Massive SSD Storage: Samsung SSD 850 Evo 2TB Review

[Steve]

SSDs have become bigger and more affordable over the years. It's hard to believe the prices many of us were paying just a few years ago when we can equip our current test systems with a 1TB Crucial MX200 SSDs for just $365 ($0.36 per gigabyte). There haven't been many options exceeding 1TB -- certainly none that have been consumer friendly. The Intel DC S3610 1.2TB costs $1,190 for example, while the 1.6GB model is fetching $1,590.

Recently, Samsung delivered even higher capacity SSDs with 2TB versions of its famed 850 Pro and 850 Evo series. Today we have the 850 Evo 2TB on hand and although it's obviously not cheap at $800, that works out to be just $0.40 per gigabyte, hardly huge premium over the $0.36 you'd pay for the 1TB models.

While we already know the drive is reasonably priced for the amount of storage provided, we're keen to see what its performance looks like. Is the 2TB model faster, slower or just what we have come to expect from the 850 Evo series?

Read the complete review.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

To be honest, 800 balloons is a lot of dough to throw around on 2 TB's of storage. The prices should still drop further in the future, not so much on smaller capacities but on large capacities like this.

 

[Amy Grant]

Eventually in the not too distant future 2TB SSD will be ever faster, e.g., 3D XPoint and cost the same as the 2TB HD.... Early adopters pay the price.

 

[Cryio]

And here I am, wanting to buy a 120/128 GB Sata based SSD, haha.

 

[amstech]

Just to give a price comparison I still rock a OCZ Agility 2 180GB (3.5", lol), I bought it because it had Vertex 2 like performance for cheaper. I paid $330 for 180GB. I would have to pull up my newegg history but I believe I bought it around 2010.

 

[DaveBG]

I have predicted this. Less than a month ago some of the biggest drives were 750GB and were much more expensive today we see 2-6- even 16TB drives.

 

[misor]

Is Samsung 'dumping' current ssd stocks to prepare for next year's 3d nand offering or something?

 

[Sniped_Ash]

SSD speed is my drug, but luckily my 256gb 830 Pro and 1tb 840 EVO are meeting my storage needs...for now. Otherwise, I'd be thinking reaaaaal hard about getting this 2tb monster.

 

[Lionvibez]

"If you were lucky enough to own the 160GB model you would have felt like you had all the high-speed storage in the world."

I paid $500 for the 160GB G2 model in dec 2009 I know that feeling.

Two years later I picked up a second one for like $200 bucks and I'm still running them in a Raid 0 array. No longer the fastest but very stable. Most of the issues people had with SSD in that time frame I was able to avoid all of it.

And because of that I tend to stick to intel drives even if they are not the fastest anymore because Stability in I/O is more important to me than raw speed.

As for the samsung drives because of some of the recent firmware shenanigans I've avoided those aswell for secondary builds.

You can however get the 512GB 850pro for $300 CAD right now which is a good price.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Nice one Sammy... 2TB yum. Just needs to drop another 25-50% in the next 18 months or so.

I'm a bit confused why the writes are rated the same as 1TB model. Doesn't double the flash usually mean double the writes? Lower grade flash then I take it?

 

[cliffordcooley]

I think Samsung's goal is to personally be the ones to kill off HDD's.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

As the manufacturing capacity increases, we can expect significant further reduction in price. Does anyone see economic or physical science barriers to 1TB for less than US$200? Are there limits to 'faster/better/cheaper'?

 

[madboyv1]

With the price difference, as well as having two separate warranties covering for a total of 2TB, I'd probably go with 2x 1TB, unless physical space was a deciding factor. Both would go nice as companion storage with the PM953/SM951...

 

[Per Hansson]

I'm a bit confused why the writes are rated the same as 1TB model. Doesn't double the flash usually mean double the writes? Lower grade flash then I take it?

Not always, that depends on what is the bottleneck.
In this case the 2TB is slower than the 1TB model because it causes too much overhead to keep track of the NAND tracking table...
Anandtech review went into more detail on it if you want to read more about it: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-evo-ssd-review

 

[Darth Shiv]

Not always, that depends on what is the bottleneck.
In this case the 2TB is slower than the 1TB model because it causes too much overhead to keep track of the NAND tracking table...
Anandtech review went into more detail on it if you want to read more about it: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-evo-ssd-review

Sorry I meant write life not speed.

One of the commenters on the article says what I was thinking:
"Durability is the amount of data that can be written to the drive Samsung is guaranteeing can be written to it during its life. It's just related to the number of times a chip can be completely rewritten. If you double the capacity, you double the number of chips, and therefore you double the durability."
So it shouldn't be a function of the NAND tracking table complexity but my expectation is that it would be based on the number of writes per NAND cell multiplied by the total number of cells. I.e. should scale with capacity?

 

[Per Hansson]

@Darth Shiv SSD manufacturers have been using generalized endurance ratings for quite some time now.
Mainly it's so enterprise users don't use client drives for server workloads...

You can read some more about it here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review/4

 

[Camikazi]

I have predicted this. Less than a month ago some of the biggest drives were 750GB and were much more expensive today we see 2-6- even 16TB drives.

You predicted the sun will rise in the east... we all knew it was going to happen it's not much of a prediction

 

[Darth Shiv]

You can read some more about it here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review/4

Thanks.

 

[The Owl]

And here I am, wanting to buy a 120/128 GB Sata based SSD, haha.

My three main machines all have 128 Gb SSD's I also have the bits to put together when I feel up to it to build my new machine which has a 265 of the same, although for storage at the moment I use mechanical drives and until 4Tb drives of the SSD kind are as cheap as the mechanical I cannot see them being use for storage but I live in hope