Don't Buy DRAMless SSDs

[Rinix]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/dramless-ssd-roundup,4833.html
Eeek. SSD quality has reach an unthinkable low. If you need an SSD, make sure it either has DRAM for its cache, has a good SLC cache like the Samsung 850 EVO, or it has a mixture of DRAM and SLC for cache.

[Don_prince]

Search a bit more in Dram SSD's, Dram ssd's are a nightmare... that is propaganda....


I will evolve on this tomorrow with parts of my own experience with Dram ssd's...

[Rinix]

What?!

[Don_prince]

Dram ssd's on itself are not particularly bad. The way it is done matters...


You can not have a mix of both... Samsung is doing this with the 840 and the 850 and the 860 series... They work also with expirimental triple level cell chips. If you are interested on how that works and its disatvantages take a look... anyway down the road it means that they can be made cheaper, but they need a mix of dram and nand flash. Risks of losses are way higher and when moving huge chunks of data the cache gets clogged and the ssd gets down to an enormous slow speed.. This happens way quicker when the ssd is used as an OS drive..

So a mix Dram and (all the others are sram) Sram always means there is a limit after which the speed of sram needs to be taken. With the samsung 800 series this means also that the triple level cell system needs to do its job and it becomes the slowest SSD of the bunch...

Especialy the samsung series (of which I have 5 around at home) have serious issues. Because of this complicated technology they started to use a certain series of sandforce controllers...

This series of sandforce controllers you need to stay away from. BEFORE you buy your ssd CHECK what controller is in it. IF it is a sandforce controller CHECK wheter it is COMPATIBLE with your motherboard.

Trust me... Mine was not compatible with my motherboard... It caused carnage over all my disks and I ended up with 4 corrupted harddrives.. With that I lost my 2 backup, my main and my leisure drive. The drives where send to a friend of mine in Norway to recover what is left of the data... Everything was so scatered all over the place it either became a price in the 6 digits and a years time with a slim chance of ony 40% recovery. I lost 3 years of work and data...

Another friend of mine had a client who ordered 350 laptops with those samsung ssd's... it took them 1,5 years to uncover the problem and samsung did not refund to this proffesional client who had a lot of damage and money put into uncovering this issue. Neither have I been compensated for the loss of my data or 2 drives of which the controller compleatly stopped working...

I decided to stay away from samsung ssd's... If you still want to buy them, do it, they are cheap... but be prepared for the worst and have your backups and check them...

[Cougar11]

I'm not going to say any of this is not correct, since I have not researched it, but other than your description of possible problems, your post Don, without technical data, is like a steam review. I have had 1 Samsung Evo for for over four years, and another for over 1. One of which has my OS, and I have no issues with them. I am not saying you and others have not had issues with them. The new egg reviews did talk about bad out of box, and others that failed soon after install, but over 75 percent had no issues and love them. I will buy more of them in the future, until I see specific data that says look out, or I have issues with mine. I would really like to see the data you speak of.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk

[Don_prince]

Just google sandforce controller issues.
List is massive though still incomplete.

Also the list on the internet is not complete. Most motherboards have multiple sata controlers (my workstation has 4) and you have to just take the wrong one and then stil my 850 evo did well for the good part of 2.5 years... The problems are not realy noticable untill it is beyond recovery...

The write speed issues? just google on triple cell level ssd's and knock yourself out...


EDIT:

If you want to figure out wheter you are a candidate search for the specific controler on your model ssd and the controller on your mobo... if you google on that and nothing shows up I'd say you have a good chance of no issues...