Looks like a bloody cheap price for a 2tb SATA 2.5" SSD. Could be of interest for those wanting a larger capacity SSD for a game drive…
CamelCamelCamel.
Cache less or cash less? 😜
Cage less. It’s free range
Good for a storage/game drive.
As long as you're not writing to it often, it's fine
Nope, it's not fine. After SLC cache exhausted, the writing speed can drop to ~30MB/s, which can be a problem if you don't write it often but occasionally have to copy lots of stuff on to it. I have a 500GB one and I regret to have bought it. 2TB version might have larger SLC cache, which might ease the problem a little bit but again, if write a lot of stuff at once, it's definitely going to be a problem.
@[Deactivated]: If you're doing an occasional large write (e.g. installing a game), you will experience the massive slowdown as you've explained but since it's not a regular thing, it's fine for most people
@[Deactivated]: In tests it took 140GB of writing data constantly at 490mb/s to hit that speed cap. If you install games via discs or downloads, the vast majority of users won't hit the speed cap. You'd need to transfer lots of data from one SSD to another to hit the speed cap, so it does make a perfectly fine external PS4 drive or Steam drive.
@FabMan: Did you test it yourself? I only have a 500GB one and the threshold to trigger speed drop was only ~15GB or something close. It has been while and cannot really remember the exact result. Also If you tested it against a 2 TB one, it most likely has more SLC cache, I'm not sure how much more though. So if you indeed managed to get 140GB before hitting by speed drop, then it's not that bad as most people unlikely need to write that much data at once. ~15GB was unacceptable to me.
@[Deactivated]: Yeah the 2TB has more SLC, 70GB data transfer at 1TB. The lower capacity QLC drives look awful for both BX500 and the QVO 870, you've really got to go too 2TB on both versions to mitigate most of the problems.
@[Deactivated]: Depends on what you're doing- Lots of little writes and/or majority just read, like a steam drive, it's perfectly fine.
I've had issues with two of my BX500 drives, one as a boot drive, and one purely as a game drive (on different PCs)
Personally I would recommend spending the few extra bucks for something else
yep, thus my comment of a games drive. Less ideal for a boot drive.
That's for standard packaging though.
Now if you want "Frustration Free Packaging", you're looking to pay an extra $87.33
I’m confused, what is frustration free packaging?
Amazon repackage blister-seal packages into easier to open packaging. Personally have seen a huge decrease in blister seals (thankfully).
But if you want the frustration free packaging for the 1 gig drive it is only $30 more… Presumably going frustation free costs experientially more as storage gets more dense.
Which infers that the more data the more frustrating the packaging. Is each byte in its own box? That would be rather frustrating.
Indeed. In that case the $87.33 sounds like it might be really good value…
Is this better or worse than the MX500? My husband told me to look out for 2 Tb mx500, the ones different to the Firecuda types, I'm guessing to store movies on the computer. Don't know much tech speak so I have no idea what I'm looking for apart from price and 2tb lol
Worse.
Mx500 is Better
Thanks all 😊
The BX500 is a little worse than the MX500, it's a little slower, and doesn't have the same long term endurance. But if it's for relatively static storage, it might be worth saving a few $.
I'd say considerably worse. MX500 is one of the top SATA SSD and BX500 is one of the most budget name-brand SSDs
Depending on use case, the difference may range from slightly worse to regretting not buying the better drive
its a LOT LOT worse
as a 2nd non boot data drive its fine
@bazingaa: I've used these to upgrade old PCs.
They are 'bad' if you are paying close to the same price as an MX500.
Even if it is running slow occasionally, it is still an SSD, and still much faster than a HDD.
It will degrade faster than a drive with cache. When sectors degrade they get marked off and your drive capacity will reduce a little (by a few bytes). It will take a while before you can even notice. For $36, I'm sure it's ok if you replace the drive in 10 years.
Keep in mind only large, continuous writes slow it down, on an OS you are reading files most of the time, reading doesn't degrade the drive, and you are always getting the full speed.
@greatlamp: Yes it is a cheap good drive for old PCs. I got this for my i5-2400 but recently upgraded to 5600x and I have a FIrecuda 510 as well. Still booting from BX500 and it works well :)
I got a Drevo X1 60 GB for my 4th gen laptop about 5 years back, still works well as a boot drive.
B for budget.
M for Max.
A for?
Asian.
any good to throw into a PS4 Pro?
It would, but I'd spend just a tiny bit more to get an SSD with cache just so that you don't end up with slow writes when downloading/installing games, and/or if you ever wanted to use the SSD elsewhere in the future.
Installed the 480GB version in my PS4 Pro a while back, definitely feel the slowdown when copying or installing a new title.
Booting up and loading games is definitely a huge improvement over the original HDD
Probably be better off with the Samsung 870 QVO for $225 and reselling the Far Cry 6 key as per my comment below
Is it ok to play game or save photo?
Yes
I think you're better off getting a Samsung 870 QVO 2TB + Bonus Far Cry 6 redemption key for $225
If you're not interested in the game, you could probably resell for $35-40 on ozbargain classified section
A QLC drive with DRAM is preferable to a (low end) TLC that is DRAMless, IMO
Would this be OK as a DATA drive for storing movies on my media server?
Yes.
Yep
Yes, but a spinning rust HDD should be even cheaper.
Will be slower than an SMR hard drive for copying lots of data to it due to being dramless and crap controller on it, you will see write speed drop to ~30MB/s but if you are not downloading any big movies (like bluray remux or high bitrate 1080p/4k) then you will be okay. If you are running a torrent client make sure nothing is seeding from this drive and that any downloads go to another drive before you move them over or it will be overworked quickly and go to horrible speeds.
Seeding is fine, you only need to worry about writes, and only large files will overwhelm it.
It will always read at full speed. It's actually perfect for a torrent box, you are always reading and writing small files.
but if you are not downloading any big movies (like bluray remux or high bitrate 1080p/4k) then you will be okay.
This will cope absolutely fine with big movies, the only thing you'll see is a delay copying them to the drive the first time. It's totally fine for movie storage.
Matching MWAVE, https://www.mwave.com.au/product/crucial-bx500-2tb-25-3d-nan…
They currently have an Afterpay promo (Save 20$) if anyone is interested
for gaming , should i get a SATA SSD or NvMe SSD??
Thanks!! I am new!!
At the moment, the difference between SATA SSD and NVMe for games is so slight, it's unnoticeable (i.e. games might load be a fraction of a second faster)
However, with PS5 and Xbox Series X having very fast storage, future games may be designed to take advantage of the faster NVMe speeds
So if the price difference isn't much (and you're PC has a spare NVMe slot), I'd go NVMe
thanks for the advice.
Any good nvme suggestions?
You'll struggle to find 2TB at this price - NVMe drives are usually quite a bit more expensive.
As per FireRunner's post they may end up to be better in the long run - but this SATA drive is absolutely fine for gaming today. If you want 2TB and you've got $200, then it's a good deal.
@Nom: Just checked some prices, it looks like you'd be paying ~$300 for a low end 2TB NVMe
I think SATA SSD's will still be useable for a good while. By the time NVMe becomes a requirement (or lack of NVMe severely degrades gaming experience), larger capacity NVMe drives will probably become more affordable
@CDG: That’s a budget low end NVMe, in some ways worse than the drive in the OP. Not the worse value but not sure if I’d recommend it either.
@FireRunner: Thank you!!
I think i will go for this : https://www.centrecom.com.au/samsung-870-qvo-sata-iii-2tb-25…
@CDG: The 870 QVO is quite a low end drive, you are much better off spending the little extra to upgrade to an MX500
NVME if DirectStorage ever takes off with Windows 10 and 11.
I've looked into it as well.
My idea - get this for now, 2.5TB is good storage for games at great speeds.
IF some games in the near future require NVMe to run a game at its best, then buy a 500GB/1TB NVMe (will only drop in price too) and you can move any game(s) that require NVMe to that drive.
While the majority of your games can stay on the SATA and be at equivalent speed.
If you can use tiered storage, such as AMD StorageMI, NVMe SSD + HDD will give you the speed of NVMe most of the time with the capacity of a hard disk.
Tiered storage manages both devices as one volume and then caches what you use most onto the fastest storage.
I have MX500 and BX500 and they both serve the purpose of storage well. It really depends on what you want to do with them and whether you will be constantly accessing them. For storage the BX is fine it may be a few seconds slower moving a large file. My 2c
So this drive is similar spec to the Samsung QVO SSDs which also uses SLC cache and slows down when exhausted/full.
QVO has a DRAM cache, you do get the slowdown but can take a much bigger write before doing so (~80GB for 2TB drive IIRC).
The BX500 has the advantage of being TLC instead of QLC (more durable and faster) but the lack of DRAM negates the benefits anyway
The 2TB version of BX500 could be QLC also. The 1/2TB BX500 are apparently: SM2259XT + 96L QLC SSD.
Great price, always need more space with something like Xbox Game Pass, so many games I can download.
2TB is not enough… we need more like 20TB for Game Pass.
my2cents:
I've bought a few QLC SSD's like a BX500 and P1's. never again, no matter how cheap it is, i cannot honestly recommend QLC for any use case. Its like a bad micro-SD card in HD form.
Pay that bit more for a non-QLC drive it will save you tons of your own time in the future.
Is SSD or HDD better to leave connected to a RPi 4?
I've got Volumio set up as a music streamer, with an old 1.5TB 3.5" WD drive and powered caddy plugged in.
Don't know if i'll leave both on all the time but may as well switch of the HDD if not using I guess.
This SSD Price seems ok, probably an overkill for storage, and 3.5" Seagate Barracuda seems better for $68.00?
Cheers
SSD will use less power, not have to spin up (or spin all the time) and be more responsive but the HDD will do it fine
Thanks (both) will see how it goes.
Either way if not an SSD it should be externally powered if plugged into rpi4
decent price to make it an external portable drive
Alright to leave SSD on all the time if no read write?
Yep
Cheers maybe i'll get one, this external with a small HDD shitting me and out of power sockets
so is this currently the best 2TB SSD ~ $200?
Blast it, ordered one anyway. Seems to be the best deal at the moment, will be more than fine for what I need
Does anyone know of any external enclosures where the enable the disc to be mounted as SSD not Hard Disk Drive?
The cheap ones don't and apparently affects the speeds (although I've never noticed an issue, maybe just slow to do bulk copying)?
Assume no need to heatsync cases for SSDs, only using the BX500 for data/music streaming and heat aint much of an issue
Cheers,
The cheap ones have no problem with it. Just search for
UASP 2.5 enclosure
On eBay/Amazon/AliExpress
Ok will have a search.
The one I got from shopping square that comes up on here often (ORICO 2139U3 Transparent) and an Amazon one for $10 too, both don't register as SSD, so they do have an issue.
Volans are usually pretty good may test it in the one I got here, as long as it's USB 3 but should be.
Volans also comes up with Hard Disk Drive, not SSD
What do you mean? What device are you connecting these to?
UASP refers to the protocol used by the enclosure and if you put a hard drive or an SSD into it then it will be using UASP for the transfers.
What is UASP? UASP is the abbreviation of USB Attached SCSI Protocol. It is a computer protocol used to move data back and forth between USB storage devices (such as hard disk drives (HDD), solid-state drives (SSD), and thumb drives).
UAS depends on the UASP and uses the standard SCSI command set. Compared with older USB mass storage bulk transfer (BOT) drivers, using UAS generally provides faster transfer speeds.
@Agret: Go into optimise disks in windows - internal SSD show up properly as SSD, these cheap enclosures show up as hard disk drive, not SSD. Apparently speeds are also reflective of this. May not matter in the real world for my use but still an issue none the less.
There was a discussion on it in the time previous orico enclosure thread.
Cheers
$199 and cache less