Samsung EVO 870 4TB vs QVO 8TB for TM backups

[Alpha Centauri]

Hi all

I have a M2 MBP with 2TB (only 600GB currently used) internal memory and will likely use either of those drives as a DAS inside a USB 3.1 enclosure for TM.

Unfortunately the largest storage capacity of the EVO peaks at 4TB, whilst the QVO is available up to 8TB. I understand the differences in flash tech used in both drives and TBW is effectively advertised as half for the QVO, compared to the EVO. There is however another concern that was outlined on this user bench mark site specific to the 4TB EVO:

"There are high failure rates for the 4TB version of this drive. After moderate use the drive can develop bad sectors which block file reads. Scandisk does not detect the errors and the data blocks are not recoverable. There are widespread reports of this problem but Samsung have yet to issue a statement."

Obviously a 2x TM (4TB) capacity in relation to the internal 2TB won't get me quite the snap-shot histories as a drive that has 4x the capacity.

So I guess the question more so becomes how:

1. folks with the 4TB EVO have indeed experienced premature wear?

2. the 8TB QVO has held up for those that use it for TM?

The speed read/write speed difference is irrelevant as it's exclusively for TM and will be bottle necked by the enclosure anyway.

Cheers

 

[ojfd]

For mission critical backups one should be using rotating 3.5" drives from reputable manufacturer. Not even 2.5". And, obviously, not SSD that already have/had manufacturing problems.

Apparently, Samsung had (still has?) something screwed in their flash manufacturing processes. Until those are fixed and there are field reports/statistics that confirm that everything is OK now, I would stay away from their recent models.
Btw, affected were not only 870 EVO, but also some models in 9xx line and some OEM drives.
See my post:

Warning! Samsung PM881 M.2 SATA 128GB bad batch floating around

I thought I'll post this info, especially for our German users and those, who are looking for M.2 drives to upgrade their older G3/G4 Power Macs. There was a large number (>50) of these drives sold on German fleebay recently at a very attractive price. I bought four :oops: It turns out, that...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[ArkSingularity]

Personally, I've never had a single Samsung flash device fail. That's entirely anecdotal, just because I haven't experienced it doesn't mean someone else hasn't or won't. But I've been pretty comfortable with mine, I always go for Samsung devices whenever possible when it comes to buying flash. It's one of the few things I'm very brand-loyal on.

That being said, I am personally a bit leery of QVO flash (I don't know what the shelf life would be over long periods of time). I'm sure it'd be fine for time machine backups, but if it were me personally, I think I'd probably grab a well-rated hard drive and use that instead. That's just me, I'm sure the flash devices are fine, but TLC flash is probably quite a bit more expensive to get in 4TB+ sizes.

Perhaps someone will know more than I will on this front.

 

[genexx]

For mission critical backups one should be using rotating 3.5" drives from reputable manufacturer. Not even 2.5". And, obviously, not SSD that already have/had manufacturing problems.

Apparently, Samsung had (still has?) something screwed in their flash manufacturing processes. Until those are fixed and there are field reports/statistics that confirm that everything is OK now, I would stay away from their recent models.
Btw, affected were not only 870 EVO, but also some models in 9xx line and some OEM drives.
See my post:

Warning! Samsung PM881 M.2 SATA 128GB bad batch floating around

I thought I'll post this info, especially for our German users and those, who are looking for M.2 drives to upgrade their older G3/G4 Power Macs. There was a large number (>50) of these drives sold on German fleebay recently at a very attractive price. I bought four :oops: It turns out, that...

forums.macrumors.com

Thumb Up for rotating 3.5" drives.... i have a WD 12TB USB enclosure with a WD RED inside was cheaper than the WD RED only and gives Peak of 190MB/Sec @ MBA M2.

For NVME i would only use WD SN850 also X for 2TB SN 770 or SN 570.

All Samsung NVME have several Problems with Trim or Power Saving Modes @ Mac or Hackintosh due to problems with the Controller. Mostly notable when in use as Boot Drive but with Time the wearing or Power Draw is a Problem in itself.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

For mission critical backups one should be using rotating 3.5" drives from reputable manufacturer. Not even 2.5". And, obviously, not SSD that already have/had manufacturing problems.

Apparently, Samsung had (still has?) something screwed in their flash manufacturing processes. Until those are fixed and there are field reports/statistics that confirm that everything is OK now, I would stay away from their recent models.
Btw, affected were not only 870 EVO, but also some models in 9xx line and some OEM drives.
See my post:

Warning! Samsung PM881 M.2 SATA 128GB bad batch floating around

I thought I'll post this info, especially for our German users and those, who are looking for M.2 drives to upgrade their older G3/G4 Power Macs. There was a large number (>50) of these drives sold on German fleebay recently at a very attractive price. I bought four :oops: It turns out, that...

forums.macrumors.com

I'm the OP and and in DE. A whilst ago (perhaps 1 1/2 yrs) I was attempting to fit a second SATA SSD into the CD bay, to compliment my 850 EVO that's been a boot disc for perhaps a decade. At the time I chose a 2TB 870 EVO but this ended being a nightmare as on idle the memory pressure was exceedingly high. After even Firmware updates this issue remained and I had to put this down as a problem with me using a patched OS (Catalina), countless attempts to remedy over on the unsupported Macs forum. Of course the other glitch "might" have been that the 5,3 MBP was simply too old for the SSD's controller. Either way I had to return the 870.

I did recently buy the 870 EVO (4TB) again to not use as a boot disc but purely for TM. Haven't actually unpacked it yet as it may be a poor decision to it being too small. Hence also about the longevity of the QVC with double the storage for the same use.

Having said all this, it was a toss up between using DAS with SATA SSD+NVME m.2 OR a NAS with 3.5" HDD.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

All Samsung NVME have several Problems with Trim or Power Saving Modes @ Mac or Hackintosh due to problems with the Controller. Mostly notable when in use as Boot Drive but with Time the wearing or Power Draw is a Problem in itself.

Do you know if this also applies to the 2TB 990 PRO? I did buy a couple to use as DAS in an enclosure, for the purpose of cloning the internal with Super Duper.

 

[genexx]

Do you know if this also applies to the 2TB 990 PRO? I did buy a couple to use as DAS in an enclosure, for the purpose of cloning the internal with Super Duper.

I heard these may have a new Controller, but as i am not using it, i have no idea. There is also a Rumor of high failure rates i have no idea if right or not.
Keep in mind that also Samsung NVME have slower Write rates in Acasis 405 TB4 Enclosure for instance than WD SN even SN570 which is 79€ in 2TB right now on Amazon Germany and also @ Windows.......

Link to a Test from a macuser.de User:
#1

 

[Alpha Centauri]

I heard these may have a new Controller, but as i am not using it, i have no idea. There is also a Rumor of high failure rates i have no idea if right or not.
Keep in mind that also Samsung NVME have slower Write rates in Acasis 405 TB4 Enclosure for instance than WD SN even SN570 which is 79€ in 2TB right now on Amazon Germany and also @ Windows.......

Link to a Test from a macuser.de User:
#1

Interesting, that link, thanks. Those 990’s I had planned for Sabrent USB-C 3.2 enclosures, on advice from a member here. Off course over the top but it was meant for planning in case the TB enclosures come down in price in the future.
Getting notifications (Amazon) that the 8TB 870 QBVO has increased/ suddenly jumped in price by 25%..wow.

In any case, I’ve decided to return all the DAS stuff in favour of a NAS solution for my TM backups, that I’ll be ordering soon.

 

[okkibs]

A NAS with a simple linux RAID or even a qnap with zfs raidz2 would be plenty for backups and drive failure mitigation. I would also prefer a single big M.2 SSD with 4TB or 8TB, but I will not buy anything QLC nand and even the 4TB models have issues. It will probably be at least another year or two until 4TB M.2 SSDs are common enough. I am waiting for that time to retire all the spinning rust all at once. It's really unfortunate that SSD pricing has come down so much lately and the only interesting model is the 970 plus 2TB that just has too little space to be usable. On a desktop you can slot in a couple of these in a bifurcation PCIe extension card but even then you'll likely max out at 8-10x2TB and that doesn't leave much after redundancy considerations, not to mention you can't use that as DAS with a Mac. And over the network the benefits of the SSDs is in large parts lost.

If I had to buy something right this second it would be a QNAP 4-bay NAS with 4 slots and ZFS support, with 4x18TB prosumer NAS HDDs (red plus or similar) in a RAIDz2 for about 30TB of total available space for about a grand. Keep that for the 5 years that the HDDs last, and then in 2028 trash that entire thing in favor of flash.

Exclusively for backup purposes it really doesn't matter in the end how you store it as long as you got 2 backups in case one fails just when you need it. Whether that is flash or stone slabs won't matter with Timemachine where the backups can take however long they want.

 

[ojfd]

For NVME i would only use WD SN850 also X for 2TB SN 770 or SN 570.

Well, regarding WD, there's this post over at MacOS9Lives

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6781.msg51819.html#msg51819

I have a feeling that flash drive manufacturers, in their pursuit of increasing the number of cell levels, shrinking dies etc. and reducing manufacturing costs have run into some technical problems (physical limits?). It applies not only to Samsung or WD, but, probably to others too. Time will tell.

 

[genexx]

Well, regarding WD, there's this post over at MacOS9Lives

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,6781.msg51819.html#msg51819

I have a feeling that flash drive manufacturers, in their pursuit of increasing the number of cell levels, shrinking dies etc. and reducing manufacturing costs have run into some technical problems (physical limits?). It applies not only to Samsung or WD, but, probably to others too. Time will tell.

You should Read ! The SA510 is a SSD not an NVME where i had no failure at all as well as all the uncounted Hackintosh user etc. Also this is related to OS9 on a Powerbook G3 2 Decades old Hardware.

Also if there where high failure rates on WD NVME you had heard of it in the Net and you also should not rely on a simple post of 1 User. I personally had high failure rates on Samsung HD and SSD @ Mac ( none on Samsung NVME in PC ) and none on Crucial SSD & WD HD or NVME.
There are 100drets if not 1000ends of Posts with the Samsung NVME problems @ Mac or Hackintosh.

But for SSD i use also allways the Crucial MX500 Series but i do not buy any SSD these Days anymore.

I personal have the WD SN 850 / SN 770 / SN 570 in Daily use with no faulure or anything bad @ Mac and Hackintosh and so many more user.......

But back to Topic i would not ever go NAS these Days cause i have a 12TB USB WD Red with 190MB/sec Peak Writing.
+ 2 2TB WD NVME in USB 10GBit/sec enclosure.

Backup once a Day is enough for me, saves some Watt of Energy consuming.

 

[ojfd]

I did read!
A flash memory is a flash memory. It does not matter by what kind of controller it is interfaced to the outside world - SATA or NVMe.
All I am trying to say is that there might be some technical problems down the (always cost reducing) road. First indications are there.
P.S. One user that has statistics of 100 drives is more than just one user with a single drive.

 

[genexx]

I know the World is evil......i could start to count NVME SSD HD.... but nah
i had more HD failing but not one SSD / NVME and not only for me.....

I also tend to not believe some Posted claims.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

>A NAS with a simple linux RAID or even a qnap with zfs raidz2 would be plenty for backups and drive failure mitigation. I would also prefer a single big M.2 SSD with 4TB or 8TB, but I will not buy anything QLC nand and even the 4TB models have issues. It will probably be at least another year or two until 4TB M.2 SSDs are common enough. I am waiting for that time to retire all the spinning rust all at once. It's really unfortunate that SSD pricing has come down so much lately and the only interesting model is the 970 plus 2TB that just has too little space to be usable. On a desktop you can slot in a couple of these in a bifurcation PCIe extension card but even then you'll likely max out at 8-10x2TB and that doesn't leave much after redundancy considerations, not to mention you can't use that as DAS with a Mac. And over the network the benefits of the SSDs is in large parts lost.<

Indeed current memory size of NVMe was the big issue, ruling out TM use and just having it potentially only as a cloning backup. The Samsung SATA SSD's for TM, I just read having too many issues to be a reliable backup. Interestingly enough I had past, own personal experience with the 870EVO used in a 5,3 MBP as a boot drive, having high memory pressure on idle. Back then I gave up on it, settling on the explanation of firmware incompatibility or the patched MacOS I was running. In hindsight it was perhaps exactly those controller issues that were reported with the larger 870 EVOs. But all is sent back now and am looking at a NAS solution after all.

Cheers