Which SSD is the most reliable?

[Gloor]

Hi everyone,

I understand that this is subjective topic but I would venture to guess that there is still something to be said. I'm looking for an external storage for my new base Mac Mini. I want to get a 4TB drive that I will use to have all my files on (pictures, documents etc.). I think that speed is not crucial but reliability is. I'm not interested in enclosures where you put in your own module (unless you really make a case for it).

So far, I've found these:

Samsung T7
Samsung T7 Shield
Samsung T9
Crucial X8
Crucial X10 Pro

what do you guys use or what do you think is the most reliable, please? Any info is appreciated

 

[Bigwaff]

All the same but skip SanDisk based on posts in this forum. Review warranty or purchase extended warranty. Do you plan to buy a second drive for backups? If there is one certainty, drives eventually fail.

 

[Boyd01]

I started with three of the older Samsung T3 USB SSD's back around 2016 or so. They have been great, still using them (one is a boot disk for a 2014 Mini). Today, I have a total of four 2tb T7's, one 2tb T7 Shield and two 4tb Shields. All of these have been great (which is why I keep buying them).

Also have two WD black 2tb USB "game drives" which I got from Best Buy when they didn't have any T7's and I was in a rush. They have been fine too, but quite a bit larger and kind of ugly (don't especially care). I work with lots of very large files and always buy SSD's in pairs, with one for a Carbon Copy Clone.

 

[Ray2]

We have 14 SSD's in externals. Range from .5 to 8 TB, up to 10 year old drives. All Crucial or Samsung other than a WD850 I very recently purchased. We've lost probably 4/5 drives over the years. I don’t keep track, they’re consumer grade drives and I expect failures, as I’d suggest you do as well. Both Crucial and Samsung have failed. The Samsungs went fast (less than a year). My view, backup regularly.

If you’re really bent on making a statistically informed choice, Backblaze reports failure statistics.

 

[macfacts]

I'm not interested in enclosures where you put in your own module (unless you really make a case for it).

if you care about speeds, thunderbolt 4 enclosure drives are faster.

 

[Fishrrman]

Crucial X9.
Small. Fast.

 

[Gloor]

I don't really care about speed. I have Samsung T7 and used it to boot up from it and didn't really see any slow downs. I don't move much data around anyway so speed is lost on me i guess. Hence why I want reliable ones

if you care about speeds, thunderbolt 4 enclosure drives are faster.

 

[djc6]

The T7 and T7 Shield have slightly different internals, which results in the T7 Shield being better than the T7 at sequential writes:

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicdesign/comments/13c3obk/samsung_t7_vs_t7_shield_on_bmpcc_series

I use a Samsung T5 1TB for years for time machine backups on my laptop and have never had any issues. I know that getting an NVMe card and a separate enclosure is a lot more flexible and performant, but at the time there were all these compatibility issues about what chipset works best, which enclosure has enough cooling, which NVMe drives work with what enclosures - I just wanted something that worked, so I got the T5 since same company made everything.

That said, this black friday I purchased a Samsung 980 Pro NVMe and a Sabrent EC-SNVE (uses Realtek chipset that seems preferred) and it all works fine so far on my 2018 Mac Mini. I like that its NVMe should in the future I use the drive in something else like a windows PC or PS5 or something.

 

[bradman83]

I'm not interested in enclosures where you put in your own module (unless you really make a case for it).

Okay, let me make a case for it.

Amazon sells an M.2 SSD enclosure by Sabrent that’s fantastic and allows you to pop in any M.2 NVMe SSD you want. It’s completely tool-free. You can therefore pick whatever SSD you want for the enclosure, including enterprise-grade models like WD Red or Black or higher end Samsung drives. It takes all of 30 seconds to install the drive and it’s ready to go.

Amazon.com: Sabrent SSD Enclosure

Amazon.com: sabrent SSD enclosure

www.amazon.com

 

[Boyd01]

My only concern with the "do it yourself" approach is that, if something doesn't work then the ssd and case manufacturers can point a finger at each other. Even if you can get a refund, that's a hassle and you will probably have to eat the shipping cost and waste a lot of time. It might be rare, but I've seen a few threads about this kind of issue in the past.

If there's a problem with the T7, you only have one seller and one company to deal with. I also often get this kind of thing at my local Best Buy. Prices are pretty close to Amazon usually, no shipping, instant gratification. But mainly, if there's a problem right out of the box, I can exchange it in person easily. Never had a problem with my SSD's, but that return/exchange ability has been really useful with a few other electronics/computer items I've bought.

But if price is your main priority and you don't mind the additional risk, I'm sure you can save some money by "rolling your own" enclosure + disk.

 

[Gloor]

Are these NVMe SSDs more reliable you think?

What about this one then

SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD 4TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Hard Drive, Seq. Read Speeds Up to 7,450 MB/s for High End Computing, Gaming, and Heavy Duty Workstations, MZ-V9P4T0B/AM - Newegg.com

Buy SAMSUNG SSD 990 PRO 4TB, PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280, Seq. Read Speeds Up-to 7,450MB/s for High End Computing, Gaming, and Heavy Duty Workstations (MZ-V9P4T0B/AM) Non-Heatsink with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.ca

edit: just checked that the enclosure is still capped at 1000mb/s so this above would be a waste i guess

Okay, let me make a case for it.

Amazon sells an M.2 SSD enclosure by Sabrent that’s fantastic and allows you to pop in any M.2 NVMe SSD you want. It’s completely tool-free. You can therefore pick whatever SSD you want for the enclosure, including enterprise-grade models like WD Red or Black or higher end Samsung drives. It takes all of 30 seconds to install the drive and it’s ready to go.

Amazon.com: Sabrent SSD Enclosure

Amazon.com: sabrent SSD enclosure

www.amazon.com

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Not enough time to pass any objective judgement. In another 10-20 years, we can look back and there will be abundant evidence to answer this question. Otherwise, we are best guessing, probably based on personal biases, biases of others that influence our thinking, short-term experiences, brand perceptions and- probably most likely- marketing messaging.

 

[Gloor]

Yeah, i guess so.

In my 30+ years of using computers I've never had a HDD failure so I hope that trend continues

Not enough time to pass any objective judgement. In another 10-20 years, we can look back and there will be abundant evidence to answer this question. Otherwise, we are best guessing, probably based on personal biases, biases of others that influence our thinking, short-term experiences, brand perceptions and- probably most likely- marketing messaging.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

If SSDs are used like HDDs, I doubt that trend can continue. And you've been lucky. While I've also had generally good luck with HDDs, I have had a few failures over 20 years.

My expectations with SSD is MAYBE 7-10 years if the WRITES volume can be minimized. But again, there's not been enough time to know if what amounts to a gut guess is valid or invalid.

As it's a relatively NEW technology, the best advice is the same advice applied to HDDs: be sure you have a solid backup strategy, ideally with at least one recent backup stored OFFSITE, regularly rotating with an ONSITE backup to keep both (that's TWO) backups fresh. Then, you can buy any of them with confidence that your backup system can recover if the SSD unexpectedly conks sooner than you hope.

 

[Lioness~]

Bought a Samsung EU 2TB to Black Friday price

 

[Gloor]

I think I might go the same route.

Bought a Samsung EU 2TB to Black Friday price

View attachment 2458113

 

[Lioness~]

I think I might go the same route.

I think a 'few' others did too, as expected delivery isn't before around 10th Dec, here. But I have good experience with Samsung disks.

I'm in no hurry though, as I just bought it for no particular reason, and haven't decided what exactly I'll use it for. TM-disks I have already. But another 1 might be good to my MBA, so I don't have to move another disk between the Studio and the MBA - we'll see 😀

 

[Boyd01]

In my 30+ years of using computers I've never had a HDD failure so I hope that trend continues

My first computer was an Apple ][ in 1978 but first HD was an Apple Hard Disk 20, I pre-ordered it along with a Mac 512k in 1985! It actually connected to the Mac via the serial port and would seem unbelievably slow today. 🤣

Unfortunately, I've seen many failures of mechanical drives though. So, our usage patterns might be very different or maybe it's just luck? I have switched entirely to SSD's now, except a few big hard drives for archival storage.

I lost a 3tb external hard drive on my media server after about 3 years of always-on use. Replaced with a 4tb hard drive that also failed after 3 years. Got a 4tb SSD, which was quite expensive at the time but no problems for over 5 years now.

Have not seen a SSD failure myself (yet). This includes my 2012 i7 quad Mini with original Apple 256gb internal SSD. It was used heavily for video/audio editing over several years, then turned into a headless fileserver that runs 24/7. Also have a 2013 MacBook Air with original Apple 512gb SSD - no problems. Guess I'm the lucky one this time!

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

It’s write volume that wears out SSDs. See many threads about Apple Fusion drives failing. Too many writes is prob the culprit nearly every time.

Conceptually, few writes and mostly reads implies SSDs could last a very long time. But the real test is simply more time when objective data comes out to show average life spans of SSDs. HDDs already have long histories, so we have much better information about them.

 

[EugW]

In my 30+ years of using computers I've never had a HDD failure so I hope that trend continues

I've had several hard drives fail, and I've had a couple of SATA SSDs fail too. And I don't even run them that hard.

Have not seen a SSD failure myself (yet). This includes my 2012 i7 quad Mini with original Apple 256gb internal SSD. It was used heavily for video/audio editing over several years, then turned into a headless fileserver that runs 24/7. Also have a 2013 MacBook Air with original Apple 512gb SSD - no problems. Guess I'm the lucky one this time!

I just gave a friend an OEM Apple/Samsung 128 GB SSD, because his friend's original OEM SSD in her 2015 MacBook Air died.

It just so happened I had a couple of extra ones, because I had pulled them out of a 2015 MacBook Pro and a 2017 MacBook Air to replace with OEM SSDs that I got cheap on the used market.

 

[LeeW]

I have over 100 servers in Data Centers in the EU. The oldest SSD server still running is from 29 December 2012. It has 2x OCZ 120GB SATA III SSDs in it configured in Raid 1. It has been 24/7 reading and writing for 12 years now, and neither drive shows any obvious signs of error or failure. The customer still uses it.

I have also had brand new WD Blacks and Samsung Pros fail within weeks or months.

 

[Guenter]

When it comes to reliability nothing beats regular backups. There were some bad rumors about sandisc and wd during a certain period, but i dont remember details.

 

[blufrog]

Samsung Pro SSDs have 5x the write life of the EVO equivalent. Worth the additional cost.

SSDs have the allegedly theoretical risk that if not powered "for some time" they can suddenly lose all their data, but so far in the real-world, this doesn't seem to have happened (yet).

I say "allegedly theoretical" because it could happen, or has happened but we just didn't know about it.

I have a couple of SSDs that have not been powered in nearly two years. Will be interesting to see if they still have their data on them.

 

[EugW]

Samsung Pro SSDs have 5x the write life of the EVO equivalent. Worth the additional cost.

Uh, wut?

The Samsung 990 EVO 2 TB, Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2 TB, and Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB all have the same 1200 TB TBW rating and the same 5-year warranty.

 

[blufrog]

Uh, wut?

The Samsung 990 EVO 2 TB, Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2 TB, and Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB all have the same 1200 TB TBW rating and the same 5-year warranty.

That's according to Samsung's own datasheets on the models. It's not some random figure I pulled out of thin-air (in case you were wondering).