100% of my QLC drives are now dead.

[Shrek]

The problem of TLC -> QLC is that one gets 33% more capacity, but has to lay it down twice as densely; it doesn't seem like a great trade-off to me.

 

[lexluthermiester]

it doesn't seem like a great trade off to me.

That's because it really isn't.

 

[R-T-B]

That's because it really isn't.

Honestly, I hear you, and if I had my way we'd still have MLC and maybe even SLC options in consumer land, but... still not sure that high a failure rate is normal. If he was hitting the drives over a bit more time I might buy it, but this does strike me as a premature failure.

Not to say they were ever a GOOD purchase as an OS drive but complete failure of all of them just seems too much to me.

 

[newtekie1]

I've run one in my daily driver as the system drive for over a year, and it's been absolutely fine.

 

[GreiverBlade]

I mean, the P3 drives are junk, but "all QLC drives are bad" is quite a statement... if it were that widespread an issue I imagine we'd have a lot more threads about it.

my P1 and P3 Plus are showing 100% health remaining no error and are regularly under load

the P1 is the older of the 2, at least 4 yrs the P3 Plus is 8 month and 23 days

i confess, you got me scared there ...
this is the P3 Plus (lost a bit of speed but 66% full)

it's just a smidge slower than the 2230 SSD in my ROG Ally in reading and quite faster in writing (Seq) it's a Micron 2400 512gb which is also a QLC drive (soon to be replaced with a DRAMless SLC WD SN770M 2tb)

and the P1 (which is in a limited USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure) still the same as when bought even at 95% full


the more worrying one is an Adata Gammix S11 Pro 512gb (SLC+DRAM) but i suspect it's the USB port i hooked it to and now because of failing hardware (at least i hope )



if anything .... i never had an SSD to die one me, even my OS drive for 9yrs (an OCZ Vertex 3 120gb ) that i changed a while ago, is still usable and 97% health remaining (granted that one is, iirc, MLC NAND)

 

[Shihab]

Did any of the anti-QLC folk ever drive any SSD, regardless of type, to even half the endurance rating of a typical QLC drive in <= 5 years of use?

I don't have access to my desktop atm, but the work/testing laptop I'm on right now has had a cheap, 960Gb Kingston for 2 years (avg power-on time 9~10hrs/day, heavy but infrequent I/O-intensive applications). Stats show only ~11TBs written in this period. From a simple linear extrapolation that would be ~28TB in 5 years, or ~55TB in 10 years.
Now what's the worst TBW rating for a 1TB QLC drive? 200TBW? And that's assuming this figure isn't underestimated for warranty purposes.

 

[chrcoluk]

Honestly, I hear you, and if I had my way we'd still have MLC and maybe even SLC options in consumer land, but... still not sure that high a failure rate is normal. If he was hitting the drives over a bit more time I might buy it, but this does strike me as a premature failure.

Not to say they were ever a GOOD purchase as an OS drive but complete failure of all of them just seems too much to me.

Its a bad trade off, and I think 3D QLC is where planar TLC was at, not good enough for the trade off.

TLC was saved by the move to 3D nand where its become as good as planar MLC was.

Ultimately QLC might become acceptable years down the line, but in my view it shouldnt be on the market right now at its current pricing levels. It just seems a desperate ploy to increase profit margins, whilst hoping pSLC is enough to hide its deficiencies.

 

[Ahhzz]

That's because it really isn't.

I've run one in my daily driver as the system drive for over a year, and it's been absolutely fine.

Its a bad trade off, and I think 3D QLC is where planar TLC was at, not good enough for the trade off.

TLC was saved by the move to 3D nand where its become as good as planar MLC was.

Ultimately QLC might become acceptable years down the line, but in my view it shouldnt be on the market right now at its current pricing levels. It just seems a desperate ploy to increase profit margins, whilst hoping pSLC is enough to hide its deficiencies.

There are always going to be anecdotal stories on all three sides of this issue. The important thing to remember is that they are all anecdotal. That's all they can be. There is no ability to state "This drive architecture absolutely will not/always work as a System/data disk, so Never/Always buy that type". Just keep in mind, all we can give here is the facts as we know them, sources to back those up, and opinions based on those and personal experience. Don't expect everyone's experience to be identical.

 

[Wirko]

Did any of the anti-QLC folk ever drive any SSD, regardless of type, to even half the endurance rating of a typical QLC drive in <= 5 years of use?

I don't have access to my desktop atm, but the work/testing laptop I'm on right now has had a cheap, 960Gb Kingston for 2 years (avg power-on time 9~10hrs/day, heavy but infrequent I/O-intensive applications). Stats show only ~11TBs written in this period. From a simple linear extrapolation that would be ~28TB in 5 years, or ~55TB in 10 years.
Now what's the worst TBW rating for a 1TB QLC drive? 200TBW? And that's assuming this figure isn't underestimated for warranty purposes.

Too many consumer QLC SSDs die long before they reach their rated TBW. They also fail to enter permanent read-only mode.

 

[Klemc]

 

[chrcoluk]

There are always going to be anecdotal stories on all three sides of this issue. The important thing to remember is that they are all anecdotal. That's all they can be. There is no ability to state "This drive architecture absolutely will not/always work as a System/data disk, so Never/Always buy that type". Just keep in mind, all we can give here is the facts as we know them, sources to back those up, and opinions based on those and personal experience. Don't expect everyone's experience to be identical.

Not sure why you quoted me there, but if you are saying any end user feedback isnt credible, and something only becomes credible when a manufacturer says it, then I will disagree with you, and I wonder if thats why TPU never made an article on the 870 EVO problems.

However my point was not made in reference to QLC drives failing, but rather its performance metrics and other parts of its specifications, these are not speculative they are published specifications. The price differential simply isnt adequate enough to have that as a trade off. In some cases QLC drives even can cost as much or more than competing TLC drives. So yes I stand by my opinion that QLC exists to boost margins. They found a way to add more capacity without using more materials and obviously it was tempting for them to sell that in place.

On the failures we also to remember time is king here. TPU reviews a drive, the problem is its a brand new drive, so any long term use of the drive can not be represented by a review, for that we have consumer feedback. Samsung as an example had issues with the 840 planar TLC drives, that were not apparent on day 1 of release. QLC for me is simply too young to consider it a reliable process at this point, so I will take consumer feedback onboard as its the only data available to us plebs who dont have insider information to hand.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Too many consumer QLC SSDs die long before they reach their rated TBW. They also fail to enter permanent read-only mode.

That means it is controller/firmware kink to be worked out rather than NAND endurance issue, just as I thought.

 

[Shou Miko]

If the drive is under warranty contact Crucial for RMA they are usually fine with RMA from the experience I got with their memory.

Had servers running Samsung 870 QVO drives that has dropped them from their raid and refuses to acknowledges the ssd is fine and have not smart alerts on them and runs fine in Windows 10 Pro machines to day.

Also having some server issues with Transcend QLC SSD's looking into why they are also dropping on when the smart status in other computers are showing fine so it can be the transfer speed that needs manually adjusting or update of the raid controller.

 

[AusWolf]

I have an MLC drive that I bought in 2016 in one of my HTPCs, and it still shows 100% in Crystal Disk Info after having written 10+ TB on it.

I was shocked when TLC became the norm, but there wasn't much I could do about it. If it was up to manufacturers, I'm sure every drive would be QLC, but the trade-offs are far too great at this point, I guess. I'm glad we still have TLC at least.

 

[Wirko]

Had servers running Samsung 870 QVO drives that has dropped them from their raid and refuses to acknowledges the ssd is fine and have not smart alerts on them and runs fine in Windows 10 Pro machines to day.

Also having some server issues with Transcend QLC SSD's looking into why they are also dropping on when the smart status in other computers are showing fine so it can be the transfer speed that needs manually adjusting or update of the raid controller.

Raid controller may drop a disk from an array if it detects significantly different write speeds between disks, and that's more likely to occur with QLC SSDs. Does the controller have any adjustments related to that?

 

[SPDIF]

I would never buy an QLC drive in my life, but who knows maybe there's nothing else available in the future as they all move to this type of NAND.

 

[kapone32]

Knock on Wood but I have had 2 BX500s 2TBs in RAID 0 since last year with no errors. They only contain Game files though.

 

[AusWolf]

I would never buy an QLC drive in my life, but who knows maybe there's nothing else available in the future as they all move to this type of NAND.

They moved all to TLC because it's mostly fine for home usage. But if QLC presents itself with too high a failure rate, they won't be able to move all drives to QLC.

 

[ThrashZone]

For the people here that still think that only Samsung has had drives that loose data, and no response from manufacturer. Here you go; Sandisk AKA Western Digital has now the same problems...

SanDisk Extreme Pro Failures Result From Design and Manufacturing Flaws, Says Data Recovery Firm

It doesn't look like a firmware fix will be enough.

www.tomshardware.com

Hi,
Yeah the above is interesting

I've yet to really do much with ssd or m.2's as far as storage and luckily I don't have a vast gaming storage need
So far 500gb 850 evo has sufficed otherwise larger data needs like movies/ tv series/.. go on tried and true hdd's and do just fine as far as daily.. viewing and backup goes

 

[SPDIF]

The 970EVO and 970EVO plus also has proven to be very very reliable SSD's. Cheap but they at least don't use QLC Nand. I know they are trying to make QLC reliable also, but at the moment there's to much trash drives with QLC on the market. I would not use it anyway for data storage, then give me an good old HDD, they have at least proven themself.

 

[Selaya]

No.

 

[Shihab]

Too many consumer QLC SSDs die long before they reach their rated TBW. They also fail to enter permanent read-only mode.

Any reliable figures for this?

 

[Assimilator]

Any reliable figures for this?

No, just the standard old "QLC is evil WAAAH" nonsense, as usual from the QLC refuseniks.

 

[SPDIF]

QLC is not evil in sense, but at moment it's not reliable enough. But at least they are working on it to make it better. Like they also still try making 3-bit MLC to perform better with big TBW.

 

[damric]

This thread reminds me: 100% of my OCZ drives are dead, and I owned like every model they made.