SSD brand preferences?

[benguild]

There's a Samsung SSD on Amazon for $500. It's 1TB.
With that said, I once read a review that Intel was pretty much the only SSD that wasn't failing like crazy. Can't find the link off hand (it's late)... but what are people's experiences?

Given that Apple is using Samsung SSDs internally (no?) ... isn't that a great choice/value?

 

[maflynn]

Apple is using Samsung and LG for their internal storage, before that it was Toshiba. tbh, I've never seen or heard any references stating that all SSD drives are failing or many of them that are not made by Samsung.

I have a OWC SSD in one Mac and its been going for a couple of years, no issues, likewise I have an intel SSD in my old 2010 MBP that my wife uses - its quite a workhorse.

I'd say given what I've seen here, read various reviews and my personal experience, I don't think there's any evidense that there's widespread failure with non Samsung SSDs

 

[magamo]

Intel claims the annual failure rate of their SSDs is 0.61% (and that of HDDs is 4.85%):

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...bility-of-intel-solid-state-drives-brief.html

For SSDs' reliability across manufactures, this somewhat old article has some data on the return rate by each manufacturer and also looks into annual failure rates:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html

While Intel does look like a clear winner when it comes to reliability, other reputable manufactures don't seem to have reliability issues, although things might be different if you look at a particular model.

In any case, it's not that Intel is pretty much the only SSD that isn't failing like crazy. It'd be more like, when the above article was written, Intel was pretty much the only SSD that was reliable like crazy; others were just reliable, not to a crazy level.

Also, since you're going to install on a laptop, SSDs are very good when it comes to durability; you drop your laptop on a hard surface, and your SSD will likely survive.

If another single anecdotal data point means something to you, Intel's SSD I bought in 2009 is still working fine after 5 years, and whatever SSD Apple put on my 2010 MBP hasn't failed either.

But to give a counter anecdote, this is the scariest story I've read of SSDs failing one after another:

http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale/

Maybe some folks are just astronomically unlucky...

 

[saturnotaku]

It's not the brand of SSD that matters so much. Rather, it's the controller they use. Intel was crazy reliable because they used their own in-house controllers while many others at the time used Sandforce, the second generation of which was plagued with problems. After OCZ acquired Indilinx and started using that design, its reliability improved. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done to the company's reputation.

 

[paul-n]

SSDs from Intel, Samsung and Crucial are often recommended because of the reliability. But the most important thing to do is creating a backup.
For a single person the loss of data is always a disaster and it makes no difference that the drive usually don't fail when it fails at you.
Just buy a SSD from the mentioned brands and always to backups.

 

[ecschwarz]

There are countless threads about Samsung SSDs on the boards - a lot of people are using them (mostly the 840 Pro and 840 Evo varieties), and have had a lot of good luck. Like Intel, Samsung uses their own controllers and design the whole widget. Some other manufacturers take various components and piece them together into a product (sort of like an Apple vs. PC manufacturers comparison in the methodology).

That being said, if you had said what model of Samsung drive, that could've helped (I'm guessing based on price and size, it's an 840 Evo), but I've installed about 4 or 5 for people over the last year or so and we've all been pretty happy with their performance and reliability (original 840, 840 Pro, and 840 Evos). I think the built-to-order 2.5" SSDs for the non-retina MacBook Pros and Mac minis were/are basically Samsung 830s. I've heard comments that they moved to SanDisk, probably due to the 830 being discontinued and price.

The SSDs used for computers like the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro are blade-style PCIe drives, which are totally different animals, but they've used a variety of suppliers - Samsung, SanDisk, and Toshiba are ones I know of specifically.

You might want to check out these two articles: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-ssds/

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6727/apple-is-using-sandisk-ssds-in-retina-macbook-pro-as-well

 

[hallux]

Looks like it's the 840 EVO. I just put one in my 2012 MBP, a 750 GB one though, and it's like a whole new computer. Where iPhoto took 20 seconds to load using the spinning drive, it now takes FOUR, my library is ~35 GB. Looking at benchmarks, the smaller 840 EVO drives are slower but once you hit 500 GB the performance levels out.

 

[benguild]

Hmm, so there's no real extreme bias for reliability in terms of brand? I suppose you could get a dud from any manufacturer, but what's usually the failure pattern for an SSD? Gradual or sudden?

 

[yjchua95]

Apple is using Samsung and LG for their internal storage, before that it was Toshiba. tbh, I've never seen or heard any references stating that all SSD drives are failing or many of them that are not made by Samsung.

I have a OWC SSD in one Mac and its been going for a couple of years, no issues, likewise I have an intel SSD in my old 2010 MBP that my wife uses - its quite a workhorse.

I'd say given what I've seen here, read various reviews and my personal experience, I don't think there's any evidense that there's widespread failure with non Samsung SSDs

Since when did LG make hard drives for Apple?

I think you must've mixed up storage and displays

Apple uses Samsung and LG for displays, and as for storage it's either Samsung or SanDisk (they used to use Toshiba and Hitachi as well).

 

[maflynn]

Since when did LG make hard drives for Apple?

I could have sworn LG was making SSDs for apple. I know Samsung is, as was (is?) Toshiba, and it seems after some googling Sandisk may be making it as well.

 

[yjchua95]

I could have sworn LG was making SSDs for apple. I know Samsung is, as was (is?) Toshiba, and it seems after some googling Sandisk may be making it as well.

Some variants of the 128GB and 256GB SSDs for the iMacs (256GB only), MBAs and rMBPs are SanDisk.

Samsung makes 128GB and 256GB variants as well. So if one buys a 128GB/256GB Mac, he/she will be entering the SSD lottery. The Samsung 256GB is faster than the SanDisk 256GB by about 150MB/s in sequential reads.

Meanwhile, Samsung is the sole supplier for the 512GB and 1TB variants.

Note that I'm talking about PCIe SSDs in Haswell Macs.

 

[Weaselboy]

Hmm, so there's no real extreme bias for reliability in terms of brand? I suppose you could get a dud from any manufacturer, but what's usually the failure pattern for an SSD? Gradual or sudden?

Sudden... very very sudden. No funny noises or anything like a bad hard drive, you just go to use your SSD one day and BAM... it is completely dead like a brick.

I have never seen anything recent showing SSD reliability by brand. There is the older data posted by magamo that was based on return rates to a French retailer.

 

[ecschwarz]

Sudden... very very sudden. No funny noises or anything like a bad hard drive, you just go to use your SSD one day and BAM... it is completely dead like a brick.

I have never seen anything recent showing SSD reliability by brand. There is the older data posted by magamo that was based on return rates to a French retailer.

I completely agree - a dying SSD is somewhat sudden, so be sure to use Time Machine or another backup solution. That being said, it's not a flawed technology that is going to be a problem, but just something you should be aware of in the worst-case-scenario. I've seen plenty of hard drives go bad in a relatively short time, and have been happy with my SSDs so far.

I'm sure if threads like these existed in the '80s, people would be wondering if a hard drive was less reliable or scarier than their Mac 512k/Plus diskettes.

 

[Delorean2006]

i chose samsung, i truly do not like samsung products because of bad experiences but made the plunge and bought a samsung evo 840 and it has been nothing but an amazing experience with it, i love it so much, so I'm going to say samsung plus the prices have just plunged on amazon so I'm sure you can get a great deal now with a lot of storage.