What's your boot drive? (Any recommendations?)

[masterdeejay]

Samsung PM9A1 1Tb (980 pro oem) + Akasa Gecko Pro heatsink
60c at load

 

[SPDIF]

I dare say that there are actually no bad SSDs to boot from anymore. Just avoid a QLC SSD as a boot drive at all times. These are more suited as a pure storage.
Even DRAM-less SSD are now more then fast enough as a boot drive, such as the WD SN770.

 

[Palindrome]

My old Samsung 970 PRO 2TB, still going strong... Boot in Windows 11 in seconds. This baby, they don't make them with this quality of NAND storage nowadays...

I think i can take this drive with me in my grave.

Rock solid, undestroyable this thing, never felt sorry for buying this SSD. In an older laptop an Samsung 860EVO, way better then the new 870EVO, again because of using rock solid Nand Flash. These drives also never did get a firmware update in their whole lifetime! But all new drives has so many Firmware updates, unbelievable...

I use also WD SN850X or 990 PRO and i can't see any difference in boot time with Windows or games with that old 970PRO.

Anecdotally I agree, I've worked with plenty of client systems where the old Samsung 840 or 850 boot SSD still felt perfectly snappy despite years of use. Something something "they don't make em like they used to". I've also never updated the firmware on my Samsung drives, although I've also not had any updates available for my 970 Evo since I purchased it so...

It might be the best course of action for me then to treat my 970 Evo as "ol' reliable" and not try to fix my system if ain't broke

 

[Hyderz]

Been using Samsung 970 evo plus 500gb …. It has been flawless

 

[SPDIF]

Been using Samsung 970 evo plus 500gb …. It has been flawless

Yep these drives are also Rock Solid with good and strong NAND, like i said earlier, they don't make drives like this anymore... New generation SSD, most of them get a firmware update every 6 month's.
The 970 series are nearly indestructible so to say. The older series Samsung SATA, the same story, never firmware updates, never problems reported.

I am happy to have some of them in my house. I never felt sorry for buying them, and they still are being used. The only problem is that some of them have a limited capacity. 256GB is nowadays quickly used up. My wife her laptop uses a 860Pro ssd, from 256GB, it was one of the first to become available.

 

[A Computer Guy]

My Samsung 970 Evo has been going strong for years now, however I am considering buying a newer, faster boot drive to replace it. The 970 Evo model is several years old now; and with my board having a Gen 5 M.2 slot, I could take advantage of the latest and greatest NVMe drives. Even a good Gen 4 drive would run rings around my 970 Evo.

As such I'm wondering, what boot drive do you use? What are your experiences with it/them? Any Gen 4/5 drives you'd recommend in particular? Any you'd steer clear of?

My disk usage needs are about as casual as they come, but the prospect of newer, faster tech is enticing nonetheless

The only thing I've really heard are Samsung's firmware woes with the 990 (?) series, so as reliable my 970 Evo has been, I'm a bit unsure whether I'd get a 990. Not too worried about my data, since most of it is on a separate drive and backed up regularly, I'd like to avoid having to go through an RMA process or multiple OS reinstalls with a brand new drive.

Would be great to hear what y'all are using

I've used the following NVME without issues. Per the Samsung devices I've had all of them came with up to date firmware's out of the box so no issues there. They might not be the best but they've always given me good performance consistency.

• Samsung 970 512GB (used for OS and Synology read-cache)
• Samsung 970 EVO 2TB (used for OS and secondary storage)
• Samsung 980 PRO 2TB (used for OS and secondary storage)
• Samsung 990 PRO 2TB/4TB (used for OS and secondary storage)
• TeamGroup MP34 4TB (used for games)

Used for VM's (for high endurance and performance consistency)

• Intel Optane 905p 960GB
• Intel Optane 905p 1.5TB

Lower Performance Models

• Crucial P1 1TB (used for OS and secondary storage)
• Crucial P1 2TB (used for OS and games)
• Crucial P2 2TB (used for OS and games)

This one was a bit problematic at first and refused to work in one of my motherboards.

• Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB (used for OS)

Some observations and notes I've had since switching to NVMe.

• A seemingly higher chance of OS file corruption with NVMe on sudden powerloss. At least much more of a chance than for the much longer time I've been using SATA based SSD's.
• In particular NVMe without PLP that uses HBM may be more susceptible to storage errors with a bad RAM overclock or sudden powerloss.
• Lower performance QLC based drives are just fine for games storage however large transfers can take awhile once caching reaches capacity. If you are restoring something like a 2TB or 4TB steam library from a NAS or USB this can take awhile.
• NVMe RAID seems problematic for several reasons.
  • Loss of TRIM support behind RAID solutions
    • Modern SSD's or SSD's with additional provisioned space can mitigate lack of TRIM issued commands to do housekeeping.
  • Less performance compared to native access.
    • When raiding NVMe I prefer to use Windows Disk Management for a software only RAID making it both portable and ensuring the OS is maximizing the native interfaces of the drive.
• Special Note regarding Samsung 970/970 EVO and the use of disk imaging software
  • If you used the Samsung specific driver and image restoration onto a replacement drive will result in an unbootable volume. You must change the driver to the Windows Standard NVMe Express Controller then image your drive so when you restore that image onto a non-970 it will boot into Windows.
• Special Note regarding NVMe duplicators
  • If you use one then get one that can accommodate heatsinks because the drives get insanely hot when duplicating
  • Sometimes there is some incompatibility with the duplicator and the copy will fail or create a corrupted copy
  • The 1st most successful duplication I've had is from motherboard NVMe slot to NVMe slot.
  • The 2nd most successful duplication I've had is from external USB enclosure to motherboard NVMe slot. However note NVMe in an external enclosure may require a lot of power so best to use a rear panel USBC port that is more likely to supply enough power for the unit. Without a decent heatsink these can get very hot as well.
• NVMe complaints
  • Lack of power loss protection
  • No hot plug capability like with SATA
  • Degraded performance as drives fill up (Optane excluded)

When installing the primary drive I tend to partition 256GB to 512GB for OS and the remaining portion for data to reduce the burden on imaging and simplify backups.

 

[Ruru]

Kingston NV2 1TB here. Nothing to complain when this is a cheapo PCIe 4.0 drive.

 

[Shrek]

When installing the primary drive I tend to partition 256GB to 512GB for OS and the remaining portion for data to reduce the burden on imaging and simplify backups.

I would avoid having the OS and backups on the same drive.

 

[Darkholm]

Had 970 Evo Plus, now Kingston KC3000.
KC3000 is faster, 970 is now Steam/uPlay/Epic storage drive. Both 2TB.

 

[A Computer Guy]

I would avoid having the OS and backups on the same drive.

I would think that's obvious. Imaging and backups should be stored elsewhere.

I would avoid having the OS and backups on the same drive.

I must have angered the backup admin gods. I had a more elaborate response but I swear one of your replies and my reply following it has just disappeared. -- oops nevermind it was a DM

 

[Sarajiel]

The only thing I've really heard are Samsung's firmware woes with the 990 (?) series, so as reliable my 970 Evo has been, I'm a bit unsure whether I'd get a 990. Not too worried about my data, since most of it is on a separate drive and backed up regularly, I'd like to avoid having to go through an RMA process or multiple OS reinstalls with a brand new drive.

Not a Samsung 980 Pro or 990 Pro user, but those issues seem to have been fixed by now. Similar to the firmware issues that some SN850X SSDs had on Windows 11.

Personally, I like my Solidigm P44 Pro 2TB drives, despite their high cost here in the Eurozone.

My boot drives are:
Samsung 980 1TB, gaming laptop
Samsung 970 EVO 1TB, office PC
Solidigm P44 Pro 2TB, primary work and gaming machines
Various 1TB and 2TB Kingston KC3000 & Fury Renegade, WD SN850 & SN850X, and even a Lexar NM790 drive booting my video production and render machines.
Although the Lexar NM790 is a great drive for games or project data, it's a bit meh as a boot drive. However, not bad enough to feel the need to switch it out and reinstall the OS.

Judging by the amount of NVMEs in your system, keep the EVO 970 as boot drive, especially if you are lucky and have an early revision, since those are fairly solid. Consider separating your data and games to additional M.2 drives that are directly connected to the CPU. That way, you might gain a bit of performance, especially in some of the newer AAA games with a ton of eye-candy. Pretty much any halfway decent Gen4 drive is more than enough for that use case.

 

[SPDIF]

If you have an old Samsung 970 series or 860 series at home, be proud of it you will never that kind of quality anymore nowadays!
Even older series from Samsung are the best one could get. They are sometimes slow and have limited capacity, but they are nearly indestructible.

In my case with an old Samsung 970PRO 1TB as boot drive, i don't feel or see any difference with a new very fast NVMe SSD. Only when copy GB of data you are going to see the difference, but who is buying a expensive SSD to copy GB of data every day? Then you're better off with an old platters disk drive and spare the life of your NVMe SSD, it's slower but you don't destroy anything. SSD are not made to copy GB's of data every day. They all have limited life, but are lightning fast.

An old platter HDD does not care about that at all...

 

[Shrek]

For me reliability and longevity are much more important than speed.

 

[SPDIF]

In the system i use now to type the text here i am using a even older 512GB 970PRO as boot drive for Windows 11. Boot's in seconds to the desktop.

 

[JoeTheDestroyer]

The benefit of pure Optane is more than just booting; I also like the idea that the drive is not changing mode (SLC, QLC) as it fills up but keeps up the full speed throughout.

I don't use my boot drive for anything but booting. There is nothing to fill up. Software/games are installed to other drives (which includes a 905p). Even my user profile is on another drive.

So I repeat, I see no reason to upgrade my boot drive when I only (re)boot my machine for updates (which I put off for as long as possible).

 

[Kapone33]

I got a great deal on a MP700 1Tb and that is my main driver. They do run warm though so be prepared to have your PC 6 degrees warmer. I did like it so much that I got a 2Tb for some Games and to bench against the rest of my array.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

In the system i use now to type the text here i am using a even older 512GB 970PRO as boot drive for Windows 11. Boot's in seconds to the desktop.

View attachment 360266

Ahh! My 970 Pro 512 GB is at 99 percent.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Ahh! My 970 Pro 512 GB is at 99 percent.

99% free?

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

99% free?

Yes. But I'm not sure if I used it that much yet, so I'm getting MX500-like PTSD of sudden percentage plunges. Like when my MX500 500 GB in just 1 year, plunged to 82 percent!

Yes, I do a lot of game video recording, often higher than 1080p.

 

[lexluthermiester]

My Samsung 970 Evo has been going strong for years now, however I am considering buying a newer, faster boot drive to replace it. The 970 Evo model is several years old now; and with my board having a Gen 5 M.2 slot, I could take advantage of the latest and greatest NVMe drives. Even a good Gen 4 drive would run rings around my 970 Evo.

As such I'm wondering, what boot drive do you use? What are your experiences with it/them? Any Gen 4/5 drives you'd recommend in particular? Any you'd steer clear of?

My disk usage needs are about as casual as they come, but the prospect of newer, faster tech is enticing nonetheless

The only thing I've really heard are Samsung's firmware woes with the 990 (?) series, so as reliable my 970 Evo has been, I'm a bit unsure whether I'd get a 990. Not too worried about my data, since most of it is on a separate drive and backed up regularly, I'd like to avoid having to go through an RMA process or multiple OS reinstalls with a brand new drive.

Would be great to hear what y'all are using

I'm using an enterprise 22110 NVMe. It does about 2200MB per second which is more than fast enough for me. I've tried faster drives in this same system and could only see the difference in the benchmark utilities. It didn't "feel" or seem any faster. So I'm sticking with it until I need something faster.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

IIRC, my Crucial MX 500 500 GB SATA SSD, isn't known to cause corruption, but the Crucial MX 500 firmware is suspected of deprecating blocks like no tomorrow, LOL. On top of that, wasn't able to find any possible firmware fix, in case I experienced a firmware bug.

 

[Ruru]

Kingston NV2 1TB here. Nothing to complain when this is a cheapo PCIe 4.0 drive.

Reinstalled Win11 to a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB. Totally enough space for pure OS drive, everything other SSD storage (128GB + 240GB + 480GB + 2x1TB) for games.

 

[GamerGuy]

I don't really care much about boot speed, as long as my system boots up a fair bit faster than a HDD, I'm fine with it. My boot drive is a 256GB Sabrent Rocket NVMe M.2 2280 SSD that I'd gotten years back, still going strong so I have no reason to replace it. Boots into OS fast enough for me....

In fact, my 2nd rig, being newer, has a faster boot drive than my main rig, a 500GB PCIe4 x4 drive while my Sabrent Rocket is a PCIe3 x4 Drive. But honestly, I don't 'feel' the difference in OS loading times, both are fast.

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

990 Pro
Kingston fury renegade
Solidigm p41
WD black sn850x

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

990 Pro
Kingston fury renegade
Solidigm p41
WD black sn850x

I almost got a Kingston Fury Renegade.