14.8.0.1042.

The list of SSD models taking part in our experiment currently includes more than five dozen items:

1. (AGAMMIXS11-240GT-C, firmware SVN139B);
2. ADATA XPG SX950 (ASX950SS-240GM-C, firmware Q0125A);
3. ADATA Ultimate SU700 256 GB (ASU700SS-256GT-C, firmware B170428a);
4. (ASU800SS-256GT-C, firmware P0801A);
5. (ASU900SS-512GM-C, firmware P1026A);
6. Crucial BX500 240 GB (CT240BX500SSD1, firmware M6CR013);
7. Crucial MX300 275 GB (CT275MX300SSD1, firmware M0CR021);
8. (CT250MX500SSD1, firmware M3CR010);
9. GOODRAM CX300 240 GB ( SSDPR-CX300-240, firmware SBFM71.0);
10. (SSDPR-IRIDPRO-240, firmware SAFM22.3);
11. (SSDPED1D280GAX1, firmware E2010325);
12. (SSDSC2KW256G8, firmware LHF002C);

Many users dream of their PC responding and launching applications as quickly as, for example, modern smartphones and tablets. And the path to fulfilling this desire lies, as a rule, not through a more powerful CPU or even through a larger RAM. The best results come from replacing a slow HDD (or old SSD) with a really fast solid state drive.

The measure of all things in this regard are modules with an M.2 interface operating according to the NVMe specification. The PCI Express bus and the data transfer protocol specifically designed for the SSDs connected over it break through all the limitations that prevent conventional SATA-enabled SSDs from achieving speeds above 550 MB/s and which pose a bottleneck for parallel requests on multi-core systems.

2.5" SATA SSDs
Conventional SSDs in the 2.5-inch drive form factor are in most cases the only option for laptops and older PCs

But such SSDs are usually noticeably more expensive than solid-state drives with a SATA connection and require a modern motherboard. Next, we will tell you which computers this or that type of disk is suitable for and how big the difference in speeds is in practice. Then we present the results of tests of SSDs using the NVMe protocol, and in conclusion we advise the easiest way to migrate the system from an old HDD or SSD to a new one.

Choosing the best technology: NVMe or SATA

The type of drive you choose depends on the system you intend to upgrade. Most laptops (especially older ones) are equipped with only one SATA connector and a hard drive bay. In this case, the disk can only be replaced with a 2.5-inch SATA SSD (see). The same applies to most PCs up to the Intel Broadwell generation, even if some expensive motherboards have an M.2 slot (along with PCIe lines, it can also use SATA with its characteristic limitations). If there is no modern M.2 slot on the board, you can connect an M.2 form factor module to a PCIe slot via an adapter.

M.2 to PCIe adapter
Simple, inexpensive adapters (from 300 rubles) allow you to use M.2 drives in PCIe slots on a PC. To boot from them, the UEFI BIOS must support NVMe

If you are going to use an NVMe SSD as a system drive, then UEFI must support booting from NVMe - you should check this on the motherboard manufacturer's website (NVMe Boot option). Otherwise, you can use the SSD as an additional drive running Windows, but this will only be justified in certain cases.
The M.2 slot has become widely used in platforms starting with the Skylake generation (LGA 1151 socket) - information can be found in the technical specifications of the board. But be careful: M.2 is primarily a designation for the card form factor (22x80 mm).

There are two types. The M.2 module with the so-called “B” key supports conventional AHCI technology, which is used to connect drives via the SATA interface. Such drives have the same names as their 2.5-inch SATA counterparts (for example: Crucial MX300 M.2, Samsung SSD 850 Evo M.2) and do not differ from them in speed. Their advantage is that there are no compatibility or driver problems with these drives, and even installing Windows 7 occurs without problems.

If your PC or laptop motherboard has an M.2 slot, the optimal solution would be to install a high-speed SSD with support for the NVMe specification into it

A module with an “M” key and support for the NVMe protocol can use up to four PCIe 3.0 lanes. Most modern motherboards and many laptops are equipped with slots with a plug in the “M” position, that is, in principle compatible with NVMe drives. But in any case, before purchasing a drive with NVMe support, you should study the manufacturer's documentation and be sure to take into account the following: it is difficult to initially install Windows 7 on an NVMe drive. If Windows 7 is already installed on the computer you are upgrading, you can transfer the system to an NVMe solid-state drive.

In the early days of solid-state drives, due to their limited capabilities and high cost, it was popular to use one small SSD for the OS and one HDD for files in parallel. Now this option, as before, has a right to exist, but due to falling prices for solid-state drives, it is losing its attractiveness. The best price for one gigabyte currently comes from SATA solid-state drives with a capacity of about 1 TB: these models can be purchased from 17,000 rubles. For desktops and laptops with an M.2 slot and a 2.5-inch bay, a combination of a solid-state drive for the OS and programs and a high-capacity HDD for files is also justified.

NVMe vs SATA: Key Differences
The SATA interface was designed for serial access to the HDD. NVMe protocol enables parallel access to SSDs

On the other hand, the difference in price for a new terabyte hard drive (about 2,500 rubles) and a 256-gigabyte solid-state drive (about 5,500 rubles) on the one hand and a terabyte SSD (from 17,000 rubles) on the other is still quite large, so the option with two disks is still relevant. However, some users find it more convenient when the OS, programs and files are located on the same drive.

Owners of modern systems who want to switch to NVMe SSDs are faced with a choice. On the one hand, there are high-performance and expensive SSD drives (for example, the Samsung 960 line) that fully exploit the potential of NVMe. On the other hand, Intel offers a series of NVMe drives called 600p, which are interesting because the cost per gigabyte of memory is comparable to the price per gigabyte of SATA drives, and their speed, depending on the use case, ranges from “significantly faster than SATA” to "lower than SATA".

NVMe vs SATA: Practical Considerations
The speed benefits of an NVMe (Samsung) drive are also reflected when running programs. When copied to an SSD, the NVMe standard is noticeably superior to modern (Crucial) and old (Intel) SATA drives

Practical comparison of different types of SSDs

The data transfer speeds and IOPS values ​​of NVMe drives are impressive on paper. But what advantages do these drives actually have? First of all, in a purely external comparison with 2.5-inch SATA drives, the practicality of the form factor attracts attention: the M.2 module is neatly located directly in the motherboard slot, while SATA requires the use of a power cable in the PC case, which is the main way and interferes. In order to clearly show the speed advantages, we compared three solid-state drives: an early generation from the Intel Postville family, a modern Crucial MX300, and an ultra-fast NVMe-capable Samsung 960 Evo 500 GB.

Ten times faster than HDD
NVMe SSDs (here: Toshiba OCZ RD400 256GB) read and write very quickly - this is demonstrated by special test software

The speed advantage should have been evident when the PC booted up, but during practical testing we encountered obstacles. For the M.2/NVMe platform, we only had the latest AMD Ryzen system, whose motherboard spent a full 25 seconds initializing UEFI from the moment it was turned on until the desktop was ready. And this is despite all the parameters optimized for increasing speed: Windows 10 was installed in UEFI mode (that is, both the installation media and the solid-state drive were initialized as supporting the GPT standard), UEFI technology was configured to support Windows 10 and fast boot, etc. .

The next UEFI updates should reduce the delay. For the Samsung NVMe drive, the net Windows boot time is 8.6 seconds. A modern SSD with SATA (Crucial) requires 33% more time, and an Intel Postville drive, due to its low data transfer speed, generally takes twice as long. In other words, in everyday use the difference is quite noticeable.

High NVMe copy speed

The differences were especially striking when copying program folders to storage devices. When reading and writing in parallel, the NVMe drive demonstrated its unparalleled multitasking capabilities, achieving speeds three and four times faster than modern and legacy SATA drives, respectively. But all the more surprising was the slight advantage of NVMe when installing LibreOffice.

BIOS/UEFI boot delay
The operating system must be installed in UEFI mode, and the UEFI itself must be properly configured for the system to boot quickly

After calling the MSI installation package with the “/passive” parameter, the installation process immediately begins without prompting, and both modern drives are noticeably ahead of the old Intel in terms of speed - 23 seconds for Crucial and 22.2 seconds for Samsung versus 38.7 seconds for Intel. When scanning a copy of the “Programs” folder using Windows Defender, it was generally found that the strength of the drives was equal - even the low speed of the old SATA drive was used by Defender to a small extent.

The high-performance eight-core Ryzen CPU can be eliminated as a bottleneck. But during further testing, it was revealed that if the SATA drive is completely busy scanning, the system performs other requests (for example, launching programs) with a significant delay. A system with an NVMe drive continues to respond immediately. Because of this perceived smoothness and future-proofing of the technology, we recommend purchasing a drive that runs on the NVMe specification - as long as it's compatible with your system, of course.

That is why in the next part of the article we will talk in detail about the results of testing NVMe drives conducted at the Chip test center. But even if you're looking to save money or your system isn't compatible with NVMe-enabled M.2 drives, a modern SATA SSD will do the trick, especially since they're relatively inexpensive.

At High Speeds: Testing NVMe Drives to Endurance

If a drive is primarily required to have high data transfer speeds, then it should be an SSD running on the NVMe protocol. If at first there was a very small number of similar models on the market (and not cheap ones), now the choice has become much more diverse. Even small suppliers offer their models. Our testing will show which model is optimal for certain tasks. We decided to limit ourselves to models for the M.2 slot. They are preferable to exotic, expensive PCIe cards because they can be installed on motherboards and laptops either in the M.2 slot or via an adapter in the PCIe slot.

NVMe drives: different controllers
The performance of NVMe SSDs largely depends on the controller used. The greatest potential is offered by Samsung Polaris with five cores on ARM architecture. The Silicon Motion chip of the Intel 600p drive (shown) is economical and affordable, but it is one of the slowest controllers

Technical Issues: Controller and Flash Memory

The tasks of the control element of a solid-state drive - the controller - are to exchange data with the PC processor via the PCIe interface, as well as to write to memory cells and read data from them. Its performance plays a special role when working with large amounts of data and parallel read and write access. Our test covers a wide range of modern drives with five different types of controllers.

Software update
provision
In addition to powerful hardware, good drivers and firmware updates are also important, something that major manufacturers do better than anyone else.

Samsung develops and produces not only memory chips, but also its own controllers with a five-core processor based on ARM microarchitecture - the most powerful of those tested, which constantly produces high results in almost every benchmark. Corsair and Patriot drives with a Phison controller can compete with Samsung in terms of read and data transfer speeds, as well as the number of operations performed per second - but, nevertheless, their write speeds turned out to be much lower. However, this difference when working on a home desktop or gaming PC will be noticeable in extremely rare cases. In this range of devices with performance and the mark “very good” also falls the Toshiba OCZ RD400 with a Toshiba controller, which reveals similarities with the Marvell chip.

In our table below, Toshiba shows a visible and tangible gap in the overall score, which is based primarily on performance: drives with Marvell and Silicon Motion controllers (from Plextor to WD) are a good ten points behind the previous position. But it should be taken into account that at least their price per gigabyte is much lower. However, Plextor is too underpowered for its price per gigabyte.

Therefore, the Intel 600p becomes an advantageous offer, the cost per gigabyte of which is at the level of SATA drives - however, this drive does not provide the performance typical of NVMe drives for very long. The point is this: Intel uses multi-level Triple Level Cell flash memory technology, in which three bits are stored in a cell. Because this technology is more complex than the commonly used two-bit Multi Level Cell memory, the writing process is slower. To correct the situation, the Intel 600p uses a certain part of the cells for the SLC cache (Single Level Cell), which fills up very quickly.

Solid State Drives
for PCIe slots
NVMe drives in the form of PCIe cards,
for example, Zotac Sonix (in the picture)
or Intel 750, are also characterized
high speeds, but cost more than M.2 modules

All incoming data first ends up here, and then is gradually saved into standard TLC memory. While this trick works, Intel reaches the speed of NVMe drives. But as soon as the amount of data increases, the cache can no longer cope. In this case, the cache has to be released (and this is a very labor-intensive process), and only then will it be able to accept new data. And since this overloads the controller, the cache, which in itself is a justifiable solution, becomes a bottleneck, and the speed is reduced to a level below the SATA drive.

Flash memory: MLC, TLC and others

Solid-state drives use flash memory of varying density, which depends on the stage of technology development.

> SLC (Single Level Cell)- the fastest and most reliable flash memory. Each cell stores one bit. Currently, SLC is used either in very expensive drives or as a fast cache.

> MLC (Multi Level Cell)- memory with multiple charge levels, storing two bits per cell.

> TLC (Triple Level Cell) with a large number of charge levels, it stores three bits per cell, which makes it slower and more sensitive than MLC.

> 3D-MLC or 3D-TLC means that the cells are located not only in one plane, but also in layers. The three-dimensional structure provides higher recording density and reliability and a shorter data transmission line, which means higher speed.

Heating problem and memory bottleneck

The last problem does not apply to drives that use MLC technology on an ongoing basis. But they are at risk of trouble due to heating. A long write process brings the controller to its maximum possible temperature, and on a small module with purely passive cooling, the heat cannot be dissipated effectively, and so the controller slows down to cool down. But in everyday use this is unlikely to happen often: the Corsair MP500 480 GB shows such a sharp drop after about 50 seconds of continuous recording at the maximum possible speed - and thanks to the high data transfer rate, this period of time corresponds to a 64 GB recording.

Data transfer speed: recording disadvantages
In reading, the Corsair barely pulls ahead, while the affordable Intel barely lags behind. When recording, the picture is completely different

Samsung itself designs and produces memory and controllers, so its products outperform most rivals. Its modules use three-dimensional flash memory technology, which allows cells to be arranged not only in a plane, but also in layers, thereby reducing the length of data transmission lines and increasing its speed. The MLC (two bits per cell) version is designed for the expensive 960 Pro models, which are designed to withstand even high loads on workstations or servers. The 960 Evo models run on a cheaper version of 3D TLC memory (three bits per cell), their speed is noticeably lower, and therefore, like Intel, Samsung resorts to SLC cache.

On the 500GB Evo, it's very noticeable when the SLC cache is full: after 11 seconds, or about 20 GB, of writing (incompressible data), the speed drops from 1800 maximum possible to 630 MB/s. This speed remains fixed, indicating that the data is then stored directly into 3D TLC memory. The 960 Evo with a capacity of 1 TB has a larger SLC cache and twice as many memory modules, which the drive can write to simultaneously.

Disks with TLC memory are noticeably slower
Part of the memory of TLC disks is allocated for fast SLC cache. When it gets full, the speed decreases noticeably

In fact, the drive maintains speeds at 1,800 MB/s for about twice as long (23 seconds) before slowing down to about twice the minimum speed of the 500 GB model. But even then, you need to copy tens of gigabytes of data from a source whose speed matches or exceeds the speed of the NVMe SSD in order to reach the memory bottleneck - something that is unlikely to ever happen in normal use.

Heat stagnation in the M.2 form factor
During intensive recording under long-term load, available M.2 drives heat up and slow down, but this hardly affects the Samsung Pro at all

The Future of SSDs

As demonstrated by released and announced products, new types of memory open up new possibilities for using disks.

>Intel Optane- the name of the technology for M.2 drives running on the new 3D XPoint memory with instant response. Optane modules, however, are not intended to be used as storage devices, but as a fast cache for frequently accessed files stored on an HDD or SSD.

> Samsung Z-NAND- the next stage in the development of flash memory. The 800GB Z-NAND drive promises speeds of up to 3.2GB/s and 750,000 IOPS. However, when it will be released is still unclear.

Service and warranty terms

If you're buying an expensive drive that's built for the future, make sure your device comes with a long warranty. In general, solid-state drives and their flash memory have not caused much inconvenience lately, so some manufacturers - for example, Adata, Intel, Plextor and Western Digital - give them a full five-year warranty.

Maximum performance with the right driver
Windows 10 has a driver for NVMe, but optimal performance can only be achieved with the manufacturer's drivers

Toshiba OCZ even offers to immediately replace the device free of charge during the term: you receive a new disk before sending the faulty one. The Samsung Pro model also comes with a five-year warranty, although it expires when the drive exceeds a specified Total Bytes Written threshold. For the 960 Pro 512 GB, the threshold value is as much as 400 TB.

That is, in order to expire the warranty early, you need to write at least 220 GB to the SSD every day for five years. One way or another, the high speed of NVMe SSDs makes them promising for the next few years.

TOP 10 SATA SSDs under 10 thousand rubles.

1.

Overall rating: 95.6

Price/quality ratio: 74

2.

Overall rating: 91.2

Price/quality ratio: 67

3.

Overall rating: 89.8

Price/quality ratio: 48

4.

Overall rating: 91.3

Price/quality ratio: 22

5.

Overall rating: 89.6

Price/quality ratio: 28

6.

Overall rating: 85.5

Price/quality ratio: 19

7.

Overall rating: 87.9

Price/quality ratio: 69

8.

Overall rating: 83.7

Price/quality ratio: 28

9.

Overall rating: 83.3

Price/quality ratio: 15

10.

Data transfer rate (40%)

: 85.5

Access time / IOPS (25%)

: 46.2

Application performance (25%)

: 89.3

Energy consumption (10%)

: 100

Overall rating: 78.1

Price/quality ratio: 53

TOP 15 M.2/NVME SSDs

1.

: 96.1

: 94.5

Overall rating: 95.8

Price/quality ratio: 63

2.

Read data transfer rate (80%)

: 95

Recording data transfer rate (20%)

: 92.9

Overall rating: 94.6

Price/quality ratio: 79

3.

Read data transfer rate (80%)

: 91.4

Recording data transfer rate (20%)

: 89.3

Overall Score: 91

Price/quality ratio: 77

4.

Read data transfer rate (80%)

: 94.1

Recording data transfer rate (20%)

: 80.9

Overall rating: 91.5

Price/quality ratio: 60

It began with the introduction of Windows 7 to the market. This is the first system from Microsoft that worked correctly with this type of memory and did not lead to premature disk failure. At the same time, the first serious problems with these media appeared.

Source of concern

The newly installed SSD media in Windows XP worked smoothly, however, over time, the excessive number of records generated by the system caused the SSD to malfunction. It was neither the fault of the system nor the equipment - it was simply a bad idea to combine the products in such a way.

In the early stages of SSD development, there were also problems with Intel drives. Most tests yielded excellent results, however, attempting to use the Iometer in the test resulted in damage to the media. In real conditions, the products worked without reservations.

The OCZ company suffered a big failure, which used an innovative controller built into the SSD in the Vertex series of drives. According to various reports, up to ⅓ of all media failed during the first year of operation.

However, for modern SSDs, manufacturers guarantee a very high level of TBW. Therefore, the weak durability of SSD drives is a thing of the past.

Total Bytes Written – the main parameter of an SSD disk

The above TBW parameter (from English Total Bytes Written) is the most important parameter that determines the quality of an SSD. It denotes the total number of terabytes, the recording of which is guaranteed by the manufacturer for a given model.

TBW values ​​depend primarily on the type of flash memory used. Assuming that the system writes to disk on average several gigabytes per day, a typical cheap SSD with a TBW level of about 20-50 TB will last about 10 years.

TBW depends on the number of so-called erase and write cycles of one memory cell. TLC (Triple Level Cell) memory has 500-3000 cycles, and for MLC (Multi Level Cell) memory this parameter is at the level of 3000-10000 cycles. The most expensive, but the most efficient and most reliable SSD models use SLC (Single Level Cell) memory - the number of erase and write operations of memory cells reaches 100,000 cycles.

Taking care of SSD durability

Engineers who create SSDs are, of course, aware of these write limitations, so they use the appropriate functions. The most important is Wear Leveling - uniform alternation of records in the least loaded cells.

Special tables that collect information about the number of records made allow you to place read-only data in cells located closer to the “end of life” ( reading data does not consume SSD resource). In addition, each SSD memory has a supply of cells to replace damaged ones.

Modern computers have more and more RAM, so they have recently returned to the idea of ​​using it as a so-called RAM disk used for data caching. Such solutions are offered, in particular, by Crucial and Plextor. Keeping in mind how to extend the life of an SSD by reducing the number of writes, a virtual disk makes sense.

New algorithms are emerging that control how data is stored in memory, so it's worth checking for new SSD firmware. After installing the manufacturer's software, it is also worth using the proposed changes to the system configuration, which are aimed at increasing the lifespan and performance of the SSD.

SSD durability testing

Many companies have tried to measure SSD lifespan– TechReport achieved good results. The test tested the behavior of several different 240 GB drives. The weakest was the Samsung SSD 840 with TLC memory, which recorded 100 TB of data without problems, after which data began to be transferred from damaged cells to spare cells. With further operation, the disk was able to overwrite almost 900 TB of data.

Kingston HyperX with MLC memory recorded about 600 TB without problems, and when there were signs of cell redistribution, another 200 TB. The Intel SSD 335 wrote 728 TB and then switched to read-only mode, allowing the written data to be downloaded.

The best result was shown by Samsung 840 Pro. True, sector remapping began to occur after writing about 600 TB of data, however, complete SSD damage occurred after storing 2.5 PB. None of the tested drives experienced any performance degradation.

Backblaze, a cloud service provider, promises to conduct SSD tests on a large scale. For magnetic hard drives, it regularly produces reports for tens of thousands of drives in use.

SSD for paranoids

If the incredible durability of SSDs hasn't convinced you yet, you can always play it safe. One of the simplest methods is a RAID1 array, that is, duplicating data on two disks.

If you don't trust the SSD, you can use a RAID1 array consisting of one SSD and one HDD. Thanks to this, you will get speed of work and the confidence that no data will be lost if any of the storage media fails. In addition, the solution will be cheaper than an array consisting of two SSD drives.

MTBF does not determine disk lifespan

When purchasing an SSD, you should not be guided by the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) parameter. In the case of hard disk drives (HDD), it is measured in hundreds of thousands, and for SSDs - in millions of hours.

For example, the mean time between failures of a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive is 700 thousand. hours. It may seem that the disk will not complete its operation within 240 years when running 8 hours a day. Unfortunately, MTBF only means probability Failure rate - 2920 hours per year (8 hours per day) divided by 700,000 hours and multiplied by 100% means that the probability of failure is 0.42%. In other words, one disk out of 240 fails within a year.

Let's start with the concept of form factor and interface. The “classic” for SSD is a traditional 2.5-inch hard drive enclosure with a SATA interface. Such SSDs are the most versatile - they can “invigorate” an old computer with SATA 2 ports, and achieve high performance from modern desktop and laptop hardware.

However, the capabilities of SSDs are much greater than what SATA allows. And here the confusion begins, because SSDs with an M.2 interface are, in fact, two different types of drives - they can operate in SATA mode with the same speed restrictions (such compact drives in the form of expansion cards were originally used for laptops , but can also be installed in the corresponding slots on motherboards of stationary PCs), or can also use the PCI-E x4 bus directly (PCI-E NVMe interface) with much greater bandwidth - if you are going to purchase an SSD with an M.2 connector, immediately clarify in what mode it runs on your computer. For example, MacBook Air used M.2 SATA until 2012, and then began to work with M.2 PCI-E NVMe. Externally, they can be distinguished by the number of cutouts on the key: M.2 SATA has two, PCI-E NVMe has one.

However, there are also atypical M.2 SSDs on the market, designed for the PCI-E x2 interface and using the same two-cut key as M.2 SATA. They can easily work on motherboards with an M.2 connector that has both SATA and PCI-E lines, but on boards designed only for SATA-SSD they will be useless, although they are no different from M.2 SATA SSDs in appearance. Therefore, the type of supported SSDs must be taken into account.

And finally, there are SSDs that are installed in a standard PCI-E slot on desktop motherboards as ATX expansion cards - this is an option for those who need high speed, but there is no M.2 slot on the motherboard.

No SSD drive lasts forever - these are the features of flash memory, which allows only a limited number of write cycles. Therefore, naturally, it is best to choose a drive with the maximum passport TBW (Total Bytes Written) - but do not forget that Samsung SSDs, which look pale compared to competitors, can actually withstand a significantly higher number of write cycles than stated in the passport.

The type of memory determines the resource of the SSD, its speed, and price. The cheapest drives use TLC or 3D-TLC, which can only last a little over a thousand write cycles. It is worth taking such an SSD with a decent capacity reserve - it will provide sufficient resource. MLC memory is more expensive, but it allows you to rewrite a cell several thousand times. The most “tenacious” memory is SLC, which can withstand up to 100 thousand cycles, it is also the fastest... and the most expensive. A compromise option is an MLC SSD with SLC caching: the unallocated space there works as a high-speed cache, but such drives are sensitive to free space, and when it decreases below a critical point, their data exchange speed decreases.

As for the manufacturer, any SSD is a combination of several options for controllers and memory chips, so it is incorrect to compare brands: manufacturers that do not produce memory themselves will use the same chips as SSDs from leading manufacturers (Samsung, Micron/Intel, Toshiba , Hynix).

Budget PCI-E drive 3 4

A solid-state drive is a new generation of storage devices whose operation is entirely based on memory chips, and eliminates the presence of mechanical parts. The first generation of SSD, which was based on flash memory technology, was in 1995, and was a huge success in scientific circles. Despite the fact that the stability of such a device left much to be desired and it was too early to consider it as a full-fledged alternative to HDD, a great future was predicted for it.

Since 2010, the computer hardware market has been replenished with SSD drive models with memory capacities from 64 to 512 GB, which marked the beginning of the gradual displacement of traditional hard drives. Compared to the latter, solid-state drives had a number of undeniable advantages:

• disproportionately high speed of writing and reading data, which has a positive effect on performance and performance;
• less noise and high resistance to mechanical damage due to the absence of mechanical parts;
• low energy consumption (in some cases up to 70%).

All this clearly indicates the possibility of a decent upgrade of hardware, especially for gaming needs.

To help you make your choice, we have compiled a rating of the ten best SSD drives from recognized market leaders. The selection of applicants was made according to the criteria of reliability, value for money, as well as based on reviews from users and recognized experts.

The best manufacturing companiesSSD- drives

Samsung. One of the most popular and trusted manufacturers of SSD drives on the global market. It has several lines of drives for computers of different levels. Budget and premium models, different form factors and maximum speeds.

Intel. The recognized leader in the field of computer electronics production did not ignore the development of SSD drives. Numerous experiments (including those from independent laboratories) have established the fact of the highest reliability of drives from this company, and partially justified the fact of their high cost.

Kingston. The entry of this company into the solid-state SSD drive market turned out to be very controversial and deserves a portion of censure. The first samples of memory modules were purchased from Intel and relabeled under the Chinese brand. After a short stint as a packager, Kingston established its own production and became a strong competitor to the flagship firms.

Transcend. A company whose main philosophy was to maintain a balance between the cost of products and their quality. As a manufacturer of SSD drives, it has firmly established itself in the niche of the middle price segment, providing users with, although not the most productive, but the most reliable data storage devices.

Plextor. A company from the Land of the Rising Sun that can withstand the competition of leaders thanks to the low price tag for its products. Despite the use of purely budget hardware in the manufacture of SSD drives (for example, Marvell controllers are combined with Toshiba’s not-so-top-end developments in the field of flash-memory), in terms of performance the latter are practically not inferior to mid-range models from the same Samsung and Intel.

Best external SSD drives

3 Transcend TS1TESD400K

Large memory capacity (1 TB)
Country: Taiwan
Average price: 31,500 ₽
Rating (2019): 4.6

An interesting model of a storage device, created in the best traditions of Transcend. The first thing that catches your eye is the excellent design of the disc case. But does the internal content of the model correspond to what is visible externally?

The answer to this question lies in the field of the concept “controversial”, and the reason for this is not the filling at all. The main problem with the Transcend TS1TESD400K is the strange USB 3.0 cable included, complaints about which are constantly coming from indignant users. Largely because of this, the SSD drive does not produce the stated write and read speeds (out of 380 and 410 MB/s, only 170 and 250 MB/s are realized, respectively, and in the best case). In addition, very often the data transfer process is interrupted due to the “disconnection” of the wire.

It is noteworthy that such problems can be avoided by the notorious replacement of the complete wire, after which the device (not always, but as a rule) continues to work without complaints.

2 ADATA SD700 256GB

Best Rugged Portable SSD
Country: China
Average price: 4,949 ₽е
Rating (2019): 4.7

The second line of the rating is occupied by a model that will clearly be of interest to photographers, videographers and others whose work involves processing a huge amount of information far from civilization. This is a protected device that can withstand shocks, falls, exposure to water and serious vibrations. Protection is provided by a housing made of durable plastic and a thick rubber rim. However, it is worth considering that there is no official compliance with any protection standards, and therefore you should not hope for a miracle and use the SD700 in extreme conditions. It is not recommended to use an external drive in cold weather - the operating temperature range starts from +5 O C

Inside the black or light green case there can be 256, 512 or 1024 GB of TLC 3D NAND memory. The manufacturer claims read and write speeds of 420-440 Mbit/sec. These figures are confirmed by independent tests and user reviews. Data transfer is carried out via the USB 3.1 interface.

Since the invention of SSD drives, HDDs that have been proven over the years have gradually faded into the background. Despite their obsolescence, the latter still have significant advantages, but the superiority of new technologies turns out to be more significant. What are their advantages, and what parameters hide the disadvantages - we find out from the comparison table.

Drive type	pros	Minuses
	Low cost compared to SSD drives Availability of 1, 2, 5 and 10 TB models in the line, which SSD drives cannot boast of High working life - unlimited number of rewrite cycles, eliminating technical breakdown Mechanical output reaches one million hours Possibility of data recovery	– Unresistant to even the slightest mechanical damage – Low file reading speed compared to SSD drives – Bulky (dimensions and weight are several times greater than SSD drives) – Large amount of heat generation (especially on high-capacity drive models) – Noisy due to the presence of a large number of mechanical parts in the design
	High speed data access No moving mechanical parts and, as a result, almost complete absence of noise High degree of reliability Better resistance to mechanical damage Large operating temperature range Low energy consumption (economical)	– The number of rewrite cycles is limited and depends on the memory size – Induced electromagnetic fields can damage the device – High price tag (especially on high-capacity drive models)

1 Samsung Portable SSD T5 250GB

Most modern. The best portable SSD for modern ultrabooks
Country: South Korea
Average price: 7,110 RUR
Rating (2019): 4.8

Sales statistics in recent years indicate that large desktop PCs are increasingly being replaced by portable laptops equipped with only the minimum required set of ports. Take, for example, the popular MacBooks - on their edges there was only room for USB Type-C ports. External solid-state drives like the Samsung T5 were created to work with such devices. This is an extremely compact (57.3x10.5x74mm) and lightweight (only 51 g) model with a minimalist anodized aluminum body.

Samsung's proprietary V-NAND memory is installed inside. Models available with 250 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB. The declared read/write speed is good news - 540 MB/s. The drive is equipped with a USB 3.1 Type-C port. The kit includes two cables: Type-C to Type-C and Type-C to Type-A, which allows you to connect the drive to both modern and fairly old devices.

In conclusion, it is worth noting the accompanying software: there are applications for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. They can be used to encrypt data using the AES 256 algorithm, update firmware, create data backups, etc.

The best SSD drives for a desktop computer

4 Intel SSDPED1D280GAX1

Fastest PCI-E SSD
Country: USA
Average price: RUB 29,864
Rating (2019): 4.6

Intel is one of the pioneers in the field of electronics. The company is best known for processors, but can also boast of some success in the field of storage systems. For example, the fastest SSD drives of the Optane family. Within this category, we will consider a couple of models at once. The first is a PCI-E card. The model is made in the “video card” format. Color – only black. The entire upper surface is covered with a massive heatsink that prevents overheating of the memory chips. The device looks stylish, is well assembled and gives the impression of a top-level device, which it is. The radiator, by the way, is not for beauty - during operation the card can heat up to 50 ° C.

Why does a solid-state drive with a capacity of only 240 GB cost 30 thousand rubles? It's all about flash memory technology. It uses Intel-developed 3D Xpoint memory, which has the best speeds and lowest latencies to date. In tests, the card produces about 2500 MB/s for reading, and 1700 MB/s for writing. Please note - not megabits, but megabytes per second!

3 Intel SSDPE21D480GAM3

The fastest 2.5' SSD drive
Country: USA
Average price: 44,850 RUR
Rating (2019): 4.7

The second representative of the Optane line is made in a completely different form factor - it is a 2.5-inch drive more familiar to most users. But two things immediately attract attention. The first is the case design. On it we can see many “pimples” and ribs that act as a radiator. You remember that these drives get very hot, right? The second is the connection type. The U.2 connector is used. It cannot be found on all motherboards, and therefore the manufacturer included an adapter for the more common M.2 in the kit.

There are practically no differences in technical characteristics - the bronze medalist only better withstands shaking and shock (withstands overloads of up to 1000 G), operates at a higher temperature (up to 85 degrees), and consumes 12.8 W of energy, instead of 14 W for the previous participant. The remaining differences are in ease of use. Firstly, a 2.5 format disk does not take up space on the computer’s motherboard, and given the class of the device, it probably already has a massive, powerful video card. Secondly, the ability to “hot” swap the disk – you can’t do this with a PCI-E card. Thirdly, the cost/volume ratio.

2 Plextor PX-256M9PeY

Budget PCI-E drive
Country: China
Average price: 6,890 RUR
Rating (2019): 4.7

Let's move on from the exotic to more down-to-earth models, the cost of which corresponds to the capabilities of the majority of ordinary users of desktop computers. The device is made in the form factor of a PCI-E card. The design can be called cheerful, because in addition to a black heatsink and a small red insert, the case has RGB lighting. Gamers will definitely be pleased.

Inside there is TLC 3D NAND flash memory that supports NVMe and TRIM. Read and write speeds are stated at 3000 and 1000 MB/s, respectively. And to some extent, these indicators are true - files up to 3 GB will indeed be processed at maximum speed thanks to the fast cache. When working with large amounts of data, the speed will drop to “earthly” 500-520 Mb/s. Also note that the model from Plextor is the only one in the category that does not support encryption.

1 Samsung MZ-V7E250BW

Best price/performance ratio
Country: South Korea
Average price: 6,150 RUR
Rating (2019): 4.8

The leader of the rating is the long-proven SSD of the 970 Evo line from Samsung. This is the most affordable and most compact model in the category. The drive is installed in the M.2 connector, which means it takes up virtually no space in the case or on the motherboard. This allows you to install an SSD not only in a desktop PC, but also in a laptop. On the other hand, the form factor does not allow the installation of a cooling radiator, which is why temperatures are slightly higher than those of competitors - about 55 degrees.

The situation with speed indicators turned out to be extremely interesting - the 250 GB model lags significantly behind the 500 and 1000 GB modifications. For example, the sequential read speed is 2900 and 3500 MB/s for the younger and older models, respectively. When recording, the figures vary even more: 1000 and 3000 MB/s! Therefore, if performance is important to you, pay attention to a model with a minimum capacity of 500 GB. Finally, we note that the manufacturer provides a 5-year warranty on its products.

The best SSD drives for a laptop

3 Kingston SMS200S3/240G

The most reliable
A country: USA (made in China)
Average price: 4,240 RUR
Rating (2019): 4.7

The third position of Kingston SMS200S3/240G is due solely to the memory capacity of 240 GB, and does not hide any reproaches to the technical part. Built on the SandForce SF-2281 controller, the SSD uses the widespread MLC technology as flash memory - a multi-level information storage model.

As for the performance characteristics, in addition to 240 GB of memory, the speed of writing and reading information should be equal to 530 and 540 MB/s, respectively. The proven SATA is used as the connection interface, the maximum external data transfer speed of which reaches 600 Mb/s.

Particular attention should be paid to the reliability characteristics. The time between failures is a decent 1 million hours – higher values ​​are available for versions of SSD drives for desktop computers or premium ones for laptops. Combined with the cost, we get a high-quality drive model that can revive any weak system.

2 Western Digital WD GREEN PC SSD 240 GB

Best price
Country: USA
Average price: 2,965 RUR
Rating (2019): 4.7

Western Digital is widely known for producing excellent hard drives. The leaders in the SSD drive market are completely different, but WD can also offer good options. One of them is WD Green with a capacity of 240 GB. This is a great option for those who want to speed up their laptop a little or replace a dying HDD with a more modern analogue. The main advantage of the model is its cost. For the silver medalist they ask only 3 thousand rubles.

You can't expect high performance speed for that kind of money. The model uses a SATA connection, which physically cannot provide speeds above 600 MB/s. Tests show sequential write and read speeds of 460 and 560 MB/s, respectively. Note that users in reviews complain about the low reading speed of 4K sectors. You can also find fault with the lack of TRIM, less time between failures than competitors, and much more. However, we remember the cost and stop paying attention to such trifles. In addition, not all laptops support NVMe, which means a solid-state drive via the good old SATA is a real salvation for them.

1 Samsung MZ-V7P1T0BW

The fastest SSD for laptops
Country: South Korea
Average price: RUB 28,390
Rating (2019): 4.9

In contrast to the previous participant, the top-end SSD M.2 drive is from Samsung. The cost and characteristics of the model directly indicate the scope of application - the drive is designed for the most powerful laptops. It uses proprietary V-NAND memory and a Samsung Phoenix controller. Thanks to the connection via PCI-E (M.2 connector) and NVMe support, the model is capable of delivering speeds of about 2700 MB/s for writing, and 3500 MB/s for reading! At this speed, even 1 TB of disk space can be filled in less than half an hour. Among the nice features, we also note the power consumption of 5.8 W, which is very useful for laptop computers to save battery power.