File Copy Performance with Microsoft Robocopy
Microsoft's Robocopy, a CLI directory replication command, gradually replaced the older xcopy. It's multi-threaded, has a ton of options, and generally outperforms vanilla Windows copy operations. Best of all, it's built right in to Redmond's operating system. Especially useful for network copy operations and backups, Robocopy doesn't stop to ask you one hundred questions while it copies over your music collection, either.
The reality of benchmarking file copy performance is that you need something fast to move data from and fast hardware to move it to. This is most important with SSDs. It doesn't matter if your drive can write sequentially at 500 MB/s if the source files are hosted on a USB 2.0-attached external hard drive. We're copying our test files from an Intel SSD DC S3700 to the drives in the chart below, taking source speed out of the equation.
There are 9065 files comprising the 16.2 GB payload. Some of the files are huge (up to 2 GB), while others are best described as tiny. On average, that's around 1.8 MB per file. The files are a mix of music, program, pictures, and random file types.
It's fair to say that this chart would look much different if we were copying from a hard drive to a SSD. Even if the disk drive's sequential throughput wasn't a bottleneck, it'd still choke on the smaller files.

When it comes to desktop SSDs, there are really two tiers of products, mostly invented by the vendors selling them. For instance, Samsung and SanDisk have bifurcated line-ups, split into enthusiast-class products like the 840 Pro and Extreme II, and value-oriented offerings like the 840 EVO and Ultra Plus. Bucking that trend, Crucial only sells one series aimed at the client space: its M500.
We're fine with that. There aren't many distinguishing features to set one group apart from the other. The differences that do exist usually show up as middling benchmark gaps. Crucial does plenty of heavy lifting, and its M500 falls between those often-contrived classifications. The more spacious models are just three and four seconds behind the first-place Corsair Neutron GTX in our 16.2 GB robocopy test, placing them ahead of midfield. Meanwhile, the 240 GB shows up just behind the 1 TB Samsung 840 EVO. Can you honestly claim to tell which of these drives are enthusiast-oriented, and which are designed to get your foot in the door of solid-state storage? It's not that easy. And the M500 gets extra points for features that aren't readily available on competing drives. The attraction is more than just benchmark-deep.
Unfortunately, the 120 GB M500 surfaces behind SanDisk's 64 GB Ultra Plus, which definitely is a value SSD. On the brighter side, it's one place ahead of the now-moribund vanilla 840.
- Crucial's New m4 (Plus 496) Gets Reviewed
- Inside Of Crucial's M500 SSD
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Results: 128 KB Sequential Reads
- Results: 128 KB Sequential Write
- Results: 4 KB Random Reads
- Results: 4 KB Random Writes
- Results: Tom's Storage Bench v1.0
- Results: Tom's Storage Bench, Continued
- Results: PCMark 7 And PCMark Vantage
- Results: File Copy
- Results: Power Consumption
- Head To Head: Crucial's M500s Vs. Samsung's 840 EVOs
- We Like The High-Capacity Crucial M500 SSDs Best...
The SSD 840 is rated for 1000 P/E cycles, though it's been seen doing more like ~3000. At 10GB/day, a 240GB would last for 24,000 days, or about 766 years, and that's using the 1K figure.
You're free to waste money if you want, but SLC now has little place outside write-heavy DB storage.
EDIT: Screwed up by an order of magnitude.
You are totally correct! You win a gold star, because I didn't even notice. Thanks for catching it, and it should be fixed now.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan
Not only are consumer workloads completely gentle on SSDs, but modern controllers are super awesome at expanding NAND longevity. I was able to burn through 3000+ PE cycles on the Samsung 840 last year, and it only is rated at 1,000 PE cycles or so. You'd have to put almost 1 TB a day on a 120 GB Samsung 840 TLC to kill it in a year, assuming it didn't die from something else first.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan
You may be thinking of the controller failures some of the Sandforce drives had, which are completely unrelated to the type of NAND used.
I would like to see, can TH use SSD put this 10GB/day and see for how long it will work.
After this I read this article, I think that Crucial's M500 hit the jackpot. Will see Samsung's response. And that's very good for end consumer.
Show me a report with a reasonable sample size (more than a couple of dozen drives) that says they have >50% annual failures.
A couple of years ago Tom's posted this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html
The majority of failures were firmware-caused by early Sandforce drives. That's gone now.
EDIT: Missed your post. First off, that's a perfect example of self-selection. Secondly, those who buy multiple SSDs will appear to have n times the actual failure rate, because if any fail they all appear to fail. Thirdly, that has nothing to do with whether or not it is a 1bpc or 3 bpc SSD - that's what you started off with.
Sounds a bit like a sore loser argument, unfortunately.
SSDs aren't perfect, but they generally do live long enough to not be a problem. Most of the failures have been overcome by now too.
Just realised there's an error in my original post - off by a factor of ten. Should have been 66 years.
Also, SLC based SSD-s are usually "enterprise", so they are designed for reliability and not performance, and they don't use some bollocks, overclocked to the point of failure, controllers. And have better optimised firmware...
Tell that to all the people on this forum still running intel X-25M that launched all the way back in 2008 and my Samsung 830 that's been working just fine for over a year.......
See what you're paying attention too is the loudest group of ssd owners. The owners that have failed ssd's.
See it's the classic "if someone has a problem, there going to be the one that you hear and the quiet group, isn't having the problem" issue.
Those that dont have issues (such as myself) dont mention about our ssds and is probably complaining about something else that has failed.
Those don't seem like opinions to me. It's customary to include some form of leeway in the sentence, like 'IMHO', 'often', or 'I've heard' etc.
Assuming the system has more than enough RAM to avoid needing any significant amount of swapping. If someone with 4GB RAM uses a 16GB swapfile to avoid upgrading to the 8-16GB RAM he really should have, he could end up writing over 1GB/minute.
I have ended up over-crowding my RAM many times in the past and it has a tendency to make my computers practically unusable when using mechanical HDDs at which point I had to spread my programs and swapfile across multiple HDDs to reduce the IO load on individual drives. I imagine this would burn through SSDs fairly quickly.
Also, SLC based SSD-s are usually "enterprise", so they are designed for reliability and not performance, and they don't use some bollocks, overclocked to the point of failure, controllers. And have better optimised firmware...
Anecdotal evidence is pretty useless. People with very good or very bad experiences tend to write reviews. People generally don't write reviews for random pieces of hardware that just work as expected. Provide citations with statistics to support your statements if you want anyone to take them seriously.
I will not be replying to this topic any more. All I wanted to do is say my opinion, but there had to be some smartass telling me that I don't have the right to do it. Noooo, I have to source it. This is my oppinion, get over it.
You are entitled to your opinion but you are making bold statements without any facts. A lot of people use forums like these to research products they are thinking about buying and you are spreading misinformation about SSD's without and evidence for your statements. I personally have 4 computers with SSD's in them that are over 2 years old and I haven't had a single issue or failure. It really pisses me off when people start spreading inaccurate statements that may turn away a potential user of a SSD. Out of all the PC upgrades I have done in the past 12 years the SSD has been the best most noticeable improvement I have done.
Just to stick an oar into the reliability issue, my Samsung 830 has run reliably for over two years now. The only SSDs I had fail in use were a couple of Sandforce drives, but their replacements have thus far been reliable. I think InvalidError has a good point about RAM though; I tend to use at least 8GB, which probably cuts down swapping quite a bit. I also prefer to close programs completely rather than have a lot of windows open, which would also reduce swapping. With a SSD, they re-open pretty quickly anyway.
I will not be replying to this topic any more. All I wanted to do is say my opinion, but there had to be some smartass telling me that I don't have the right to do it. Noooo, I have to source it. This is my oppinion, get over it.
LOL, when you come onto an article about SSD's and say nonsense like you did, you have to expect to get hate buddy. MLC/TLC is very viable and lasts much longer than a year kid, some drives do fail, and if they do you get your replacement. Other peoples drives are not lemons and last a normal lifetime, common sense bro.
Oh, I highly recommend getting the drive migration kit from Crucial for ~$20. It makes like much easier. It's a USB 3.0 SATA drive connector for your M500. Then just boot the supplied CD and run it in auto mode to copy over your drive exactly and make any sizing adjustments needed to the partitions to get it to fit. It works very nicely.