Confused about Samsung SSD types...

[johnspack]

What did I just buy? It says mlc but isn't it really tlc?

SAMSUNG 860 EVO Series 2.5" 500GB SATA III Internal SSD - Newegg.com

Buy SAMSUNG 860 EVO Series 2.5" 500GB SATA III V-NAND 3-bit MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-76E500B/AM with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.ca

I haven't really kept up on ssd tech.... I bought 2 of them... one is for a friend.

 

[TheMadDutchDude]

Link is dead.

 

[johnspack]

Try it now.

 

[newtekie1]

Multi-level cell - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

TLC technically is MLC. All TLC is MLC, but not all MLC is TLC...

Most of the time MLC is considered just to mean 2 bit cells, and TLC is 3 bit cells. But Samsung's marketing team realizes that people think MLC means just 2 bit per cell, and therefor it is more desirable. So they do the scummy thing of now calling TLC 3-bit MLC.

 

[biffzinker]

Link is dead.

Try this: https://www.newegg.ca/samsung-860-evo-series-500gb/p/N82E16820147674

Try it now.

Nope, still not working

 

[johnspack]

So now I'm seeing 2bit mlc vs 3bit mlc... now what's the difference in that? The pro versions are 2 bit mlc. Dam.
Oh well, my buddy will be happy... takes 5mins to boot his haswell box on an hd... I'll be so happy to put an ssd
in that....

 

[newtekie1]

Try this: https://www.newegg.ca/samsung-860-evo-series-500gb/p/N82E16820147674


Nope, still not working

Turn off your ad-blocker.

So now I'm seeing 2bit mlc vs 3bit mlc... now what's the difference in that? The pro versions are 2 bit mlc. Dam.
Oh well, my buddy will be happy... takes 5mins to boot his haswell box on an hd... I'll be so happy to put an ssd
in that....

2-bit MLC = The MLC we are used to and expect
3-bit MLC = TLC

 

[johnspack]

Is there any point in the pro series for a regular consumer over the 860s?

SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 2TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7KE2T0BW - Newegg.com

Buy SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 2TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7KE2T0BW with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.ca

Dam, so I should try to get a 2bit drive.... they are so expensive...
So I got burned... 2 tlc drives.... oh well at least they were cheap.

 

[newtekie1]

Is there any point in the pro series for a regular consumer over the 860s?

SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 2TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7KE2T0BW - Newegg.com

Buy SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 2TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7KE2T0BW with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.ca

Dam, so I should try to get a 2bit drive.... they are so expensive....

For a normal consumer, QLC is fine...

 

[biffzinker]

So now I'm seeing 2bit mlc vs 3bit mlc... now what's the difference in that? The pro versions are 2 bit mlc. Dam.

3D V-NAND is the latest technology in the flash memory world. This is where planar NAND (single planes of NAND cells) are stacked vertically, giving the ‘V’ in V-NAND. Due to the change in vertical arrangement of cells these SSDs have better capacities at lower production costs, half the power requirements, twice the speed and ten times the longevity of planar NAND.

Genuine 2-bit MLC would still be planar NAND vs the stacked TLC hybrid being referred to as MLC.

 

[Vario]

If you had an SSD before you can check to see its total writes, figure out how many years it took you to reach that number of writes, and then you can check the endurance specification for the SSD you just bought and get an idea of its lifespan. Most non professional users do not need the endurance of TLC.

 

[johnspack]

Yes in the end you are right. Although one of my evo 850s is showing a lot of wear, still running great. Just wanted to make sure my buddy got a good ssd.
Guess I probably shouldn't question samsungs.. seeing as how I have 2 of them and an hd....

 

[Mussels]

the samsung 860 is still a high quality drive, nothing to be burned about there, unless you could get a Pro model for the same or very similar price (as an owner of a 970 pro NVME drive, outside of very specific use cases i cant tell it apart from my sata SSD TLC based systems)

 

[johnspack]

Heh, yeah the pro is almost twice the price. Wasn't sure if it made it that much faster or not! I guess if it's not m2, then it doesn't matter... a samsung drive will pump regardless.
Think I'm just getting twitchy waiting for my 8 core 1680 cpu to arrive. Waited so dam long for one.....

 

[Mussels]

its not about faster - often the only real world difference is how long the writes can be sustained for

my intel 6000P NVME drive could write at 500MB/s, for all of 5 seconds before it choked and wrote at 15MB/s
and yet, it could read at high speeds all day long

 

[johnspack]

Well, for my VMs, I'm hoping the 860 can keep up. I can probably fill it with vms in a few days. I need high iops as well, but I know a sata ssd isn't going to give
me a lot of that.

 

[Gungar]

its not about faster - often the only real world difference is how long the writes can be sustained for

my intel 6000P NVME drive could write at 500MB/s, for all of 5 seconds before it choked and wrote at 15MB/s
and yet, it could read at high speeds all day long

I have no idea why anyone would buy that crap

 

[Vayra86]

For a normal consumer, QLC is fine...

You think? There is a noticeable performance drop and reliability isn't great, while the price/GB barely makes a worthwhile jump.

IMO, QLC is one step too far. I was never happy with dying HDDs either, even if they did 5 years or 7 years later...

 

[Gungar]

You think? There is a noticeable performance drop and reliability isn't great, while the price/GB barely makes a worthwhile jump.

IMO, QLC is one step too far. I was never happy with dying HDDs either, even if they did 5 years or 7 years later...

Well it may become interesting in 5/10 years like what happened with TLC, because i don't see this big companies invest in QLC if they weren't sure that it would become interesting vs TLC.

 

[Vario]

1TB Phison E12 based drives write at insane speeds, have an amazing endurance, and cost about the same as the QLC. So I don't understand the market for the QLC Intel model.
Here is my E12, this drive sells for ~$97 at this time.

Specifications

• Capacity: 1TB
• Read Speed: 3,100 MBps
• Write Speed: 1,900 MBps
• Interface: PCIe Gen 3 x 4
• Form Factor: M.2 2280
• Architecture: 3D NAND Flash
• Random Read 4K: 570,000 IOPS
• Random Write 4K: 570,000 IOPS
• Supported Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 8,10
• Endurance: 1600 TBW

 

[Mussels]

I have no idea why anyone would buy that crap

1TB drive for $180 when a 1TB samsung was over $500

 

[Zareek]

Is there any point in the pro series for a regular consumer over the 860s?

SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 2TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7KE2T0BW - Newegg.com

Buy SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 2TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7KE2T0BW with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.ca

Dam, so I should try to get a 2bit drive.... they are so expensive...
So I got burned... 2 tlc drives.... oh well at least they were cheap.

There was no burning, these are excellent drives. The 860 EVO is a consumer grade drive so you have a smaller amount of times you can write to it, it is rated for 300TB worth. You can basically completely fill the drive everyday for almost two years straight. Considering most people write 30GB or less a day, I think you are good for 20 to 30 years.

You are a great friend for buying your buddy that drive. I wish I had friends that nice.

 

[johnspack]

Heh, not that quite good of a buddy.... I expect him to pay for it. I had to charge it.
But one of my 850 evos is 3.5yrs old and has a crapload of writes to it, and still fast.
So these 860s with twice the wear level, should last a dam long time.

 

[R-T-B]

Genuine 2-bit MLC would still be planar NAND vs the stacked TLC hybrid being referred to as MLC.

No. Stacking/3D nand tech is just how the chips are arranged. It has nothing to do with mlc vs tlc, qlc, etc. That's the cell formating.

Performance wise mlc vs tlc has little difference on samsung drives. It's mostly an endurance thing, and both drives still have insanely high endurance, so I would not worry.

 

[biffzinker]

It has nothing to do with mlc vs tlc, qlc, etc. That's the cell formating.

I understand that part but I thought the stacking of TLC made it behave similar to how planar MLC operates.