Samsung 850 EVO 4TB SSD Review

[Guest]

Samsung finally has competition from other 3D NAND SSDs, but it counters with its new 4TB 850 Evo, which has the highest capacity of any SSD on the market. Let's take a closer look.

Samsung 850 EVO 4TB SSD Review : Read more

 

[sillynilly]

What a beast!

 

[lucas_7_94]

And i'm here with the 250GB...

In term's on technology, this is amazing, small, fast, good storage, hope the prices will be a little cheap!!

 

[Faisal_Almalki223]

Great technological evolution for SSDs! In a really short time too...
But the only culprit is the price, but overtime it might drop down to a logical price that appeals to us end users.

 

[logainofhades]

At that price, they can keep it. I will just sit here with my 480gb Sandisk Ultra II and Toshiba 4tb HDD, for now.

 

[teamninja]

For regular people a 250 gb SSD will work perfectly well and a HDD for storing photos and videos will do fine.... considering a 4 TB HDD cost 1/10th of this...

 

[phantomferrari]

Personally if I had the money to spend I would wait. Since the SM961 was released based on a new controller and now micron/intel and others are starting to push out 3d nand products id wait until the 860 series (which should be out by the end of the year) a new controller and more competition (which samsung really doesnt have now when it comes to 3d nand) should make for cheaper drives

 

[Metteec]

Nice review. Glad the low TBW was pointed out. Samsung would sell a few more if they increased it to 1,200TB, the same ratio TBW to size as their smaller 850 EVO drives. The future is grand for SSD storage; would not want to be a disk-based storage company right now.

 

[derekullo]

If you are writing 1.2 petabytes of data, you are buying the wrong drive. lol

 

[Walter_IT]

"This jump isn't a shot across the bow to hard disk drive manufacturers; it's a boot on the throat".

I disagree.
In fact, I am having a hard time thinking which kind of consumer could make use of such SSD, at these prices.
I just so happened to be looking for a 4-bay NAS for home storage, and for ~$1600 I can get 24TB in Raid5 configuration. All inclusive, and with a fairly decent NAS (Qnap TS451).
A 6TB consumer HDD sells for $160. So we're talking about nearly 10X lower cost for 50% more capacity. Yes, of course, the HDD is massively slower, but HDD are still way faster than anyone needs, for streaming videos. Which if you need 4~6TB, and you are a consumer, it is probably what you need the disk for.

So the advantages of this drives boil down to:
a) Single disk setup
b) Large storage on a laptop
Point a) is “convenient”, at best, but would anyone pay ~$1200 for such convenience? (With $300 you can get a 500GB SSD + 6TB HDD).
Point b) may make a difference … however, seeing how the few laptops that ship with SSD have options for 128GB or 256GB, the 4GB is really wishful thinking. And, again, this carries more than $1K premium. Not for everyone, that’s for sure.

IMHO, this is great technological advance, that goes in the right direction, but I see no practical use, and very little market, for it. Again, IMHO.

 

[CRamseyer]

The statement was made looking at the long term. Samsung could sell this drive today for $700 if it wanted. It uses the same controller and die arrangement as the 2TB drive. The additional 2GB of DRAM is a rounding error for most.

Think of it as a proof of concept for many people right now at a $1500 price point. What happens when Samsung moves to 60-layer TLC flash with 384Gbit density (estimated)? The $700 moves down to $400.

If you don't think HDD companies are scared of flash then why are they buying IP and assets as fast as possible?

 

[Walter_IT]

...

If you don't think HDD companies are scared of flash then why are they buying IP and assets as fast as possible?

Oh, I have no doubt that they are scared, and they do need to do something to be relevant 5 years from now, but that doesn't change the fact that "nobody" is going to buy a 4TB consumer SSD at $1500, and the ones that will, probably will do so not knowing what they're doing.
Samsung could sell this drive at $700 ... I don't believe it. Maybe in a couple of years, when the process is stable, and the yield have gone up, and the cost of RnD is amortized. Then again, who knows: these are only speculations. Facts is: this drive exists today, and it is as expensive as 2 drives that existed yesterday with half capacity.
On large capacity, where, presumably, speed is not as relevant, there's a 20X cost difference still today. Until that difference drops to 1.5X, 2X, maybe, HDD will still make sense.

The future looks tough for HDD, but we knew this before this drive was announced, and this announcement changes very little, if anything (from that perspective).

 

[mosc]

I don't think this is the death of HDD's but I do think this is the first release where you can actually plot out pretty clearly based on the forcasted process improvements when HDD's will stop being made. 2 years from now I'm sure Samsung will have an 8TB drive in this size and it will probably cost about $1500, still a lot more than an HDD. 2 years after that you can probably get such a thing for $750 and two years after that something like $300. In 6 years you're talking 8TB SDD's for $300 when a HDD probably tops out at 12TB and something like $200. I can't imagine the market will hold that extra capacity value out much longer than that.

 

[Walter_IT]

I don't think this is the death of HDD's but I do think this is the first release where you can actually plot out pretty clearly based on the forcasted process improvements when HDD's will stop being made. 2 years from now I'm sure Samsung will have an 8TB drive in this size and it will probably cost about $1500, still a lot more than an HDD. 2 years after that you can probably get such a thing for $750 and two years after that something like $300. In 6 years you're talking 8TB SDD's for $300 when a HDD probably tops out at 12TB and something like $200. I can't imagine the market will hold that extra capacity value out much longer than that.

I would love for that to happen and, who knows, maybe it will, but I seriously doubt it.
This estimate (http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/news/4/2/42280_023_experts-claim-ssds-price-hdds-2016-beyond.jpg) says it will take till 2023 for the cost-per-GB to be comparable to that of HDD.
I don't think it is realistic: we have already seen major slowdown of the shrinking, so I don't think we'll keep the -30%/year reduction much longer. I hope I'm wrong, but 50% reduction in 2 years seems very difficult to maintain going forward.
But, let me insist: in terms of price-per-GB, this new 4TB drive does not make any difference, as it costs exactly as much as 2 SDD with half its capacity.

 

[CRamseyer]

Hard drives will not die. The flash fabs can't even make enough bits to cover the demand today for storage. HDDs will continue to thrive in the data center and in home servers (NAS).

I think some of the comments overlook the next step. During Micron investor calls we've learned that second gen 3D (From Micron) should sample in early 2017. The layers increase from 32 to 64. For MLC flash that means 512Gbit and for TLC that means a massive 768Gbit. For TLC that is a 96GB die. A current gen 256GB SSD that sells for $60 today uses 8 packages with two 128Gbit die per package.

The same configuration, 8 packages with two die per package, nets us 1,536GB next year. They won't sell that for $60 right off the bat but you get the idea. Moving to the other end of the scale with a configuration like the Samsung 850 EVO. Eight packages with 16 die per package. That nets us a 12,288GB (12.2TB) SSD.

So, like I said in the article. The next steps from here are more like leaps in capacity than baby steps.

 

[Van der Berg]

It is very nice to see a 4TB model of the Samsung 850 EVO. It is a good review again and one day we will have this in our PC. Only the price is now to high

 

[Igor_10]

I'd like to know what is the best choice if you need buy speed one? Is that Intel 750 1.2TB, Samsung 850 EVO or SM961 1024GB? I'm pretty confuse because when you compare SM961 with S. 850 EVO the first one is faster?