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February 21st, 2022 19:00
XPS 8950, SSD questions
I ordered an XPS 8950 with the 2TB NVMe SSD boot drive, and have three questions:
1) What is the actual manufacturer/model of the SSD it comes with?
2) If I want to add a second 2TB SSD to store data, what should I buy? (priorities are reliability, performance, energy efficiency, and cost, in that order)
3) Longer term, what are recommended ways to protect against drive failure? My current scheme is to keep images of the system on external backup drives (refreshed occasionally) and use a combination of dropbox (real time), a cloud backup service (daily), and File History backing up all my data files to the external drive(s) (hourly). I figure with that I don't need RAID, but am I missing something or screwing up the performance of my system?
Thanks for any and all advice!
Vic384
6 Operator
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3.2K Posts
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February 24th, 2022 05:00
@dsm8950 There is a big difference in endurance between the 970 Pro and the 980 Pro but the 980 Pro is much faster. There is also a significant price difference. Depending upon how the SSD is going to be used, you will have to decide what is important to you; will you even approach the endurance limits in your use or do you really need the speed. See this comparison: https://ssdsphere.com/samsung-970-pro-vs-980-pro/
Tesla1856
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February 24th, 2022 07:00
1. Definitely. Dell should sell/pre-config it that way. I really don't think hardly anyone needs to be running spinning-platter HDDs inside their computers now-days.
2. Haven't really been following WD-SSD tech (or HDD for that matter), this is a good primer. Marvell is a popular SDD-controller. I think Kingston SSDs used it.
the new SSDs also feature Western Digital's own new SSD controller instead of using a controller from Marvell.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12543/the-western-digital-wd-black-3d-nand-ssd-review/
Tesla1856
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February 24th, 2022 08:00
Thanks for the link. Good write-up. So, is this correct ?
SSD Endurance Terabytes Written (TBW) (higher is better)
Samsung 970 Pro 1-TB with Samsung V-NAND 2bit MLC (NAND) = 1200
Samsung 980 Pro 1-TB with Samsung V-NAND 3bit MLC = 600
- But 980-Pro is about 50% faster due to 4x4 interface.
- Both have 5 Year Warranty
I still suggest 5-10% Over-Provisioning (good TBW or not)
dsm8950
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February 24th, 2022 11:00
The 2TB Samsung 980 Pro is 1200 TBW. And given that the most TBW for my current drives (that I've had ~6 years) is 156 TBW, I figure I have a good margin there. And, not that this is determinative, but there were a higher proportion of failures reported for the Seagate on Amazon..
kras1
2 Intern
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444 Posts
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February 24th, 2022 11:00
That is why I went with the Seagate Firecuda 530. Pretty much just as fast as the Samsung 980 Pro but it has the endurance of the 970 Pro. The Firecuda is a newer drive with newer tech but it is also more expensive.
kras1
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444 Posts
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February 24th, 2022 12:00
There are plenty of horror stories for both manufacturers, but over all both drives have excellent reviews. I based my decision on technical reviews from tech websites. That still doesn't mean much though.....
Tesla1856
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February 24th, 2022 14:00
Not bad specs. With their SSD baby-steps over the years, I didn't even know Seagate decided to get serious about SSDs finally (usually signaled by a company making high-end ones, along side the entry-level ones).
FIRECUDA 530 2-TB SPECS
Capacity: 2TB
Interface: PCIe 4.0 x4
Memory controller: Phison PS5018-E18 controller
Flash memory: Micron 176L TLC NAND
Rated performance: 7,300 MB/s sustained read, 6,900 MB/s sustained write
Endurance: 2,550 TBW
Warranty: Five years
kras1
2 Intern
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444 Posts
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February 25th, 2022 16:00
Just curious as to what drive/type you decided to go with and if everything is working? New drives can be a PITA but are always nice once they are up and working properly.
rkrazdan
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April 23rd, 2022 16:00
My XPS 8950 stock from costco came with:
1tb WD NVME
2tb Seagate 7200rpm Barracuda
64gb ram 4400mhz
12700 CPU
I upgraded to the following:
2 tb Samsung 980 PRO SSD 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 (Root)
Moved the 1tb WD to the second NVME slot (Music drive) (it has a silicon gel underneath for cooling, I replaced that with ineo M.2 heatsink 2280 SSD with Thermal Silicone pad
4tb Samsung 870 QVO SATA III
Noctua U9S CPU fan (yes, the CPU runs hot, normally around 80 degrees F)
I already had a Corsair Dual SSD Mounting Bracket 3.5" CSSD-BRKT2, Black which allowed me to simply pull the hdd, and it fit perfectly in the blue "click-in" hdd bracket.
I then used the dell recovery tool to reimage the hard drives. Selected the Samsung 980 is the primary.
At boot hit F12, change from Raid to AHCI. Don't exit, make sure bios recognizes all drives. Save & exit. Reboot then go to Windows Setup.
Now, make sure for anything larger than 2tb, you setup the volume to GPT in Disk Management. Then you can use NTFS to format the volume. GPT is a partition style vs NTFS which is a File System. Do Not buy AOMIE, or any other partition tool, wasting money, you can do it using WinPE diskpart or directly through Disk Management.