Finding a good SSD

[Bufo Bill]

Hi, this is my first post here, but I've been lurking about for a few weeks. 

I have been given an HP Pavilion G6 laptop, which is to become my dedicated music server. I am on a very tight budget, hence the second hand starting point (I wanted a bat cave when I was a kid; still dreaming lol). I was thinking of replacing a failing hard drive with an SSD. The thing is I've had budget option SSD's on portable memory and they have sometimes lasted little more than a year of daily use. What would you recommend I replace my hard drive with, an SSD or another HDD, is one likely to quit as quickly as my past experience suggests? I have a budget of £140-£200, I think that's about US$240 or so.  

Many thanks from Bill.

[jaspal kallar]

What size e.g. 500 GB or 1 TB?

[Bufo Bill]

1 minute ago, jaspal kallar said:

What size e.g. 500 GB or 1 TB?

Hi 500GB is probably all I can afford, but if there is a 1TB that would suit, please let me know.  

Thanks for the quick response. 

Bill. 

[jaspal kallar]

500 GB Samsung 850 Evo I've been told is good.  Note, I have no experience of SSD drives

 

 

[RG]

1 minute ago, jaspal kallar said:

500 GB Samsung 850 Evo I've been told is good.  

 

 

Very happy with mine but only 6 months use to date.  With patience you will find a great deal on one and they have a good warranty.

[Bufo Bill]

1 minute ago, jaspal kallar said:

500 GB Samsung 850 Evo I've been told is good.  Note, I have no experience of SSD drives

 

 

Thanks very much for your help, the SSD that you mention kept cropping up in my research too, and is within my price range. 

I would still love to hear opinions on the reliability of SSD's. 

Thanks from Bill.

[Bufo Bill]

Thanks RG, will keep your advice in mind. 

Bill.

[rickca]

1 hour ago, Bufo Bill said:

The thing is I've had budget option SSD's on portable memory and they have sometimes lasted little more than a year of daily use. What would you recommend I replace my hard drive with, an SSD or another HDD, is one likely to quit as quickly as my past experience suggests?

No question I would go with a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo.  Once you experience how much faster your laptop runs with an SSD, you will never go back to a hard drive unless you need more storage capacity for a given budget.

 

Have you experienced reliability issues with an SSD or a USB flash drive?  The latter certainly have a disappointing track record.  Have a look at Amazon reviews for the Samsung 850 Evo ... 87% 5-star ratings with 16,000 reviews.  That is unbeatable.

 

 

[Bufo Bill]

2 minutes ago, rickca said:

No question I would go with a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo.  Once you experience how much faster your laptop runs with an SSD, you will never go back to a hard drive unless you need more storage capacity for a given budget.

 

Is your experience with reliability issues with an SSD or a USB flash drive?  The latter certainly have a disappointing track record.  Have a look at Amazon reviews for the Samsung 850 Evo ... 87% 5-star ratings with 16,000 reviews.  That is unbeatable.

Thanks @rickca that's very helpful. It was indeed a usb flash device I had in mind; more than one in fact. Is there much difference (forgive my ignorance, I'm new to this)? 

Many thanks from Bill  

[rickca]

Many premium laptops today come with nothing but SSD.  If reliability were an issue, would Apple take that risk with their MacBook Pro?

 

USB flash drives are a convenience device.  They are notoriously unreliable.  They shouldn't even be used for backup.

 

Although USB flash drives and SSD's share some of the same technology, SSD's have much more sophisticated controllers and use higher quality flash memory than USB thumb drives.

 

 

[beerandmusic]

I have formatted all my old HDD and have about 10 i will be selling...i don't want anything but SSD anymore with exception of my external 4TB hd's as that would be too expensive in SSD.

 

With costs today, i don't know of any reason anyone would buy a HD except for large backup drives.

 

Samsung are the most respected and i would give 2 thumbs up and own several.  I have had only one ssd go bad on me in the past 3-4 years, and it was a patriot.

[Bufo Bill]

Many thanks that has settled my mind rickca. 

Bill.

[Bufo Bill]

2 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

I have formatted all my old HDD and have about 10 i will be selling...i don't want anything but SSD anymore with exception of my external 4TB hd's as that would be too expensive in SSD.

 

With costs today, i don't know of any reason anyone would buy a HD except for large backup drives.

 

Samsung are the most respected and i would give 2 thumbs up and own several.  I have had only one ssd go bad on me in the past 3-4 years, and it was a patriot.

Many thanks for your comments, very helpful. 

Thanks from Bill.

[beerandmusic]

57 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

I have formatted all my old HDD and have about 10 i will be selling...i don't want anything but SSD anymore with exception of my external 4TB hd's as that would be too expensive in SSD.

 

With costs today, i don't know of any reason anyone would buy a HD except for large backup drives.

 

Samsung are the most respected and i would give 2 thumbs up and own several.  I have had only one ssd go bad on me in the past 3-4 years, and it was a patriot.

but i must say patriot sent me a replacement drive within 24 hrs of them recieving the bad one, and I had it within 3 business days...the support was great!

[Indydan]

I have had a 1 TB Mushkin Reactor in my iMac for 13 months now. Blazingly fast compared to a normal Hard drive. Perfectly silent as well. My SSD software (Disk Sensei) indicates it is in perfect health. 

 

 

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226596

[beerandmusic]

^^^  He said his budget was $250...but if he could afford that much, i personally would go with this

 

16,000 5 star reviews!

 

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E1T0B-AM/dp/B00OBRFFAS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504943542&sr=8-1&keywords=1+tb+ssd+samsung

 

[Panelhead]

  I have been using SSD's since 2009 and never had a drop in performance or a failure. 

  SSD may be more expensive where you are. I have purchased all mine from Fry's. 

  They have Samsung Evo 850 drives in 250 gB for 89.99 right now. I store all my music on hard drives and they are loaded into RAM for playback.

  A 250 gig SSD should work fine for a dedicated music server.

  I have tried a few brands. I like the Samsung the best. But all have really performed the same. All have read write speeds over 500 and have ever failed.

  I might go get one of the 850's. I have a 128 gig right now.

[Bufo Bill]

Thanks for the help everyone, you've all helped ease my mind considerably, I think that Samsung is one for the shopping list! 

Many thanks from Bill.

[lucretius]

16 hours ago, Bufo Bill said:

Hi, this is my first post here, but I've been lurking about for a few weeks. 

I have been given an HP Pavilion G6 laptop, which is to become my dedicated music server. I am on a very tight budget, hence the second hand starting point (I wanted a bat cave when I was a kid; still dreaming lol). I was thinking of replacing a failing hard drive with an SSD. The thing is I've had budget option SSD's on portable memory and they have sometimes lasted little more than a year of daily use. What would you recommend I replace my hard drive with, an SSD or another HDD, is one likely to quit as quickly as my past experience suggests? I have a budget of £140-£200, I think that's about US$240 or so.  

Many thanks from Bill.

 

Samsung 512GB 850 Pro ~ $USD 212

Samsung 1TB 850 Pro ~ $USD 421

 

The Pro can handle more write cycles than the EVO. I've been running Samsung 840 Pro's for more than 3 years now (main OS drive) - no failure or data corruption.
 

[rando]

Second hand, being used as your main computer, or not.  If it will be your music server being able to get the highest amount of sound quality out of it is up there in terms of importance.  Right alongside it is a backup solution.  When SSD fail they don't give any warning like spinning drives which start being unable to write to sectors.  Budgeting in a 1TB 7200 rpm spinning drive + case could be a wise move if you lack other options.

 

Back to sound quality.  Laptops are a world of their own with the amount of power management and miniaturization that has gone into making it function.  Running your OS/programs and storing/streaming music all at the same time on a single hard drive takes it's toll.  The addition of an external DAC would produce a marked improvement when used with a good quality music player program.  

 

I've now suggested two additional purchases for your budget dedicated music server.  They would also add the expense of cables and some planning to use the highest quality input and output your machine is capable of.  You might also find upping the quantity of RAM is necessary.  What would be most helpful to our ability to help you would be listing your computer specs and music system chain.  Doing a search here for ways to stop background processes and other detrimental effects will also take your system further.  Look for BIOS updates, take the laptop apart and clean it, remove the wifi card and turn it off in BIOS if you will not be streaming, find the best drivers for critical system components, examine everything you can improve.  Then assess what needs to be bought.

[Bufo Bill]

Lucretius, many thanks for the recommendation. Rando, many thanks for your input. To be more specific about my set up, after my laptop I have a Dragonfly Black DAC by Audioquest (I hope to upgrade after Xmas), then it is linked to my 1950's tube Hifi (a Quad II) and electrostatic speaker. Very unusual I know, particularly as this system is essentially mono! The sound quality is very good, there is no question of upgrading anytime soon (budget).  

Many thanks from Bill.

 

[chrisc]

The 240Gb SSD in my 2012 MacBook failed after 3 years.  It kept showing "seek errors".  I replaced it with a Samsung.  So whatever you use, backing up is a must

[beerandmusic]

8 hours ago, chrisc said:

The 240Gb SSD in my 2012 MacBook failed after 3 years.  It kept showing "seek errors".  I replaced it with a Samsung.  So whatever you use, backing up is a must

 

Yea, i was quite surprised when i had my first SSD go bad...i figured it being basically memory that they would last nearly forever.  I am sure time will show that most of htem will.

[rando]

Samsung 840 Pro is an example of required age and dispersion with quality memory/controller installed that is still in wide use.  With the approach of five years since it was released it is the benchmark SSD data for user failure rate.  Drives in constant use that crossed the 3 year mark have been deemed stable and likely to have a longer life cycle than the computer generation they were designed for.  Drives with any health issues at the 3 year mark predominantly failed within 6 months.  Almost every other SSD from every other maker of equal age or greater age is dead.  

 

Memory and controllers have both advanced in the production environment considerably during the intervening years.  Don't base your buying habits on who had a good reputation 5 years ago which doesn't hold the same amount of truth now.      

[beerandmusic]

4 hours ago, rando said:

 Almost every other SSD from every other maker of equal age or greater age is dead.  

 

 

I doubt that very much.  I have had dozens of ssd drives and usually go with least expensive or fastest, depending on if it will be a backup or main computer drive...i have only had 1 die.  I do recommend samsung, but would not be leery of buying any brand.