SSD upgrade choices.

[HuLkY]

Hi guys,

I need your help choosing one upgrade for my laptop, it got Samsung 850 EVO M2 250GB SSD, I installed only three games and TADA storage is almost 10-11GB left.. so I decided I will upgrade it next month - storage wise - and I had some ideas and your opinions are so much appreciated, the options are.

1 - 2 of Samsung 850 EVO - 500GB - M.2 SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-N5E500BW) in RAID 0, the cons here is that I will have 1TB of fast storage, price is 340USD and I already have the 250GB so I know how the speed is and would expect double of it maybe? down side is that it's an older model.

2 - 2 of Samsung 950 PRO Series - 256GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V5P256BW)in RAID 0, cons is that it will be super speedy, new technology - so far I googled it for actual performance boost but mostly regarding booting time and some technical notes here and there, this technology is still on the rise, still getting firmware upgrades from Samsung, it will cost me 380USD for only 512GB, unlike option 1 of having 1TB like option 1.

3 - 1 of Samsung 950 PRO Series - 512GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V5P512BW)and avoid the RAID 0 fail risk - I can handle it ok, I have been doing it for round 7 years for servers since this is my job but you know when it happens, IT HAPPENS - It will be speedy more than single 950 256GB single drive, cheaper since it will cost 317USD only, and later in the future maybe add another one with cheaper price by this time? I dunno but it's a standing option.

4 - 1 of Samsung 850 EVO - 250GB - M.2 SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-N5E250BW) and have it RAID 0 with my current one, cheapest option for 98$ but same pros as option 1 I guess, it's same model I have now and no need to sell my current one at this phase if I go to option 4.

I would love to hear your ideas maybe someone can add something I didn't think of, thank you in advance guys.

 

[silentbogo]

First, you need to make sure that your laptop supports NVMe SSDs.

In either case, if I were you, I'd go with the largest M.2 SATA SSD that fits your budget. I'd consider NVMe for a desktop, but I'm not so sure about dumping such amount of money just in a laptop storage upgrade.
Something like 1TB SanDisk X400 can be purchased under $300 almost anywhere (might be even cheaper to ship it from US, since it is only $250 at Newegg).
Alternatively, a 1TB 850 EVO is $100 more, but you get 3D VNAND, and speculatively higher R/W speeds (practically they are about the same as with X400).

If your laptop does support M.2 PCI-e, then I'd go with 256GB 950 Pro as a boot drive, and 1TB SanDisk X400 for storage.

 

[HuLkY]

First, you need to make sure that your laptop supports NVMe SSDs.

In either case, if I were you, I'd go with the largest M.2 SATA SSD that fits your budget. I'd consider NVMe for a desktop, but I'm not so sure about dumping such amount of money just in a laptop storage upgrade.
Something like 1TB SanDisk X400 can be purchased under $300 almost anywhere (might be even cheaper to ship it from US, since it is only $250 at Newegg).
Alternatively, a 1TB 850 EVO is $100 more, but you get 3D VNAND, and speculatively higher R/W speeds (practically they are about the same as with X400).

If your laptop does support M.2 PCI-e, then I'd go with 256GB 950 Pro as a boot drive, and 1TB SanDisk X400 for storage.

Thank you so much for the answer, I am having a regular 1TB HDD for storage already with the laptop and working fine for me for storage issues, the laptop does support M2 PCI-e I asked Sager about it and they recommended me the 950 Pro, but if I go with single 950 Pro I will be having the same storage issue but you suggested damping the 1TB HDD and adding a SSD for it which is a new option for me, but the Copy / Paste / Delete / Write data on it will degrade it so fast? Correct?

 

[silentbogo]

Thank you so much for the answer, I am having a regular 1TB HDD for storage already with the laptop and working fine for me for storage issues, the laptop does support M2 PCI-e I asked Sager about it and they recommended me the 950 Pro, but if I go with single 950 Pro I will be having the same storage issue but you suggested damping the 1TB HDD and adding a SSD for it which is a new option for me, but the Copy / Paste / Delete / Write data on it will degrade it so fast? Correct?

What I suggest, is the following configuration:
- NVMe SSD as a boot drive
- Larger M.2 SATA SSD for games and software
- Keep the hard drive for multimedia (movies, music, photos) and for backups.

I am using the same setup on my desktop and so far I am very happy with it. Though, I have an older Samsung XP941, which works on PCI-e 2.0 bus (Windows 10 loads in 5-6 sec from cold boot).

Degradation is not a big concern nowadays. Most SSDs have a projected lifetime of 9-10 years, which is more than adequate. They will more likely die from controller failure, rather than NAND failure (at least that's what I've seen over the past year or so on low-end drives). My SanDisk Extreme II is already 3 years old and it is in excellent condition. XP941 was purchased recently (used), but it's been in action since late 2014 and still kicks ass (no errors, excellent SMART, no overheating).

 

[Frick]

Only three games? What games? I know modern games are big, but only OS+three games on 250GB sounds a bit off to me.

But yeah as big as you can, essentially.

 

[RejZoR]

If you value reliability, stay away from RAID0. As for M.2 drives, sure, they are faster sequentially and slightly for random. But realistically you can't tell the difference. I've had SM951 and I couldn't tell compared to a single 850 Pro that I have now.

Go with single 1TB 850 Pro/Evo. You'll have most reliable, easiest to maintain and still super fast setup.

 

[flappyone]

... but the Copy / Paste / Delete / Write data on it will degrade it so fast? Correct?

Wrong...state of the art - Drives, especially good ones like the Samsung PRO series, will not "degrade" that fast. As long as you do not run write intensive, professional Databases on your Laptop or something like that, a 950 Pro may last like 15 years for you, really.

 

[bonehead123]

950Pro....no question IMHO

I have 2 & luv 'em bigtime !

 

[RejZoR]

Well, in the torture tests, Samsungs wrote over 1PB before experiencing catastrophic failures. That's 1 Petabyte. Or 1000 TB. It's an insane amount of data written to a drive. I thought I'd accumulate written gigabytes faster as well. Have the drive for like half a year now and I only have 3.5 TB written. Out of which 1.5TB was day 1 migration from 2TB HDD. I'll never going to even max out 300TB guaranteed writes for 850 Pro, let alone 1PB.

 

[HuLkY]

Thanks a lot guys for the help, seems also I might have a new option *fingers crossed* for better or worse I hope xD

Only three games? What games? I know modern games are big, but only OS+three games on 250GB sounds a bit off to me.

But yeah as big as you can, essentially.

TC's Division, DOOM, MK, TR xD , 4 Games. Currently I got only 11GB only free to handle, and any new game update freaks me out.