Breaking Intel's 600p NVMe SSD: Endurance Pushed To The Limit

[Guest]

Upon release, Intel stated that all SSD 600p series products shared the same 72TBW endurance rating, which we discussed in our review. Later, the company quietly changed the endurance rating, which we put to the test for 42 days.

Breaking Intel's 600p NVMe SSD: Endurance Pushed To The Limit : Read more

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

"A few NVMe SSDs perform better, but only cost a few dollars more and deliver higher endurance, as well. "

So.... which ones only cost a few dollars more but perform better?

 

[LiviuTM]

MyDigital BPX, for example? http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/mydigitalssd-pcie-m.2-ssd/

 

[Brian_R170]

I've got three of the 512GB 600p in three different desktops in my home, so it's reassuring that they have reasonable endurance for a consumer SSD and that they fail in a way that protects your data. They're certainly not stellar NVMe performers, but for the price (mine were $180, $130, and $130 from Newegg), they still seem like a pretty good compromise between performance and value, especially given that I tend to replace drives every 3 years to move to a new technology/formfactor/capacity/etc.

 

[wtfiwin]

nice review, this is an excellent read ty chris

 

[kiniku]

Now subject the same punishment methodology to a Samsung NVMe drive and share with us the results.

 

[CRamseyer]

Chris Ryan, a former Tom's Hardware editor wrote something like 1.7PB to a Samsung drive around 5 years ago. I don't know if I can free a computer up for that long. I'll look into how to manage a 960 Pro or EVO endurance test. The first step is getting the drives. Datacenters are buying them as fast as Samsung can make them. That's why they go in and out of stock.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

MyDigital BPX, for example? http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/mydigitalssd-pcie-m.2-ssd/

The review on Tom's for the MyDigitalSSD BPX was a good one to see other low-priced alternatives to Intel's 600p. Here's the 256GB performance comparison.

That being said, I still wish Intel never released this 600p. I always thought of them as having either the best performers or near the best. This 600p seems like it was released just to hit a low price point for a NVMe drive. Who knows, maybe they just wanted a way to sell NAND that didn't perform well enough for their bigger enterprise SSDs or even their mid-level consumer grade SSDs.

 

[bit_user]

First, thanks for doing this investigation. This is true tech journalism.

Second, to anyone who thinks 39 GB/day is higher than the typical home user requires, please check the I/O usage of Firefox (or other popular web browsers). I typically have several tabs open, in each of several windows. It's not at all uncommon for me to see 39 GB/day of bytes written. When you take into account write amplification, the true number could be several times this.

I think the main culprits are HTML5 that uses local storage and caching, as well as Firefox's history, and recovery features. Of course, ad block would help, but eventually you might not have much of a web left to browse.

The Intel 600p includes a five-year warranty, but we suspect most users will replace the drive within that time.

Most users? You guys should get out and see how the real world uses tech. My work PC is a first-gen i7 Xeon from 2010. I was only allowed to replaced the original HDD after it died. If I'm lucky, I'll get to replace the box with a Skylake, this year.

I keep my home PCs & components for a long time, as well. I tend to put old SSDs into less demanding or less write-intensive uses, such as media streaming boxes. My fileserver is still booting off a Crucial RealSSD C300. Of the 13 SSDs I've bought, none has yet died on me - and all are still in service (though I only use a few, on a daily basis).

 

[panathas]

Great! Now at the end of its life this SSD becomes a brick with all of your data on it and there is no way to delete them since it's like a DVD in read-only mode. What happens if you want to throw it away? Is there a way to secure erase it or somehow destroy the data on it or you have to physically break and destroy the drive?

 

[CRamseyer]

That is a very good question! I'll load the drive in a machine tomorrow and try to secure erase it.

 

[ashburner]

I've been using the 1tb 600p for just over a month now and it's been great, and extremely speedy. I doubt if I will ever reach its data write capacity. Apparently I'm not a power user.

 

[bit_user]

I always thought of them as having either the best performers or near the best.

No way.

Intel hasn't lead in SSD performance, for a long time. The 750 was good, for a while, but then you pretty much have to go back to the X25, in order to find a best/near best performer from them.

I do hope we see a higher-end M.2 drive from them, with more greater reliability and ECC features. Much like their 5xx series SATA drives traditionally had. I will give up a bit on price and performance, for better reliability.

 

[Bruce427]

Chris,

When do you expect to review the Samsung 500GB 960 EVO? The 250GB version got such a poor review that I have been holding off the 500GB until your review.

Also, when do you expect to review the Corsair MP500?

Thanks

 

[Sakkura]

First, thanks for doing this investigation. This is true tech journalism.

Second, to anyone who thinks 39 GB/day is higher than the typical home user requires, please check the I/O usage of Firefox (or other popular web browsers). I typically have several tabs open, in each of several windows. It's not at all uncommon for me to see 39 GB/day of bytes written. When you take into account write amplification, the true number could be several times this.

I think the main culprits are HTML5 that uses local storage and caching, as well as Firefox's history, and recovery features. Of course, ad block would help, but eventually you might not have much of a web left to browse.

The Intel 600p includes a five-year warranty, but we suspect most users will replace the drive within that time.

Most users? You guys should get out and see how the real world uses tech. My work PC is a first-gen i7 Xeon from 2010. I was only allowed to replaced the original HDD after it died. If I'm lucky, I'll get to replace the box with a Skylake, this year.

I keep my home PCs & components for a long time, as well. I tend to put old SSDs into less demanding or less write-intensive uses, such as media streaming boxes. My fileserver is still booting off a Crucial RealSSD C300. Of the 13 SSDs I've bought, none has yet died on me - and all are still in service (though I only use a few, on a daily basis).

I use Firefox heavily and am not seeing that behavior. My boot drive, with Firefox installed as well, has seen a total of 24.7 TB written over a little less than 4½ years of use. That means an average of ~15GB writes per day, total.

You probably have a problem with an extension or maybe some changes you've made to the configuration of the browser.

As for replacements, people tend to upgrade storage relatively often. Especially when we're talking about low-capacity SSDs. I don't think a 128GB SSD is going to be popular after 2022.

 

[CRamseyer]

Hey Bruce,

I have both the MP500 and 960 EVO in 512GB classes. For the Samsung we updated the original article with the added info but it's not online yet. The 960 EVO 500GB is more like the larger model in performance than the smaller version.

The MP500 may take a little longer. I have the 480GB version but the 240GB doesn't get here till the 20th. I hope to pass the review down the chain on the 25th.

I'm still bullish on the BPX 480GB.

 

[Achaios]

The guy that claims he is seeing 39 GB per day of use b/c of Firefox is doing something seriously wrong.

I have had my Samsung 840 Evo 500 GB since 2013, and it has logged exactly 9916 hours of use. Now throughout this period, the drive has had exactly 6885 GB written on it, which means 16,67 GB per day on average. In reality it is much, much less data written per day, so I recommend he gets his PC checked by a professional.

 

[Achaios]

It follows that I too use only Firefox as my web browser.

 

[Bruce427]

Thanks Chris,

With what you have observed, would you recommend the 500GB EVO 960 over the 256GB 950 Pro?

 

[envy14tpe]

Responsiveness Chart seems a little misleading..the observed range is 1015 to 1113. Difference is only 10%. Also, what are the units?

A quick look makes the M.2 seem much better than 2.5" drives. But 2.5' are still priced well. Although, in 2 years I'm sure we'll only be talking about M.2

 

[reghir]

I've used HDSentinel for many years and have always been impressed with it. For SSD drives its' information, ie wear, temperature and errors is invaluable and have strongly recommend it to my friends.

 

[bit_user]

The guy that claims he is seeing 39 GB per day of use b/c of Firefox is doing something seriously wrong.

No, it just depends on how many tabs you have open x how long you leave them open. Some sites are worse than others. I tend to have a lot of tabs open and don't always sleep or power down my PC while I'm away or sleeping.

I've used HDSentinel for many years and have always been impressed with it.

Their list of officially supported drives is pretty small, and seems skewed towards older models:

http://www.hdsentinel.com/compatibility_ssd.php

 

[LunarPropane]

What media wear indicator did you use?

 

[LunarPropane]

What media wear indicator did you use?

 

[bit_user]

What media wear indicator did you use?

I'm just looking at the I/O Write Bytes column, in Task Manager. It's disabled, by default.

The I/O Writes column is also informative, because each I/O Write to the drive forces it to modify at least 4k. However, that column probably counts the number of write calls to the kernel, which can do some buffering & combining before they're finally sent to the drive.