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Suggestion: Place to talk about SSD's we have tested.

This is being brought up because of this post: Is it time to transition to SSDs for standard replacements?.

With the cost of SSD's getting to a point you can give them a serious thought for spinning drive replacements, I think we need to have a place on iFixit for SSD owners to review their SSD of choice and provide some insight on how well a given drive will work in a certain use case.

What would be a good way to do this?

Edit 10/30/16

Dan makes some good points I failed to mention at the time I wrote this post. I wanted to be optimal and imply that people will know that has to be done, but I know that some people won't know. I have looked at them and used them to develop my own standards.

Here's what I would think of for standards:

  • What system are you using? (This is a frame of reference so someone wondering what the SATA bus the test system uses. Most users probably do not know, but I can usually figure it out by the age of the system and how the BIOS implements it)
  • What form factor and interface standard does the drive use?
  • Is the SSD proprietary (example: Apple blade SSD's)
  • What OS are you running?
  • How does the drive implement TRIM? Is it have to be configured manually or does it do it within the drive to eliminate issues from not setting TRIM up? (I think it's okay if the person doing the review isn't sure. However, they need to be honest.)
  • If installed in the ODD bay, how does the system take it?

Now, for the optional nice to know stuff:

  • If installing in a computer that uses a thermal sensor (i.e. a Mac) does it need a thermal sensor?
  • Is the system's BIOS and other firmware up to date, along with the firmware on the SSD? (Easy way around users not knowing is to have them take note of their SSD's firmware revision and BIOS revision if they know.)
  • Will the drive have enough free space after everything is put back? (1/3 for 128-256GB and 1/4 for 512GB and larger.)
  • What OS does the SSD utilities work on? (Most are Windows/Mac only.)

Now, to deal with some other things.

  • SATA cable swaps if the SSD is slower then the system bus. Cables do not matter from my experience. A SATA II cable will work fine with a SATA III SSD since the signal is digital. If they want to install the rated cables that's fine but it really does not matter as much as people make it sound.
  • 2.5-3.5" desktop brackets. This will be determined by the case so it isn't essential information. If the review includes it that's great but it should not be required. It will not be an issue with modern cases. When the reader installs the SSD, then you will get the answer.
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The SATA cable issue I was speaking about was the custom laptop cables. The standard SATA cables a desktop has are not an issue here.

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I see now, @danj . I thought you were talking about the desktop cables where they say you need to use SATA III cables on SATA III drives and spend more on cables you don't need.

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Before you talk about replacing HD's with SSD's you need to setup some baseline of things that need to be handled and discussed with the customer.

You need to gage what the customers needs are. Someone who is a packrat wanting to have everything on his system may need a dual drive config if they don't want to go to the poorhouse with a larger SSD.

I still think a lot of people needs can still be handled with a hybrid SSHD drive which is still less expensive than a SSD of the same size.

If they are so gun-ho for a SSD then you need to think this though:

  • What is the systems SATA port - SATA I (1.5 Gb/s), SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) or SATA III (6.0 Gb/s)?
  • If the current drive is slower than what the system could support does the drives SATA cable need replacing as well? A common issue with MacBook Pro's.
  • If swapping out the optical drive for a SSD is the port able to support the drive properly?
  • Systems firmware up to date?
  • OS up to date?
  • Afterwards will the given drive have enough free space? 128/256 GB drives 1/3 needs to be left free 512 GB and larger 1/4, otherwise you'll wear out the drive prematurely.
  • 2.5" or 3.5" SATA, 1.8" ZIF, mSATA, M.2 or custom blade drive in the case of Apple. mSATA, PCIe AHCI (rev1) or NVMe (rev2), and PCIe lane width x2 Vs x4 signaling. Onboard housekeeping or TRIM services.
  • Needed cables and frame (screws & bushings) present in the system? If swapping out a 3.5" need adapter frame.
  • Thermal sensor issues: Need to install a replacement sensor?
  • What OS's does the SSD utilities support? Is it important the customer have access to them?

Pitfalls:

Not all SSD's play nice in older systems! You need to review the drives specs and make sure it will work in the system. As an example the SATA I system may not be able to support the SSD you are thinking of installing.

In the case of MacBook & MacBook Pro systems moving the HD from its current port to an optical drive carrier may not be a smart move! While it will work in most cases, the optical drive port does not offer HD crash guard protection, so if the customer fails to wait for the drive to spin down it could crash the drive from a bang! So its best to leave the drive in its original location.

But! in some cases you're between a rock and a hard place as the optical carrier is also converting the drives SATA connection to PATA which is what the system is expecting (older systems). Then you often are forced to move the drive over as the PATA I/O is just too slow for the SSD this is where a SSHD is better suited.

A second problem in the MacBook Pro's & Mac mini's is the quasi SATA III interface the optical drive connection has. In some the timing is off so you need to use a fixed SATA II drive (either HD or SSD) otherwise you'll encounter problems. Auto SATA port sense drives won't work reliably either!

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I'm currently looking at SSD's for a Linux laptop to replace the 3-5 year old spinning drive, which likely has a lot of hours on it. I've honed it down to 3-4 manufacturers, depending on availability: Intel, SanDisk, Samzung and OCZ. This research is critical for my application; I need to make sure I picked a drive without any of these issues.

Example: The Samsung drives have a few issues. The 840 Evo has issues in a RAID setup but should work normally. However, I am still hesitant to trust them even if it's just a RAID issue since that usually means there are more serious issues on how the drive implements TRIM. Even the 850 Pro is having issues if what I am reading is accurate. But from what I am reading, it also depends on the drive. The 840 Evo's issues are only in RAID if what I am reading is accurate, so the 840 Evo is out. I do not know the 850 Evo's issue is for sure yet but from what I am reading it is data corruption with TRIM enabled. On top of these TRIM issues, Samsung is also infamous for the 840 Evo speed issues. Chances are the whole 850 series is blacklisted this time, instead of the 840 Evo with the 850 Pro being safe.

I'm probably going for the 512GB class, since I am installing the SSD in a notebook. Generally speaking (with exceptions like the T420, T520 and X220 and others I am missing) you don't have mSATA options in most laptops so you have to get one large drive in most cases. That's something that I think people do not take into account, and certainly didn't take into account when I got my Crucial M500 240GB a few years ago. I made the mistake of getting a 256GB class drive with a 16GB firmware lockout.

The issues I am finding out with Samsung were somewhat difficult to find; you have to dig for that information. Unless you know what to Google you will think the drives are fine when you should be careful with Samsung and Linux. And to an extent, you are right about me not considering the issues you mentioned. I want to think people will know that has to be taken into account but I know people won't.

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Where are you hearing Samsung SSD's are having problems in a RAID setup & what is the RAID config 0 or 1? Or are you using Rapid Mode?

We use them and haven't had any issue, but we use them in an external case setup in both RAID 0 & RAID 1 arrays.

Your issue could be more to do with the given system.

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I don't know if it happens in 0 or 1. It's an issue I have read about researching SSD's for the Linux build. I mentioned it as an example of why the idea of having SSD reviews that go beyond the stuff anyone can Google is a good idea.

It's a Linux issue. Mac and Windows are fine.

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Good to know! You had me worried ;-}

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When evaluating SSD's you need to think about the usage the system is going to be encountering. Is the user looking for fast boot up and running a small set of apps with limited content access or created?

As an example someone doing light web surfing, email, texting and/or writing will have less data churning than someone who is a music or video editor, web developer, or app coder, The drives lifespan won't be taxed so a cheaper drive will likely support their needs

On the other hand, someone who creates a lot of files or altering them is a data churner! Then the quality of the drive is important as well as its lifespan.

While I think Nick was focused on upgrading internal drives I would also say many advanced users & pro's need external drives as they may not want to have such a large internal drive or need to have seamless backups so they can roll back to a given time point. This is where the external drive needs to be as fast if not faster than what the internal unit offers in addition the I/O to the system needs to be able to support the massive data flows.

So there is my food for thought

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Nick will be eternally grateful.