Storage The Sudden Small-SSD Availability Crisis (Aug 2016)

I think we may have deviated away from the info wanted by the OP....quite a while ago actually

 

Yes, I did - because the OP was concerned about price - my initial intention was to point out that I have employed cheap mSATA drives with the use of a £3 adapter, as a viable alternative to a standard SATA3 SSD. However, I was distracted from my train of thought when you waded in and started spraying around your own straw man arguments, whilst claiming others were doing so to you.

Actually, no, I didn't. I merely pointed out that the laptop I was using couldn't make full use of the mSATA drive's speed, because of limitations with the laptop's SATA bus.

You are the one claiming I'm advocating the use of SATA2 drives over SATA3. I didn't say that - go back and read it again.

Yes, and after you'd put so much effort into dragging us away from that point.

Nor does this with any of mine - you just attributed arguments to me that I did not make.

Don't stop now, you've being doing it from the start!

Again, I didn't say that, so your (rhetorical) question is moot.

see above - you've hinged your entire argument on something I didn't say.

Nope. Not that it has any relevance to the thread, I bought the mSATA for my laptop to speed it up and free up the HDD as a storage drive.

I don't have the time or patience to point/counterpoint your entire post, but I will say this:

Superfast m.2 NVMe drives are largely unnecessary and are clearly not worth considering in the value for money stakes. This particular one, as Samsung 951 if you really must know, I got for pretty much half price as part of a larger purchase - bringing the unit cost into line with SATA3 SSDs of the same size. So, why wouldn't I?

The 128GB mSATA I got for my laptop performed at roughly 475/325 Read/Write on ATTObench whilst hooked up to SATA3 on my PC via my £3 adapter. A sight better than most reasonably priced "decent" alternatives.

Granted this wasn't exactly a granular test, but it told me enough for my purposes.

The OP was clearly interested in value for money - or he wouldn't have bothered posting in the first place. It is (hopefully now) plain to see that my intent was to offer other options.

Oh, and I've just read this back to make sure I didn't uncoinsciously slip in a straw man argument about your position, but feel free to accuse me anyway.

 

Oh dear...

Look i'm sorry if you're peeved to be called out, however -

"I ordered a cheap no name 128GB mSATA SSD four days ago for my spare laptop - it arrived today and cost me ~ £22.

What crisis?"

is not answering the question about SATA drives, now is it???

& where exactly in -

"All very good points, but it has a two year warranty and very few people will notice the performance difference a "shonky" drive and a "good" one. I certainly won't in this case - my laptop now boots to desktop in under 20 seconds, and the mSATA bus on it is only SATA2 so it can't make full use of the drive's speed."

"I stand by that statement. The cheapo mSATA SSD I put in the spare laptop is cable of of higher speeds than the laptop can make use of. The SSD benchmarks I ran on it, topped out at ~ 280 read 255 write, which is what I commonly saw on SATA2 SSDs over the years. Conversely, many higher end low capacity SSDs have severely gimped write speeds. "

- do you state anything about -

(a) the speeds of that mSATA SSD on a 6Gb/s controller - as there's no proof that it can do more than what you've tested; even if the testing is correct

(b) anything about the performance outside of sequential r/ws

(c) that you intended the OP to use an adapter

(d) what the SSD was so that the OP could buy one (as opposed to, for example, a "higher end low capacity SSDs (with) severely gimped write speeds")

(e) that anything i stated about nand die size increasing slowing speeds for smaller drives was wrong

(e) etc, etc...

[NB as an aside, since you've explicitly stated that "Conversely, many higher end low capacity SSDs have severely gimped write speeds", i *really* don't understand why you were then claiming that there could be no noticeable difference???]​

Now, if you cannot see that the exact words which you've used & the things which you didn't state which you're now relying upon don't have implications *within context* then there is really no hope for any kind of rational discussion; is there?

Yeah, quite obviously i'm not claiming that i'm infallible - &, having noticed that i'd made a mistake re the nand used in a couple of the Crucial drives, i very openly acknowledged it (rather than editing 'in secret' as i 'could' have done)...

...& similarly, if rather than just being cross about things, you'd instead corrected your incomplete statements so that there was clarity about what you were actually meaning to say (perhaps adding a bit more detail about the mSATA on 6Gb/s & what the nand dies were & whatnot), there would have been no need for me to type either the last post or this one - & everything would have been happy from my perspective...

Well, i'd have then replied with something to the effect of "Ah, i now see what you were on about - it just wasn't clear that you were meaning any of that."


Anyway, this is going absolutely nowhere, but unfortunately, with psychic powers not being my forte, if you don't actually write what you actually mean then the only way to read your comments is within the context of what's gone before... ...as that's how a sensible discussion usually works in my experience.

 

Good heavens, the information you're providing is highly valuable and well explained, but you are riling people up something fierce! Nonetheless, thank you Thank you all, in fact, for all the information and input.

To clarify, these are normal users. However, I still worry whether or not they'd feel the hit of a slower SSD with poor 4K random and mixed performance. That, in particular, is exponentially better on the 'better' drives. A good example of something where this might be felt by them is in the speed at which thumbnails are generated in Windows Explorer when opening a folder full of hi-res digital photos.

The main goal is, of course, to just get them off hard drives as soon as possible. But if plumping an extra £20 for a better one will result in them having a significantly better experience, I'd rather do that. I'm just not sure how tangible the difference actually is in normal tasks (ON SMALL DRIVES). It's funny, I've installed hundreds, but I rarely get the chance to use them extensively myself, so I don't know.

 

Willful ignorance of the facts and restating the same incorrect remarks doesn't make your position any stronger.

Upset about being called out about what?

I made it clear to the OP that there were other alternatives and as for your bullet points.

(a) - covered that
(b) - I didn't claim otherwise
(c) - also covered that later
(d) - No I didn't, but I will if he wants - you're missing the point again. I haven't claimed that I have found the be all and end all of cheap SSDs. Stop trying to pin me down on claims I didn't make - you're embarrassing yourself.
(e) - you're reaching now
(e) again - go out and buy a two 128GB SSDs one higher end and one budget, with similar claimed read write speeds. Put them in your PC/laptop and use them day to day.

Are you honestly going to say most people will notice the difference between the two in everyday use? Of course not.

Sitting down with a suite of benchmarks and studying them to the nth degree isn't the same thing and well you know it.

Now, I promised myself I wouldn't respond to trolls, and here I am doing just that. Well, no more.

 

^^ because pocket demon will reply to this thread with a wall of text.....

 

Just for posterity, I've now compromised with the Samsung 750 EVO range. Much, much faster than the ultra-cheap offerings, but more affordable than the premium performance drives. I'm going exclusively for 250GB drives now, as there simply isn't a 120/128GB drive worth using right now.

UPDATE 1st Sept. 2016:

The smaller TLC-based SSDs are back in more plentiful stock now; July/August seemed to just really suck. I guess priorities got a bit jiggled with the manufacturers and suppliers.

For what it's worth, my research at this moment suggests that the PNY CS1311 120GB is the best value for money. Kingston's newest TLC offering, the UV400, loses out considerably (it has large file transfer issues that aren't really represented properly in Userbenchmark's figures, but which are mentioned in other (1) reviews (2)) and Toshiba's Q300 isn't much better. All are around the same price, ~£35. Prices seem to have stabilised.

The CS1311 isn't actually far behind Samsung's new budget option, the 750 Evo; the 750 series don't seem to make much sense in price-performance terms, although I have bought a couple of the 250GB variant as it's the best value larger drive if you can't afford the 250GB 850 Evo.

(More in-depth review of the CS1311 can be found here. It's one of the best TLC-based SSDs so far, based on what I've seen.)

 

A quick necro/update. Hoping not to revive all the BS drama and derailing, but here's a basic review and comparison of data I did in an Amazon review of the 850 EVO:

That's it for me, basically. I've verified all this extensively in my own working experience: you just can't tell the difference in normal use (boot times, program launches, small file operations) between a cheaper half-decent SSD like the CS1311 and a premium SSD like the 850 EVO.

I know the thread's dead and I apologise for the necro, but I wanted the last word to be something on-topic and useful to people.