Introduction
A few days ago, we published a Tom's Hardware State of Solid State editorial that discussed what we will see from SSD vendors in the second half of 2015. That story has a lot of information in it, but only covers 50% of the market. Samsung owns most of the market, after all.
Samsung owns 50% of the solid-states storage market share. When it comes to client-oriented drives, that percentage increases, and in some countries goes as high as 80%. Samsung manufactures roughly 50% of the world's NAND memory supply, too. Not all of the flash goes into SSDs; much of it goes into cell phones, tablets, children's toys, SD cards and even automobiles.
Samsung doesn't just lead in production volume. It also leads in technology innovation as well. Recently, Samsung was responsible for delivering the first client three-bit-per cell-based SSD, along with the first 3D cell structure SSD in both MLC and TLC. Today, the company brings us the first widely available 2TB 2.5" client-focused drive.
Since the release of the first 1TB SSD, enthusiasts have looked to the next capacity point. It's always easy to demand a bigger, faster or better product. But when push comes to shove, those jumps only happen when there's financial impetus. I can ask for a Ferrari SUV that can comfortably hold eight passengers, but that doesn't mean Ferrari would make any money on it, or that I could afford such a monstrosity. Clearly, Samsung determined that the time was right for 2TB SSDs to become more commonplace.
I purchased a 250GB model several months ago and love it.
Wait just a few short months as more 2TB consumer SSD's hit the market and watch them tumble.
I only stopped using it when the laptop I had put it in got stolen last year.
The worst part of SSD's has been using someone else's PC without one. It's disgusting doing support on an OS that isn't installed on an SSD.
Now that my request to you is out the way, thank you for the article. The 2TB EVO really looks amazing!! I'm not a Samsung fan, but they definitely have my round of applause for this drive, especially because of the SLC emulation.
Except for the two images immediately above that line. :D
SanDisk stated a while ago they wanted to ramp up to 8TB SSDs as quickly as possible, but I'll believe that when I see it. Unlikely they'd chuck out a 4TB now if they can make money from a 2TB first (really wish just once some company would properly leave the others behind instead of milking every inbetween stage of a tech as much as possible).
"The only drives faster than Samsung's 850 Pro and Evo 2TB in sequential writes are the 850 Pro and Evo 1TB."
Why have you used a bar graph with a non-zero origin for the results? I really hate that, it's very visually misleading. Please replace the image with a graph that has the origin at zero so it will at least be visually logical. The whole point of a bar graph is that the visual impact can allow one to infer an immediate sense of difference, something which is destroyed by using a non-zero origin.
In contrast to this, why do all the PCMark8 tests have zero origins, which have almost no results variation at all? Actually I don't know why anyone bothers with that suite, it tells one nothing useful IMO, I mean does anyone really care about Service Times for games? Level loading and to what extent SSDs can reduce in-game stuttering, sure, but then this is achieved with just about any SSD.
Anyway, please replace the non-zero-origin graph for the Seq. Write data.
Ian.
PS. Why does the Vector 180 show such an odd performance wobble as it moves up the queue depths for the seq. write test?