I am looking for a SSD about ~500GB (480-512) to replace the internal HDD of an old MacBook, any good suggestions?
I would prefer something more reliable than speed (For example, the drive turn into read-only mode instead of not recognised at all when something happened badly)
Let me know if you have an idea which SSD brand will have promotion during BF/CM too.
Crucial MX500 or the Samsung 860 Evo. Both are great, the Crucial is cheaper but the Samsung should theoretically be more reliable. I’ve been rocking the precursor of the Crucial for 4 years and it’s been holding up great so I’d recommend the Crucial. Better bang for the buck.
Thanks for the suggestions. I don’t mind paying a bit more if Samsung 860 Evo is proven to be more reliable. Sadly, there’s no reliability report on SSD in scale unlike Backblaze’s HDD report.
Reliability in terms of SSD is more like durability. SSD’s, being flash memory, have limited write cycles. A Crucial will last you 5 years if you wipe and refill it everyday. The Samsung should last 6 (I just made up those numbers, but there’s a small difference there).
The next thing is the controllers but those are rarely an issue anymore. If anything I’d prefer the controller Samsung uses but the difference in quality is too small to bother.
Basically any SSD you buy today is much more reliable than any spinning rust. It’s more like saying there’s a 0.01% chance the Crucial will fail on you and a 0.009% chance the Samsung will. I don’t think that’s worth an extra twenty to thirty bucks but that’s obviously just my opinion. Your SSD will outlive the rest of your hardware regardless of your choice.
Samsung is worth the extra money. They rarely ever fail, but when they do, they send you brand new replacements. Crucial - if it breaks, throw it away, because you’ll never get it RMAed - the warranty is worthless.
You have a good point here, it is not like I am building a new PC / upgrading a new Laptop. If Samsung during BF is same as normal priced Crucial why not 
Thanks for the insights. Does that means I have to send in my original one to get the replacement? Maybe I am just being paranoid but I don’t feel comfortable to send in old drives even if it is fully encrypted. (Yet I care about warranty, lol)
Yes, all of them work like that.
Issue is, most of that cheapo SSD’s have no DRAM cache or a shitty controller.
A missing DRAM cache is not as bad as a shit controller.
Always inform yourself when buying new SSD’s.
Also waiting for BF, maybe we see decent 500GB or even 1TB for 30 or 60 bucks.
So far, Kingston works fine, its without DRAM cache, but still better then HDD’s.
Also have a few Crucial and Samsung SSD’s.
Both work fine.
I have a Crucial MX200 running on my wife’s late 2011 MacBook Pro for 4 years without a glitch. And a 1TB 860 Evo that was on offer on Amazon is running on my laptop just fine since May.
1x 1TB Samsung NVMe and 1x Samsung 256GB NVMe running locally here, Samsung are always worth the extra price. An exception.
Samsung makes great RAM modules too, btw
Thanks for mentioning the DRAM cache, I just look up about it such as pros and cons of having it. That’s why I am not looking for the cheapest SSD, I would prefer reliability when it comes to storage.
Thanks for letting me know!
I trust Samsung too in terms of quality regardless of what type of products, but there might be some other brands for SSD that I never heard of before.
Thanks for the help, I will most likely go with Crucial unless the price is close during BF/CM
For my personal laptop… I dont really care about what ssd inside it.
Fast and ult-fast, is it really different?
My only request is known brand.
I would say look at anandtech reviews, which are pretty informative. Crucial has made some good drives (MX series) and some clunkers (BX). Samsung has the QVO (Q = quad level chip, i.e. 4 bits per cell so it should really be called 16 level) and I’d stay away from that. The EVO is TLC (8 level) which by now is more common and less suspect than before. However, nearly(?) all consumer ssd’s will lose data under power interruptions and stuff like that. Data center drives have hardware counter measures that cost more. They also will tend to use more power though. Back in the day, Intel was about the only manufacturer that really handled this issue properly. By now, I don’t know if any do. If it’s for a laptop though, the battery pack provides sort of a built-in UPS, depending.
You can actually go a step further without breaking your wallet in half while doing so. MLC is my “go to” level where it’s just “one back” from Data center grade SSDs (SLC) without the absurd price tag attached.
So it’s works like this now…
SLC: Most reliable but seriously comes at a hefty price tag that 99.99% of consumers aren’t going frankly pay for. Even to me it’s insanity and I am usually willing to “top dollars” for things if they are crazy good.
MLC: Second most reliable yet relatively afford able. You can scoop up a Silicon Power 64GB SSD for like 30 bucks on Amazon and that’s what I did for my build. Comes with a 3 years warranty to boot. That’s may be expensive especially if you amp up the capacity but hey if you value system’s run time, less admin time, etc etc etc then I doubt a small one of these+a WD black would break anyone banks.
TLC: These are the ones that are where most the “budget” SSDs sits at. Thus you can usually get at least 240GB for the price of that Silicon Power I was talking about. But honestly is it worth the hassles to worry about your data poofing? To me no
QVO: No idea why this grade would even exists, since that would make even TLC more reliable than these junk drives.
If you’re anal about reliability, the Samsung 860 PRO (not Evo) lineup is MLC - which makes it more reliable.
EVO is TLC.
edit: 970 PRO if NVMe.
Both advertise absurd TBWs (Terabyte Written).
I agree even a number of dedicated providers even uses these because of the price:preformance:reliablity factors.
Sorry to bump this topic but I am looking for another SSD in the range of ~250GB (240-256) to replace a failing HDD in old laptop (so need it asap) but cheaper than Crucial MX500 / Samsung 860 Evo.
I know those 2 are the better ones based on the comments above but I am looking for the third best one (maybe Kingston A400? Kingston UV500? WD Green?), thanks!
Patriot Burst performs very well, considering its price.
Some Adata models are not too shabby either.
Crucial BX500?