Samsung 4TB 850 EVO Listed For Sale, We Have Detailed Specs And Pricing

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For now. Intel and Micron should also have large capacity SSDs out later this year and then soon we should see lower end ones come out and help push the $/GB down. Once it gets to where you can buy a 4TB for $200 bucks I am jumping on one and finally having a single drive for everything again.
 

Metteec

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Note the Terabytes Written (TBW), a measurement of drive endurance, or the number of TB you can write to the drive without it failing. For 500GB drive, the ratio of TBW to Drive Size (TB) is 300:1. For the 4TB drive, the TBW ratio is 75% less than the 500GB drive, at 75:1.
 

Metteec

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While $1,500 seems like a lot, your closest competitor is the SanDisk Optimus MAX 4GB SAS SSD. The Optimus MAX is a more reliable drive, aimed at the professional server market, but commands a hefty price tag (~$2,200). The Optimus MAX is 500/500 MB/s Sequential Read/Write with 85K/11K Randon Read/Write IOPS (4KB). The key difference though is the 867:1 TB to TBW ratio (compared to 75:1 for the EVO), making the Optimus MAX substantially more reliable. I think at this price point, Samsung is targeting the enthusiast market with these specs. Regardless, I would recommend holding out. At CES back in January 2016, Mushkin unveiled its REACTOR 4TB SSD with a $500 price point. There are rumors that they plan to release the drive next month. Prices for the EVO 4GB are going to drop significantly, and I would not be surprised to see $900 with $100 MIR.
 

CRamseyer

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The reports of the Mushkin at $500 are wrong. One site published that price point but either misheard or Mushkin misspoke. The $500 price point was in reference to the 2TB model that Mushkin released just after CES. I wrote a news post about it right after CES to set the record straight.

The TBW number only refers to the amount of data written that falls under the warranty period. Several studies have shown that TBW is a reference only for warranty periods. There are very few studies published that follow the true JEDEC standards for testing endurance. With that said, I can't say this drive will far exceed the warrantied TWB rating but Samsung memory lasts much longer than the low TBW ratings used for warranty purposes.
 
In 3-5 years these will be a couple of hundy. The manufacturing cost of these drives is dirt cheap - it's all just recouping R&D/FAB costs. Being first to market always guarantees a price premium too. Storage involving any moving parts is close (< 3 years) to being declared officially dead imo.
 

jn77

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Why are they doing this backwards? I would expect that an EVO 950 Pro 4TB would be $1499....... This is just a basic EVO and a previous generation at that..... I would say $500 for this one, $600 for an 850 Pro 4Tb, $900 for an EVO 950 4TB and then $1499 for an EVO 950 Pro 4TB....

Guess I will be waiting. I have been waiting for 4TB EVO's to come out so I can run them as 8TB in Raid 0 on my laptop. Not spending $3000 on last generation tech.
 
METTEEC,
A lot of people don't understand TBW. A higher capacity drive can obviously handle more writes (assuming everything basically equal).

The article suggests that maybe the reason for the 4TB and 2TB being the same has to do with the amount of OP (Overprovisioning) but I don't agree. I think they're just being really approximate and lumping drives together.

The reason the OP amount makes no sense is because SSD's use wear leveling algorithms, so the memory ends up wearing about the same on average. I'm not sure how a bit more OP is going to double the write endurance of the memory (2x capactiy, same TBW). Without getting into details that just doesn't make much sense.

Obviously more memory whether OP or not will help with TBW but a 2TB with some extra OP exactly matching a 4TB with proportionately less OP memory for TBW seems incredibly unlikely.
 

PaulAlcorn

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Extra overprovisioning serves several purposes, and it does have a huge impact on endurance and performance. The controller can dynamically allocate free blocks to replace failed ones, which allows the drive to keep on chugging even after a significant number of expired blocks. The more blocks you have, the more that you can designate to replace failed ones, thus increasing life. More OP also reduces other intangibles, such as read-disturb, and allows more efficient operation in general.

There are two types of wear leveling - static and dynamic rotation. Dynamic wear leveling distributes incoming data among blocks to assure an even wear rate. However, if the blocks are populated with data they aren't written to, so that creates a huge mismatch, which is where static rotation steps in. Static rotation is constantly shuffling around the existing data on the SSD in the background to assure that populated blocks are not only written once, which allows it to spread that additional endurance among the free pool.

Too much static data rotation can exacerbate read-disturb wear, so the algorithms are quite sophisticated to determine when, and where, to move data. Some may even forgo static data rotation entirely to avoid additional wear on weak cells, or the cells around them.

OP certainly increases endurance. Take the Micron 9100 we recently reviewed as the perfect example. The same model, one with 2.4TB of addressable space (from a 4TB pool) has a 6.57 PB TBW rating, while the same SSD with 4TB of flash, but more addressable area (3.2TB) provides only 3.28 PB of endurance. All other factors, including DRAM allocation, NAND, controller and firmware, are all the same, but the doubled OP provides a neat doubling of endurance. However, there is a diminishing point of returns around 50 to 60 percent OP (dependent upon controller and other factors). After that you are sacrificing too much capacity for negliglble gains.

OP also increases random write performance, the 2.4TB model his 300,000 IOPS, the 3.2TB hits only 160,000. Again, almost a double in this metric due to doubled OP.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/micron-9100-max-nvm...
 

bobmac1547

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CAUTION! While Samsung SSD's have good performance, their technical support and customer service are terrible! They do not have any provision for expedited cross shipping so you must wait until the defective drive arrives at their location, they tested, and then they decide whether to replace it repair it or whatever. As a result of her recent experience, I no longer buy Samsung drives, but have switched to SanDisk. SanDisk has excellent customer support policies. Caveat emptor!
 
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