Shane Downing Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Shane Downing is a Contributing Writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering consumer storage, PC hardware, and AI.
Stomx Or at least get back to MLC at 1TB instead of 2TB. MLC endurance is few times (some claimed up to 10 times) better than TLC. With horror I observe how in one year my WD Black 8 TB TLC SSD lost 1 out of 20 its cells and slowly becoming resembling Swiss cheese. Smaller drives lasted ~2 years just in some day turning into read-only Reply
leclod Stomx said: With horror I observe how in one year my WD Black 8 TB TLC SSD lost 1 out of 20 its cells and slowly becoming resembling Swiss cheese. Smaller drives lasted ~2 years just in some day turning into read-only What does cell mean to an ssd and how do you know ? (Edit : you mean it lost 1/20 its capacity ?) How full is your drive ? How many TBW ? My 4TB SN850X from 2024 is at 100% health with 57TBW (I mostly keep it at 50% capacity) I've never had an ssd turn into read only and I've had a few. If you're honest in your claim, you and @razor512 , just buy a TLC drive triple what you need and use it not more than to a third of its capacity. I'm convinced it will last long. Reply
Stomx leclod said: What does cell mean to an ssd and how do you know ? If you're honest in your claim, you and @razor512 , just buy a TLC drive triple what you need and use it not more than to a third of its capacity. I'm convinced it will last long. Percentage Used: 5% Data Units Read: 663,515,841 Data Units Written: 308,349,682 Your suggestion reminded me the famous phrase attributed to Marie Anoinette – "If starving people have no bread let them eat cake" 🙂 Reply
USAFRet Stomx said: Percentage Used: 5% Data Units Read: 663,515,841 Data Units Written: 308,349,682 Your suggestion reminded me the famous phrase attributed to Marie Anoinette – "If starving people have no bread let them eat cake" 🙂 5% in one year. So…..100% in 20 years? Will you still be using this drive in 2045? Today, in 2026, are you still using any drives you had in 2006? Reply
leclod Stomx said: Your suggestion reminded me the famous phrase attributed to Marie Anoinette – "If starving people have no bread let them eat cake" 🙂 Your quote wasn't obvious to me, a quick search told me its meaning and that it wasn't from Marie Antoinette. So your first comment was bs, your ssd is perfectly fine, you're just using it more than average ? You didn't say how full you keep it. By the way, I bet starving people would love to eat cake. And your swiss cheese isn't really our swiss cheese, we too prefer the ones without the holes. Reply
Stomx T USAFRet said: 5% in one year. So…..100% in 20 years? Will you still be using this drive in 2045? Today, in 2026, are you still using any drives you had in 2006? Yes if you trust advertisements. In reality 5% cells are dead, 20% almost dead. In one more — 20% dead 50 % almost dead, corrupted bits in files appear, you get program crashes, some apps do not start, and then abruptly it gets belly up. This is how it works their BS TBW 600TB per 1 TB capacity for almost all TLC consumer SSD drives Reply
USAFRet Stomx said: T Yes if you trust advertisements. In reality 5% cells are dead, 20% almost dead. In one more — 20% dead 50 % almost dead, and then abruptly it gets belly up. This how works their BS TBW 600TB per 1 TB capacity for almost all TLC consumer SSD drives The TBW for any given drive is simply what the company will do as far as warranty. In real life, however…most (non crappy) drives can and will last far longer than that. Multiple endurance tests have shown this. In your normal personal consumer use, have you ever had a drive go beyond that TBW number? Further, have you had a drive die , from too many write cycles, after having gone beyond that number? Which ones, specifically? I haven't, from being SSD only in my PCs for the last decade. Reply
Stomx With light use they will probably last long enough. I used different SSDs of several companies, mostly WD Black which were the best in terms of speed and which were the only which failed even showing light percentage used. Shocking was that the worst of them were latest Samsung 990 Pro and 9100 Pro. They totally do not fit Linux, specifically Linux Mint by some reason, many complaints. The 990 disappeared from the drives list after a week of work, 9100 disappeared in hours, showed no noticeable speed improvement and corrupted the data. 9100 returned, 990 use only via USB adapter. Need some trickery or use Windows computer to update firmware and see if this will fix this. But the fact that major producer makes faulty firmware and does not care for years and has no their Magician software for Linux tells me to avoid Samsung SSDs Reply
USAFRet Stomx said: With light use they will probably last long enough. I used different SSDs of several companies, mostly WD Black which were the best in terms of speed and which were the only which failed even showing light percentage used. Shocking was that the worst of them were latest Samsung 990 Pro and 9100 Pro. They totally do not fit Linux, specifically Linux Mint by some reason, many complaints. The 990 disappeared from the drives list after a weak of work, 9100 disappeared in hours, showed no noticeable speed improvement and corrupted the data. Returned. "with light use". That is funny. My drives in use right now…Intel, Samsung, Crucial, SanDisk. A WD coming in to rotation soon. Some of them nearing a decade old. Light use = for one of them, 10k DSLR photos per year. Another, 5,000-10,000+CAD files per year. But whatever. I've had 1 SSD die, a 960 SATA III SanDisk. Nowhere near the TBW rating. A couple of weeks over its 3 year warranty. SanDisk replaced, it, even knowing it was past that 3 year date. Reply
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