Barring catastrophic failures, endurance testing a drive to destruction takes many months. Tech Report started torturing a set of 256GB drives in late 2013; as of last month 2 of the 6 drives were still running.
I guess you don't read Anandtech much. Generally they run down the drive enough to move the counter down a few percent, then make a good estimate of endurance based on those numbers. I think it's very interesting and pretty much only Anandtech does it. Or used to do it.
Maybe it's you that doesn't read AT that much ;) (Haha, I had to)
They typically will only do that when they are testing drives with a new type of NAND that we haven't seen yet before, or testing some weird scenario, or something like that. Micron 20nm NAND is a well known entity at this point, and even though they are using custom firmware on this controller, it's performance and behavior seems very similar to the stock SMI firmware -- so basically there is nothing remarkable here. I am sure the endurance will be similar to most other drives with this type of NAND.
Right on the spot. I only do endurance testing with new NAND generations that we haven't seen before to figure out the P/E cycle rating. It takes days, possibly weeks, so there is no point in testing that with every drive. After all, the manufacturers' ratings still matter because once those are reached the warranty will be voided anyway, so my endurance tests aim to tell more about the NAND than the drive itself.
But wait. Does it take days or weeks to run down the counter 1 or 2 percent? That's all you need to get an estimate on actual endurance right? And isn't there variation in the NAND that each manufacturer buys for each line of drives? I'm talking about the binning and how endurance can vary for the same process.
The problem is finding the exact spot where the counter changes by 1 percent, so it usually takes at least a few percent worth of cycling to find that. Generally it takes a couple of days for client drives, but even then that time is away from testing other drives.
You are correct that not every die is equal, but the P/E cycle rating is usually conservative to guarantee that all SSD-grade dies comply that spec. With binning and parameter trimming it's possible to get much more out of the dies though.
I've fried 3 brand new SSDs in my torrent box over the past year. Granted two were 64GB, one 120GB, and they were pretty meh to begin with performance wise.
I knew the SSD wouldn't last, but didn't expect it to fail that quickly. Currently have an OLD 64GB Intel SLC (X25 I think) in for past few months...no issue yet.
Might not have been the flash degration, perhaps some other failure. A couple hundred TB before real failure probably. At least 100 I would say. Google this thread "SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm" - has extreme testing to failure. But yeah, your SSDs were probably sub 25nm.
Has AT ever done anything beyond testing TRIM and provisioning? Are you talking about prolonged write endurance? I think the manufacturer states that. Or are you thinking of this? http://techreport.com/review/27062/the-ssd-enduran...
The quoted numbers are what one would normally expect from honest SSD manufacturers who take into account actual 2x nm MLC NAND endurance with random workloads, based on a 3000 P/E cycles threshold. It's really nice that Transcend doesn't just settle with "40 GB/day" or "80 GB/day" or similar figures just because most consumers won't ever write that much daily.
Give some love to the newfly released BX100 (based on the same controller). Looks like a nice budget offering from Crucial that happens to have very high random io for that controller.
In most of the tests, the Crucial MX100 beats the Transcend SSD370 at the same capacity. The Crucial drives are also cheaper by a few bucks. If that's the case, then why is it said that the Transcend drives are undercutting their competitors? Also, how can you draw the conclusion that the Transcend is the best value drive - better than the MX100?
How do mixed workload correlate with the random write/read results? I've seen the same behaviour in another reviews, where the aggregate results of the SSD370 are shown to be much better than the MX100, notwithstanding both sequential and random results being much better on the latter. As I'm debating which SSD to buy to use as storage for my Steam library, I'd be interested in better understanding how to tell which one of the two is better suited.
The MX100 and Crucial drives in general do well when they are empty, but once you have a dirty drive and mixed workload the performance suffers. Our 2015 Client SSD Suite will have a more thorough look at different performance metrics because I agree that the current suite, especially the random/sequential tests, don't show the whole picture.
The MX100 is only faster in synthetic Iometer tests when the drive has been secure erased. If you look at the Storage Benches, the SSD370 is faster in all except the Heavy Workload, where the MX100 is very marginally faster (not enough to really say it's faster).
I'm actually one of the couple who had problems with the SSD connected to my ASRock H87M Pro4 and after wasting almost two days trying to get it work I sent it back.
There's some speculation that the problem is caused by having 5V and 3.3V at the SATA Power connector as some PSUs and notebooks will supply it and can be resolved by using an adapter from a regular Molex connector instead. Of course I'm not able to refute or confirm that rumor.
However it does definitely not speak for Transcend for letting such a problem slip through nor does it speak for Anandtech not properly researching whether other users have problem with a product, especially when the review is done so late after the release...
I didn't get samples until right before I left to CES, hence the late timing. Let's just say Transcend's marketing people aren't the easiest to work with when it comes to sampling...
Kristian, my beef is *NOT* the late review but rather that this delay should have brought you the possibility to check other peoples experiences.
The two most important factors (yes, even more than speed) in SSDs are compatibility and reliability, the first one is definitely compromised and the jury is still out on the second.
With the still uninvestigated compatibility problem on the table there shouldn't have been any recommendation IMNSHO.
I had slow speed and weird connection issues on all the SATA ports of my ASrock Z77 Extreme4-M while using a 512GB Trancend SSD370. Swapped it into a HP laptop and it worked fine. Very frustrating though, you would think they would test it on a wide range of systems. Looks like there are multiple motherboards that have problems with it. I saw it mentioned that it may be a compatibility issue with some SATA chipsets.
>The SSD370 is available in capacities from 32GB to all the way to up to 1TB. I decided to leave out the 32GB and 64GB units from the specification table as I suspect these are mostly OEM-focused models because (to be honest) there isn't a significant retail market for drives smaller than 128GB anymore.
Looks like these models are not OEM after all, as they can be found in lots of EU online shops
"The StaticDataRefresh technology monitors the error rates and when a preset threshold value is reached, the data will be rewritten to restore the correct cell charge level. I suspect all SSDs do this because it's vital to ensure the health of old data, but it's the first time I've seen it mentioned in a data sheet."
I've also believed this for some time. This is a little off-topic, but doesn't this mean that TRIM is more important to drive longevity than is widely believed? Sure, garbage collection and over provisioning can usually maintain a drives' performance levels, but if the drive is re-copying around unused blocks, then this seems like a problem. (I'm looking at you, Apple!)
Technically yes, because the drive would be rewriting invalid (i.e. deleted) data as well. However, even without TRIM the drive will know what pages are invalid once the OS writes to the same LBAs again. The invalid pages will then be deleted sometime during garbage collection, which will return the drive to "TRIMed" state (i.e. no invalid data).
It's basically the same with TRIM too because the drive doesn't necessarily erase the data immediately (i.e. data will initially be written to OP space). TRIM merely gives the drive a heads up and the data can be deleted when appropriate, whereas non-TRIM system will give the heads up when there' already new data coming in.
I've been waiting for this review for months. These drives were being showcased inside a low end server at Computex. I bought for 512GB drives and put them inside a HP server, connected in RAID 5 to a P410i controller. After a few months I started experiencing one drive failing every week. It all went downhill, as the failures started ocurring almost every day. I removed those drives and they are now working fine inside laptops. Transcend support told me they could not provide any support, as these drives were not tested in server environments.
Although these are working fine and fast in laptops, I was a bit disappointed that they show it running in servers at Computex and then fail to support that same scenario in the real world.
What firmware was used on the Plextor M6S during testing, or are those old historical results provided for comparison testing? Newer Plextor firmwares (released over the last 6 months) are supposed to have addressed their service time issues, and it would be interesting to see Crucial / Micron's M550 and M600 with their recent (early Jan 2015) firmwares that hopefully address the same issues.
Thanks for the extensive review. I recently purchased the Kingmax 256GB SME35 which has the same controller and memory. So far the drive has been excellent.
Compared to other SSDs power consumption of SSD370 is high, as seen in review. What about comparing it to regular HDDs? As I understand, it's the same. I'm asking because I'm considering replacing regular HDD in my laptop with SSD370 256. So my battery life will remain the same? It won't be shortened?
Hi this is to inform all concerned, I don't get in what technology transcend SSD370 is made up of... I've recently bought one of this & now after keeping a backup of my crucial data here... one folder containing my tutorials is not respondins as needed... I don't seem to find any solutions anywhere in the net.... so plz experts in ssd help me here... my email: neobondhu[at] gmail[dot] com
You really should provide screenshots of actual capacities in these reviews. There can be easily ~10GB difference in capacity between brands/models even when labelled similarly, at ~240-256GB capacities.
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Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Perhaps I missed it but no mention/testing of endurance? All I see are manufacturer quoted numbers in the table.DanNeely - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Barring catastrophic failures, endurance testing a drive to destruction takes many months. Tech Report started torturing a set of 256GB drives in late 2013; as of last month 2 of the 6 drives were still running.http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-enduran...
Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I guess you don't read Anandtech much. Generally they run down the drive enough to move the counter down a few percent, then make a good estimate of endurance based on those numbers. I think it's very interesting and pretty much only Anandtech does it. Or used to do it.extide - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Maybe it's you that doesn't read AT that much ;) (Haha, I had to)They typically will only do that when they are testing drives with a new type of NAND that we haven't seen yet before, or testing some weird scenario, or something like that. Micron 20nm NAND is a well known entity at this point, and even though they are using custom firmware on this controller, it's performance and behavior seems very similar to the stock SMI firmware -- so basically there is nothing remarkable here. I am sure the endurance will be similar to most other drives with this type of NAND.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Right on the spot. I only do endurance testing with new NAND generations that we haven't seen before to figure out the P/E cycle rating. It takes days, possibly weeks, so there is no point in testing that with every drive. After all, the manufacturers' ratings still matter because once those are reached the warranty will be voided anyway, so my endurance tests aim to tell more about the NAND than the drive itself.Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Okay makes sense.I can admit when I'm wrong.
Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
But wait. Does it take days or weeks to run down the counter 1 or 2 percent? That's all you need to get an estimate on actual endurance right?And isn't there variation in the NAND that each manufacturer buys for each line of drives? I'm talking about the binning and how endurance can vary for the same process.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
The problem is finding the exact spot where the counter changes by 1 percent, so it usually takes at least a few percent worth of cycling to find that. Generally it takes a couple of days for client drives, but even then that time is away from testing other drives.You are correct that not every die is equal, but the P/E cycle rating is usually conservative to guarantee that all SSD-grade dies comply that spec. With binning and parameter trimming it's possible to get much more out of the dies though.
Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Wow. Thanks for the specific reply.Souka - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
Just thought to share:I've fried 3 brand new SSDs in my torrent box over the past year. Granted two were 64GB, one 120GB, and they were pretty meh to begin with performance wise.
I knew the SSD wouldn't last, but didn't expect it to fail that quickly. Currently have an OLD 64GB Intel SLC (X25 I think) in for past few months...no issue yet.
danwat1234 - Saturday, January 21, 2017 - link
Might not have been the flash degration, perhaps some other failure. A couple hundred TB before real failure probably. At least 100 I would say. Google this thread "SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm" - has extreme testing to failure. But yeah, your SSDs were probably sub 25nm.nathanddrews - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Has AT ever done anything beyond testing TRIM and provisioning? Are you talking about prolonged write endurance? I think the manufacturer states that. Or are you thinking of this?http://techreport.com/review/27062/the-ssd-enduran...
Solid State Brain - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
The quoted numbers are what one would normally expect from honest SSD manufacturers who take into account actual 2x nm MLC NAND endurance with random workloads, based on a 3000 P/E cycles threshold. It's really nice that Transcend doesn't just settle with "40 GB/day" or "80 GB/day" or similar figures just because most consumers won't ever write that much daily.Dr0id - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Do you know plan on reviewing the Muskin Enhanced Reactor series? The 1 TB model seems to be the least expensive model on Newegg for that capacity.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
That's the next drive in the queue, so check back next week :)hojnikb - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Give some love to the newfly released BX100 (based on the same controller). Looks like a nice budget offering from Crucial that happens to have very high random io for that controller.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I don't have samples yet.romrunning - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
In most of the tests, the Crucial MX100 beats the Transcend SSD370 at the same capacity. The Crucial drives are also cheaper by a few bucks. If that's the case, then why is it said that the Transcend drives are undercutting their competitors? Also, how can you draw the conclusion that the Transcend is the best value drive - better than the MX100?hojnikb - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Because it kills every crucial offering in mixed workload (destroyer).Sequential speeds mean very little with ssds.
Don Tonino - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
How do mixed workload correlate with the random write/read results? I've seen the same behaviour in another reviews, where the aggregate results of the SSD370 are shown to be much better than the MX100, notwithstanding both sequential and random results being much better on the latter.As I'm debating which SSD to buy to use as storage for my Steam library, I'd be interested in better understanding how to tell which one of the two is better suited.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
The MX100 and Crucial drives in general do well when they are empty, but once you have a dirty drive and mixed workload the performance suffers. Our 2015 Client SSD Suite will have a more thorough look at different performance metrics because I agree that the current suite, especially the random/sequential tests, don't show the whole picture.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
The MX100 is only faster in synthetic Iometer tests when the drive has been secure erased. If you look at the Storage Benches, the SSD370 is faster in all except the Heavy Workload, where the MX100 is very marginally faster (not enough to really say it's faster).eddieobscurant - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Great review, keep them coming.Just to let you know that there are some compatibility issues with amd chipset motherboards and this ssd.
http://www.amazon.de/product-reviews/B00K9HID1C/re...
Daniel Egger - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Personally I'd rather have linked to the various English forums rather than amazon.de so most people here can understand what the problem is all about like:https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=183310.0
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2361429/p...
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/...
I'm actually one of the couple who had problems with the SSD connected to my ASRock H87M Pro4 and after wasting almost two days trying to get it work I sent it back.
There's some speculation that the problem is caused by having 5V and 3.3V at the SATA Power connector as some PSUs and notebooks will supply it and can be resolved by using an adapter from a regular Molex connector instead. Of course I'm not able to refute or confirm that rumor.
However it does definitely not speak for Transcend for letting such a problem slip through nor does it speak for Anandtech not properly researching whether other users have problem with a product, especially when the review is done so late after the release...
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I didn't get samples until right before I left to CES, hence the late timing. Let's just say Transcend's marketing people aren't the easiest to work with when it comes to sampling...Daniel Egger - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
Kristian, my beef is *NOT* the late review but rather that this delay should have brought you the possibility to check other peoples experiences.The two most important factors (yes, even more than speed) in SSDs are compatibility and reliability, the first one is definitely compromised and the jury is still out on the second.
With the still uninvestigated compatibility problem on the table there shouldn't have been any recommendation IMNSHO.
bfragged - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I had slow speed and weird connection issues on all the SATA ports of my ASrock Z77 Extreme4-M while using a 512GB Trancend SSD370. Swapped it into a HP laptop and it worked fine. Very frustrating though, you would think they would test it on a wide range of systems. Looks like there are multiple motherboards that have problems with it. I saw it mentioned that it may be a compatibility issue with some SATA chipsets.Daniel Egger - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
Try using a Molex to SATA adapter rather than connecting it directly to the SATA connector of the PSU.hojnikb - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
>The SSD370 is available in capacities from 32GB to all the way to up to 1TB. I decided to leave out the 32GB and 64GB units from the specification table as I suspect these are mostly OEM-focused models because (to be honest) there isn't a significant retail market for drives smaller than 128GB anymore.Looks like these models are not OEM after all, as they can be found in lots of EU online shops
KAlmquist - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Newegg sells the following sizes:64GB $60
128GB $80
256GB $105
512GB $202
hojnikb - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
geizhals.at also finds 32GB version for 32€. Although i dont think many people will buy this.Maltz - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
"The StaticDataRefresh technology monitors the error rates and when a preset threshold value is reached, the data will be rewritten to restore the correct cell charge level. I suspect all SSDs do this because it's vital to ensure the health of old data, but it's the first time I've seen it mentioned in a data sheet."I've also believed this for some time. This is a little off-topic, but doesn't this mean that TRIM is more important to drive longevity than is widely believed? Sure, garbage collection and over provisioning can usually maintain a drives' performance levels, but if the drive is re-copying around unused blocks, then this seems like a problem. (I'm looking at you, Apple!)
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Technically yes, because the drive would be rewriting invalid (i.e. deleted) data as well. However, even without TRIM the drive will know what pages are invalid once the OS writes to the same LBAs again. The invalid pages will then be deleted sometime during garbage collection, which will return the drive to "TRIMed" state (i.e. no invalid data).It's basically the same with TRIM too because the drive doesn't necessarily erase the data immediately (i.e. data will initially be written to OP space). TRIM merely gives the drive a heads up and the data can be deleted when appropriate, whereas non-TRIM system will give the heads up when there' already new data coming in.
Gc - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
| p7: Drive Power Consumption - Random Write| ...
| Transcend SSD370 128GB - 1.90
| ...
| Transcend SSD370 512GB - 2.73
| ...
| Transcend SSD370 256GB - 3.12
Anyone have an explanation for how the middle 256GB size used the most power in this test?
(or was there a typo?)
IlikeSSD - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
with new OCZ prices I'd rather go for Arc... http://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/leo-w...velanapontinha - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
I've been waiting for this review for months. These drives were being showcased inside a low end server at Computex. I bought for 512GB drives and put them inside a HP server, connected in RAID 5 to a P410i controller.After a few months I started experiencing one drive failing every week. It all went downhill, as the failures started ocurring almost every day.
I removed those drives and they are now working fine inside laptops.
Transcend support told me they could not provide any support, as these drives were not tested in server environments.
Although these are working fine and fast in laptops, I was a bit disappointed that they show it running in servers at Computex and then fail to support that same scenario in the real world.
velanapontinha - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
Please read "I bought *four 512GB drives".Also, I'd like to add that when placed in laptops, the drives reported 100% health as per Transcend's app.
editorsorgtfo - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
"the SSD370 is also listed at even lower prices on Amazon Prime right now"What about regular Amazon? I don't have a Prime account.
cbjwthwm - Saturday, January 31, 2015 - link
What firmware was used on the Plextor M6S during testing, or are those old historical results provided for comparison testing? Newer Plextor firmwares (released over the last 6 months) are supposed to have addressed their service time issues, and it would be interesting to see Crucial / Micron's M550 and M600 with their recent (early Jan 2015) firmwares that hopefully address the same issues.Gizbeat - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
Thanks for the extensive review. I recently purchased the Kingmax 256GB SME35 which has the same controller and memory. So far the drive has been excellent.danko358 - Wednesday, September 23, 2015 - link
Compared to other SSDs power consumption of SSD370 is high, as seen in review. What about comparing it to regular HDDs? As I understand, it's the same. I'm asking because I'm considering replacing regular HDD in my laptop with SSD370 256. So my battery life will remain the same? It won't be shortened?amirzz - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
Hithis is to inform all concerned, I don't get in what technology transcend SSD370 is made up of...
I've recently bought one of this & now after keeping a backup of my crucial data here...
one folder containing my tutorials is not respondins as needed... I don't seem to find any solutions anywhere in the net....
so plz experts in ssd help me here...
my email: neobondhu[at] gmail[dot] com
Firedrops - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link
You really should provide screenshots of actual capacities in these reviews. There can be easily ~10GB difference in capacity between brands/models even when labelled similarly, at ~240-256GB capacities.lenberg - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
Does anyone know how to align partitions in this ssd properly?What are the NAND Erase Block Size and NAND Page Size?
Thanks in advance.