What capacity of the SSDs should you buy? Five mistakes need to avoid when buying an SSD!

Today I'm going to talk about solid state drives. Although in 2019, I believe many of you are still using mechanical drives as system drives. Trust me, SSDs will revolutionize your daily and gaming experience. SSDs are to improve your daily and gaming experience in a revolutionary way. It's not just about starting up fast. SSDs have the biggest advantage over traditional mechanical drives in the speed at which small files can be read and written. The operating system daily operations, such as surfing the Internet, antivirus and document processing, are mostly based on small files.

A friend asked me how to improve his antique computer which is very slow. In most cases, switching a solid-state drive or adding a memory can solve more than 80% of the computer problems, especially the computer for daily office. So, the question is how large should SSDs be? What pitfalls should you avoid when buying a solid state drive?

As we all know, the mainstream SSD capacity is generally 120G (128G), 240G (250G, 256G), 480G, 500G (512G), and above is 720G, 1T, 2T. Apart from the capacity of SSD, you should take NAND flash into consideration, such as MLC,TLC,QLC. The controller model also needs to notice, such as Silicon Motion, Phison, Marvell, Samsung, Realtek. Then you have to look at their test score, read and write speed and lifespan. For the green hands, these seem to be a headache. Is there a universal rule to choose SSD?

1.capacity is vital
If your budget is adequate, choose a solid-state drive with large capacity. Why? This involves a usual question, speed dropping. A new SSD and a SSD with half capacity are two SSDs. Why? This is determined by the operating characteristics of SSDs. Unlike mechanical drives which can write and read at any time, SSDs need to erase blocks of data before they can be written. While new SSD can read data randomly because there are not old data block.

When the remain capacity of SSD is smaller and smaller, the data need to be erased ever times SSD read new data, which is like the blackboard in the classroom should be cleaned thoroughly every time written. Even if 4k reading and writing speed is not fast at this situation, it is a test for the garbage collection ability of your controller.

Here we take Asgard 2T AN2 NVME solid state vs. 256G solid state for test.

SSD manufacturers who can make 2T NVME SSD protocols are little. The controller of Asgard AN2 is Silicon Motion sm2262en, 2G external cache, particle big probability of original white. According to the running score data, the controller and firmware are very good. 

Thanks to the overall dynamic simulation SLC scheme, even if the1T data is continuously written, the performance is very good.

So, we started the reading and writing test when the disk is filled to only left 40G.

Write speed begins to drop when only 20G of capacity is left.

On the other hand, write 100G data in 256G solid state side when it is empty. Speed start to drop and SLC cache used up when there are 30G in capacity.

Therefore, the larger capacity is conducive for your SSD to reserve OP space better, building SLC cache. It can also be conducive for controller to collect garbage better. So, it is recommended to buy solid state with big capacity as possible. 128G solid state like that previous iPhone 16g memory is not enough for using.

2.Don't be superstitious about test score 
Cheating on SSD scores has been a common practice. But the existence of SLC Cache does confuse consumers.
We know that the read and write speed of TLC NAND flash is lower than that of MLC, so why are the running score of many TLC SSDs on the market good?
Most SSD vendors will take out a portion of the TLC space to simulate how SLC works, which is called SLC Cache, generally ranging from 1G to 30G. There are some SSD with half or whole space simulating SLC cache. Most of the running software reading and writing data is done in this SLC cache. But when you test a larger amount of data in it, the true performance of it will show.

(When a solid-state tests 10G data, the score drops significantly)

While SLC Cache is a big boost for the daily experience, consumers should have the right to know. So, don't be too superstitious about the running score data given by the manufacturer.

3. Do not superstitious MLC, the controller does matter
Many people may choose MLC flash without hesitation. For TLC, controversial point is its short life and serious dropping speed. While MLC NAND flash is not abounded on the market. The price of MLC flash is not so affordable. Thanks to the presence of SLC Cache, TLC flash are already able to handle most daily scenarios.

The lifespan of SSD is based on a total number of wipes (P/E), even if 128G TLC solid state, there are at least 500 times of writing life, then there are 64T write volume (of course, also counting write amplification and other factors). For ordinary people, it simply can not be used. 80% of solid-state life is broken because the controller is out of work. So, it is more important to choose a good controller than flash. If you really want to extend the life of solid state, buy a larger capacity is more reliable than anything else. With the popularity of QLC in future, large-capacity solid sin will be more and more cheap. SSD with larger capacity have perfect behavior in performance and experience.

4.Be away from “black flash” and unknown manufacturers
If you have money, then the quality of the original flash is certainly your best choice. Most of the original flash are produced by brands that have the ability to produce their own flash, such as Intel, Samsung, SanDisk, Micron and Toshiba. Of course, there are also a lot of conscience manufacturers who use the original flash.
There is also a kind of “white flash” that is the defective original flash. Although the quality of “white flash” is not better than original flash, the price is lower. It is worth considering when you do not have enough budget. However, some flash that fail environmental tests or aging tests is easy to lose data for long-term using although the capacity of it does not change.

"Black flash" are the leftover material that are phased out in the raw material link. This part of the corner material will generally scrap. But driven by the interests, some will be flowed into the market through various channels and be made into a variety of very low-cost SSDs. For your data security, don't touch it.

5. It is not necessary to choose NVME SSD
Since the SSD of the NVME protocol is a directly connected CPU PCIE channel, if your motherboard has an M.2 interface, just choose it. Of course, the economic basis determines the superstructure. If you want a big and fast M.2 SSD while having no money, there are everything in dream. Although from theory data, the running score of NVME SSD exceed that of SATA SSD, but the gap of the daily actual using experience will not be so big.
So, when the budget is insufficient, the large-capacity SATA solid state will be a cost-effective choice for you.

To put it simply, how much money do you have that determines what kind of solid state you can buy.

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