Yep! Wondering if we can get a levy passed in my district if I can buy a bunch of cheap SSDs and RAM to breathe some life in our aging computers. Most of our systems are in the CeleronD to i3 Sandy Bridge range with 1-2GB of ram and 80GB HDDs... The CPUs still wouldn't be fantastic, but they would at least run smoothly for a few more years.
>Muh MLC! >Muh endurance! >Muh data retention! >Muh reliability! >Muh random I/O! >Muh this drive isn't exactly what I want in my PC, so instead of using PC Part Picker to find a suitable drive for my incredibly critical tastes, I'm going to post a comment on a news article expressing how disgusted I am by how this drive isn't up to _MY_ standards.
I'm waiting for the usual SSD memes. Go ahead, throw 'em out there, because I know the usual group of Anandtech readers are going to get triggered by the mere mention of "TLC".
Ha! Lol. Can i add to your tropes -> I dont know why anyone would buy this, personally i have 2 x 950 pros 512gb in raid 0, and a couple of EVO 1tb for my games. </brag> its not that expensive to have decent performance and this kind of drive is just terrible, and has no reason for being. /s
It's not "incredibly critical tastes", nor is it about comparing cheap SSDs to high end ones. It's about what you're getting by paying a lot more per GB, compared to HDDs.
Some recent TLC drives have been incredibly disappointing with sequential write speeds, to the point of being slower than a 7200 RPM drives. AT got 88 MB/s out of the BX200, and 65-103 MB/s out of the SP550 (depending on capacity). A modern 7200 RPM drive can easily exceed that. Large file copies and application installs might actually be slower on a TLC SSD than on a 7200 RPM HDD.
wait...DRAM-less as in no DRAM cache as in nothing to worry about flushing at power loss? Even if it *is* mucho slower, this could be the in-between that many have been looking for to move to all-flash in their home arrays.
I'd be speaking of OSs that don't have a write cache enabled, of course. There are going to be opportunities for badly implemented WCs (not the European acronym) at a few different levels. I'm speaking specifically of SSDs without some sort of "power loss protection", usually in the form of an array of capacitors that keep the system charged long enough to flush the DRAM buffer to NAND. See this lulzy article from 2014 as an example: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/173887-ssd-st...
Things are improving, as back in 2012/2013 the networking device company I worked at ran a similar trial and found that ALL non-Intel SSDs we tested survived only a few dozen power loss events before becoming irrecoverably corrupted. This is why I've only used Intel drives for anything I care about (everything other than Lightroom cache and my Steam\steamapps folder), but I'm the paranoid type.
wait...no DRAM as in no cache as in nothing to flush in a power loss event? Meaning no need for backing caps?
Even if it is grossly slower than their DRAM-packing brethren, WHO CARES? This could be the in-between that many of us have been waiting for to finally dump spinning rust in our home arrays!
A lot of end user consumers and OEMs are extremely cost-sensitive which is one reason why conventional hard drives have loitered for so long (higher capacities being the other big one). As long as ADATA's drives offer performance that's substantially better than rotating platter magnetic storage, these new drives will probably sell just fine.
"higher capacities being the other big one" Yes, but pretty sure that is the major one.
Also, no DRAM doesn't mean it isn't susceptible to power loss issues. You don't know how the drive initiates. If it fails mid write, does it boot up and finish the write or just boot up to a blank state and you 4GB home movie is lost to the ather? :)
If it can beat the SP550 and AMD Radeon R3 in price and performance it will probably do well. They seem to sell between 35 € for the 120GB version. Picked up the R3 for 35,16 € shipped last week. Now only my travel laptop and PS4 have spinning disks.
"This is based on low-density parity-check (LDPC) code and reduces data errors, improves data integrity and thus should increase the endurance of NAND from constant rewrites."
Error checking, if implemented correctly, may help reduce data errors (or rather correct them) and thus help data integrity. Error checking DOES NOT, however, increase endurance of NAND cells. The error checking methods often used in conjunction with TLC NAND will allow you to continued to use blocks with bad cells up to a point, but cells still wear out with the normal number of writes. If you want to increase endurance, look to better NAND, Load balancing ,and reductions to write amplification.
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21 Comments
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r3loaded - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Absolutely incredible how affordable SSDs are becoming nowadays.DanNeely - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
That's OK, if/when it is reviewed it'll be massively flamed in the comments for being slower than the fastest high end SSDs.CaedenV - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Yep!Wondering if we can get a levy passed in my district if I can buy a bunch of cheap SSDs and RAM to breathe some life in our aging computers. Most of our systems are in the CeleronD to i3 Sandy Bridge range with 1-2GB of ram and 80GB HDDs... The CPUs still wouldn't be fantastic, but they would at least run smoothly for a few more years.
JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
>Muh MLC!>Muh endurance!
>Muh data retention!
>Muh reliability!
>Muh random I/O!
>Muh this drive isn't exactly what I want in my PC, so instead of using PC Part Picker to find a suitable drive for my incredibly critical tastes, I'm going to post a comment on a news article expressing how disgusted I am by how this drive isn't up to _MY_ standards.
I'm waiting for the usual SSD memes. Go ahead, throw 'em out there, because I know the usual group of Anandtech readers are going to get triggered by the mere mention of "TLC".
trparky - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
I'm more disappointed by the fact that it's 15 nm planar NAND as versus 3D-NAND.MrSpadge - Friday, June 17, 2016 - link
Well, 15 nm planar is still cheaper than current 3D-NAND.doggface - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Ha! Lol.Can i add to your tropes ->
I dont know why anyone would buy this, personally i have 2 x 950 pros 512gb in raid 0, and a couple of EVO 1tb for my games. </brag> its not that expensive to have decent performance and this kind of drive is just terrible, and has no reason for being. /s
eldakka - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
I'd never heard of PC Part Picker, thanks for that!chlamchowder - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
It's not "incredibly critical tastes", nor is it about comparing cheap SSDs to high end ones. It's about what you're getting by paying a lot more per GB, compared to HDDs.Some recent TLC drives have been incredibly disappointing with sequential write speeds, to the point of being slower than a 7200 RPM drives. AT got 88 MB/s out of the BX200, and 65-103 MB/s out of the SP550 (depending on capacity). A modern 7200 RPM drive can easily exceed that. Large file copies and application installs might actually be slower on a TLC SSD than on a 7200 RPM HDD.
DomOfSF - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
wait...DRAM-less as in no DRAM cache as in nothing to worry about flushing at power loss? Even if it *is* mucho slower, this could be the in-between that many have been looking for to move to all-flash in their home arrays.MrSpadge - Friday, June 17, 2016 - link
No, that makes no practical difference. The OS still has a write cache, so everything in there still gets lost during a power failure.DomOfSF - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
I'd be speaking of OSs that don't have a write cache enabled, of course. There are going to be opportunities for badly implemented WCs (not the European acronym) at a few different levels. I'm speaking specifically of SSDs without some sort of "power loss protection", usually in the form of an array of capacitors that keep the system charged long enough to flush the DRAM buffer to NAND. See this lulzy article from 2014 as an example:http://www.extremetech.com/computing/173887-ssd-st...
Things are improving, as back in 2012/2013 the networking device company I worked at ran a similar trial and found that ALL non-Intel SSDs we tested survived only a few dozen power loss events before becoming irrecoverably corrupted. This is why I've only used Intel drives for anything I care about (everything other than Lightroom cache and my Steam\steamapps folder), but I'm the paranoid type.
DomOfSF - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
wait...no DRAM as in no cache as in nothing to flush in a power loss event? Meaning no need for backing caps?Even if it is grossly slower than their DRAM-packing brethren, WHO CARES? This could be the in-between that many of us have been waiting for to finally dump spinning rust in our home arrays!
DomOfSF - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
dbl post, thx web errors.BrokenCrayons - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
A lot of end user consumers and OEMs are extremely cost-sensitive which is one reason why conventional hard drives have loitered for so long (higher capacities being the other big one). As long as ADATA's drives offer performance that's substantially better than rotating platter magnetic storage, these new drives will probably sell just fine.Death666Angel - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
"higher capacities being the other big one" Yes, but pretty sure that is the major one.Also, no DRAM doesn't mean it isn't susceptible to power loss issues. You don't know how the drive initiates. If it fails mid write, does it boot up and finish the write or just boot up to a blank state and you 4GB home movie is lost to the ather? :)
DomOfSF - Friday, June 24, 2016 - link
my bad. I guess I'm not used to looking at cut-rate parts. I mean, who would make a drive that tops out at 240GB? :-|DomOfSF - Friday, June 24, 2016 - link
true...can't assume competence anywhere, where my data is concerned.Ariknowsbest - Friday, June 17, 2016 - link
If it can beat the SP550 and AMD Radeon R3 in price and performance it will probably do well. They seem to sell between 35 € for the 120GB version. Picked up the R3 for 35,16 € shipped last week. Now only my travel laptop and PS4 have spinning disks.Michael Bay - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
You need better capacities for that. But it`s a start.BurntMyBacon - Monday, June 20, 2016 - link
"This is based on low-density parity-check (LDPC) code and reduces data errors, improves data integrity and thus should increase the endurance of NAND from constant rewrites."Error checking, if implemented correctly, may help reduce data errors (or rather correct them) and thus help data integrity. Error checking DOES NOT, however, increase endurance of NAND cells. The error checking methods often used in conjunction with TLC NAND will allow you to continued to use blocks with bad cells up to a point, but cells still wear out with the normal number of writes. If you want to increase endurance, look to better NAND, Load balancing ,and reductions to write amplification.