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Which SSD is the most reliable?

blufrog said:
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).
Click to expand...
That 1200 TB TBW spec I posted is directly from Samsung's specifications, and it's for all three 2 TB models. They're all the same. Furthermore, Samsung quotes the same 1.5 million hours MTBF number for all three models too.

TBW:

MTBF:
www.samsung.com

990 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD MZ-V9P2T0B/AM | Samsung Canada

990 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD (MZ-V9P2T0B/AM) - Explore the features and specifications and learn more about our Memory&Storage at Samsung Canada.
www.samsung.com www.samsung.com
www.samsung.com

990 EVO Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD MZ-V9S2T0B/AM | Samsung Canada

990 EVO Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD (MZ-V9S2T0B/AM) - Shop Samsung.com and learn more about price and offers on Memory&Storage at Samsung Canada
www.samsung.com www.samsung.com
www.samsung.com

990 EVO PCIe 4.0 x4 / 5.0 x2 NVMe M.2 SSD | Samsung Canada

990 EVO PCIe 4.0 x4 / 5.0 x2 NVMe M.2 SSD (MZ-V9E2T0B/AM) - Shop Samsung.com and learn more about price and offers on Memory&Storage at Samsung Canada
www.samsung.com www.samsung.com

Feel free to post your sources.

BTW, ironically, out of all of them it was the 990 Pro that had the most serious issues. It had a severe firmware fault that was recording excessive wear. They fixed it in firmware, but unfortunately, the firmware fix did not fix the wear that had already been recorded. If your drive had recorded say 15% wear in a matter of just weeks before the firmware update, after that firmware update, that 15% wear persisted.

And for the record, I'm not biased against the 990 Pro, as I bought the 990 Pro just last month. It is my main external drive for my M4 Mac mini.
 
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blufrog said:
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).
Click to expand...


For 990 Pro: (From https://www.samsung.com/nz/memory-storage/nvme-ssd/990-pro-2tb-nvme-pcie-gen-4-mz-v9p2t0bw/)

Warranty
5-Year Limited Warrantyor 1200 TBW Limited Warranty

For 990 EVO: (From https://www.samsung.com/nz/memory-storage/nvme-ssd/990-evo-plus-2tb-nvme-pcie-gen-4-mz-v9s2t0bw/)

Warranty
5-year Limited Warranty or 1200 TBW Limited Warranty


The TBW warranty is identical. Other specs differ of course.
 
Gloor said:
what do you guys use or what do you think is the most reliable, please? Any info is appreciated :)
Click to expand...
No onw here has oowned enough SSDs that they can have a any meaningful failure statistics to report.

But you the cloud backup company "Backblaze" runs about 288,000 disk drive 24x7 and the keep and publish accurate failure statistics

Failure rates are such that only organizations who runs 1,000 or more drives will have the data you are asking for.

What Backblaze found is the very roughly an SSD as an annualized failure rate of about 0.98 percent. The mains that if you ran 1,000 of these you would expect to have to replace about 9 or 10 of them every year.

So if you buy any random SSD the chance that id might fail in the first year is about 1%. Some are better, some worse but we do not have the data to know. Backblaze stopped publishing data for SSD because they have a policy that they need to have hundreds of the same kind before they publish data. So 0.98 was the last figure they gave out.

With a failure rate so low, Just pay whatever one you like that then let Apple's Time machine take hourly snapshots. If the AAD fails, you can recover the data and you loose no more then 1 hour of work. It is best to have multiple backups.

Finally please do remember that electronic failure is not even close to the most common reason for losing data. Theft of the equipment is near the top. Then comes user and software errors. And ultra-reliable drive will not even address the #1 cause of loss of data. There is only one way to address the theft threat, that is to have a current offsite backup. I use Backblaze. THere are others. But all of them CONTINUOUSLY send changes the the cloud so if my computer is lost in a fire, that backup up data will be current up to the last few minutes.

Time Machine does the same on a local disk. But a house fire or theft will likely take the time machine drive as well as the primary drive.

Don't forget user errors like not noticing that you accidentally made some kind of change, only to be discovered later.. Apple's Time Machine is very good at recovering from this.

Summary: Of all the ways you can loos data, a failed SSD is about the least likely
 
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So I just got the Samsung T7 Shield 4TB and I would like to ask what is the best format to use for formatting, please?

AFPS encrypted or ......?
 
Gloor said:
So I just got the Samsung T7 Shield 4TB and I would like to ask what is the best format to use for formatting, please?

AFPS encrypted or ......?
Click to expand...
AFPS for best Mac compatibility, assuming you don't need to use it with Linux or Windows. Encrypted if you want it, but that would likely slow things down.
 
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Crucial, given the options you've listed. I had a T7 Shield that ended up being a defective unit. Also had a SanDisk that turned out to be bad.
 
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Gloor said:
So I just got the Samsung T7 Shield 4TB and I would like to ask what is the best format to use for formatting, please?

AFPS encrypted or ......?
Click to expand...
Yes. APFS. It is dramatically better than any other option.

If encrypted then you will never have to worry about someone getting hold of your data even if they have physical possession of the device.
 
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Gloor said:
So I just got the Samsung T7 Shield 4TB and I would like to ask what is the best format to use for formatting, please?

AFPS encrypted or ......?
Click to expand...
When I got the Crucial X9 Pro, I got the regular one (exFAT) because I may need to use it with my old Windows Surface Pro until I switch over 100%.
 
JSRinUK said:
When I got the Crucial X9 Pro, I got the regular one (exFAT) because I may need to use it with my old Windows Surface Pro until I switch over 100%.
Click to expand...
? You can format those drives however you want. No need to get a Mac one to use AFPS. And you can format the Mac one to exFAT if you want. Basically, just get whichever one is cheaper.
 
EugW said:
? You can format those drives however you want. No need to get a Mac one to use AFPS. And you can format the Mac one to exFAT if you want. Basically, just get whichever one is cheaper.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I saw that there was a regular one and a Mac one, with the only difference apparently being how it was formatted. I knew I’d need to use it on both computers, and it was cheaper, so I got the regular one.
 
EugW said:
That 1200 TB TBW spec I posted is directly from Samsung's specifications, and it's for all three 2 TB models. They're all the same. Furthermore, Samsung quotes the same 1.5 million hours MTBF number for all three models too.

TBW:

MTBF:
www.samsung.com

990 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD MZ-V9P2T0B/AM | Samsung Canada

990 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD (MZ-V9P2T0B/AM) - Explore the features and specifications and learn more about our Memory&Storage at Samsung Canada.
www.samsung.com www.samsung.com
www.samsung.com

990 EVO Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD MZ-V9S2T0B/AM | Samsung Canada

990 EVO Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD (MZ-V9S2T0B/AM) - Shop Samsung.com and learn more about price and offers on Memory&Storage at Samsung Canada
www.samsung.com www.samsung.com
www.samsung.com

990 EVO PCIe 4.0 x4 / 5.0 x2 NVMe M.2 SSD | Samsung Canada

990 EVO PCIe 4.0 x4 / 5.0 x2 NVMe M.2 SSD (MZ-V9E2T0B/AM) - Shop Samsung.com and learn more about price and offers on Memory&Storage at Samsung Canada
www.samsung.com www.samsung.com

Feel free to post your sources.

BTW, ironically, out of all of them it was the 990 Pro that had the most serious issues. It had a severe firmware fault that was recording excessive wear. They fixed it in firmware, but unfortunately, the firmware fix did not fix the wear that had already been recorded. If your drive had recorded say 15% wear in a matter of just weeks before the firmware update, after that firmware update, that 15% wear persisted.

And for the record, I'm not biased against the 990 Pro, as I bought the 990 Pro just last month. It is my main external drive for my M4 Mac mini.
Click to expand...
I'm not disputing what you state. It was the case a few years ago, at least.

Strange, given the EVO is quite a bit cheaper than the Pro. What the heck is the point of Pro then if they are the same?

I learned of the Pro problems after I bought mine (4 TB) but it was after they fixed the firmware. I got the SSD utility to check the wear, and it was OK, so I assume mine is fixed/unaffected.

EDIT: It still shows zero.
 
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JSRinUK said:
When I got the Crucial X9 Pro, I got the regular one (exFAT) because I may need to use it with my old Windows Surface Pro until I switch over 100%.
Click to expand...
You would be better off using APFS and then sharing the storage using WiFi. For some operations, APFS is more than an order of magnitude faster. And then you get versioning, snapshots, and data checksumming for almost no cost. The SSD will also likely last longer with APFS too, although the write limits on these are now maybe longer than you will need.

The so-called "sneaker net" is "so 1980s".
 
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blufrog said:
I'm not disputing what you state. It was the case a few years ago, at least.

Strange, given the EVO is quite a bit cheaper than the Pro. What the heck is the point of Pro then if they are the same?
Click to expand...
Technology moves too quickly to use specs from several years ago to describe current models. That akin to using the Apple M1 series’ specs to describe the M4 series.

And nobody is saying the EVO is the same as the Pro. They have a different feature set and different performance.
 
Chris wrote:
"APFS. It is dramatically better than any other option"

I disagree.
I still use HFS+ on all my Mac drives, UNLESS there is a specific reason why it MUST be formatted in APFS.

Specific reasons:
- drive is a boot drive
- drive is a backup (either time machine or cloned) which requires APFS

HFS+ drives are still "accessible" by 3rd party drive maintenance and recovery software.
APFS drives [generally] are not.

I even tried "partitioning off" a portion of the internal SSD on my 2021 MacBook Pro 14 (m1pro).
I set up the partition as HFS+ -- and it works!
 
Heads up for Crucial X10 Pro users:

I’ve now had two 4TB Crucial X10 Pro drives crash within a year. Before these issues, I’d never experienced a drive failure in under five years of use.
 
I have ordered the 990 Evo (due to a special promo), however, I am looking for a reliable enclosure :(

Anyone can share a budget yet reliable enclosure? Thanks! :D
 
None without a Thunderbolt connection is really reliable. At least on my Apple Silicon Macs.
 
EugW said:
USB 4 would be fine (since USB 4 is essentially Thunderbolt 4).
Click to expand...
Are there any in the meantime? I never saw one on Amazon, when I bought several new external drives this year. Maximum was 3.2 Gen2 and most of those also 3.1 and 3.0 can't keep a permanent connection and eject more or less times a day.

There must be a difference to TB4 because the first gen only supports 20MBit/s and even those I never saw.
 
I still have 2 Crucial X10 Pro 4TB. They are very small and light, reliable if you don't need a permanent 24 hour/day connection. But way overpriced for what you get. A cheap 4TB NVME SSD in a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 enclosure will NEVER disconnect and could be much faster, one is even my boot drive and macOS didn't crash a single time because it ejected, like a USB SSD might do regularly.

About long time reliability I can't say anything. I still have up to 10 years old SSDs from cheap to fast and they all still work. The only SSD that stopped working was in my 11" MacBook Air, a year after I bought it. I think it was from 2012 or 2013.
 
Samsung drives are good - also consider Sabrent. Used them many times and they are also excellent drives.
But why not purchase an enclosure and you own drive?
A Samsung 990 Pro NVMe SSD in an OWC 1M2 enclosure runs great. Acasis also make great enclosures, as do Qwiizlab.
 
Adora said:
Are there any in the meantime? I never saw one on Amazon, when I bought several new external drives this year. Maximum was 3.2 Gen2 and most of those also 3.1 and 3.0 can't keep a permanent connection and eject more or less times a day.

There must be a difference to TB4 because the first gen only supports 20MBit/s and even those I never saw.
Click to expand...
Most of the fast external NVMe enclosures these days are 40 Gbps USB 4. There are a ton of them out there. A few of them are Thunderbolt 3 (and there are now rare Thunderbolt 5 enclosures), but they are vastly outnumbered by the USB 4 enclosures.
 
Boyd01 said:
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.
Click to expand...

Hey - what SSDs are you using in your old Intel minis? 3rd party or Apple?
 
The message you quoted lists all my disks. Do you mean internal disks? The 2018 mini disk cannot be upgraded, it's an original Apple 2tb. The only other Intel Mini I currently use is a 2012 quad with an original Apple 256gb internal SSD. It will be retired before too long.
 
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