I think this is an all time low for this 4TB SSD. Shows $740 + from Amazon AU and other Australian stores. The title shows 1TB but the pictures and the WDS400T2B0A in the title suggest it is 4TB version.
CamelCamelCamel.
Thanks
showing $162 for me
Is this dram? I was told to ask this when buying an SSD.
The SATA version has DRAM, not DRAMless. The m.2 version.. depends on the model.
Thank you!
Can you please tell me how to find out whether one has dram or not? Or are all sata dram?
The 1TB model on eBay from Futu Online is $135 after 10% off code PIN10, and $0 delivery for Plus members, if you'd like to save a few bucks (and what OzB'er doesn't?!)
Local stock too, receive much sooner and easier to make a warranty claim
Not exactly the same though, you'll need 4 SATA ports just to get 4TB of storage
@p1 ama Oh, I was just replying to the Amazon deal linked above for the $139 1TB drive, not suggesting getting four of those instead of this (which as you say would be a lot clunkier). Could have been clearer, sorry!
Given it's not QLC I assume this is a far superior option to say the 860 QVO 4TB which is sometimes around this price with cashback.
It's the same as 860 EVO TLC, so much better compared to the QVO QLC
I had no idea they had 4TB SSDs now.
4Tb evo was $628. It's not a good price for a qlc one
Why do they even bother making mechanical drives anymore. A mechanical drive is like an old man going to university and being surprised that all the girls find him old and gross.
HDDs are still 3-4x cheaper than equivalent sized SSDs
@DealhunterMelbourne: Of course but not everyone has the money to shell out $600 for 4TB of storage. HDDs are still a much more affordable solution for large volumes of storage.
While SSDs are becoming cheaper, we’re not at the stage where HDDs are completely obsolete.
With these increasing capacities, increasing reliance, and decreasing prices… HDD as a backup solution is also threatened. I can see people building PC's with say 512GB of expensive nVme SSD's, then having a second high-capacity drive (2TB-8TB) like this which is a cheap SSD. And before you know it, it's getting mainstream on NAS systems too.
Yes please, especially with the new consoles coming out, I can see SSD prices really taking a dive over the next few years (would love to go all SSD instead of mechanical).
Fair point, but I think there's also the question around which is more reliable for long term archival storage and ability to recover data.
That being said, I realised even with a 10TB HDD (thanks to the recent Seagate deal), I only use up about 4TB or so for games in Steam library (that I have a remote chance of playing) and Windows store/Xbox game pass games too.. I probably could sitch this for a 4TB SSD in the future as prices drop (note I also have a couple of SSDs for my documents/photos and use a NAS for movies/videos).
~$600 for a 4TB SSD is a long way from ~$145 for a 4TB HDD, over 4 times more expensive actually. As I said before, if its just for media storage or similar, why spend 4x more for something that performs essentially no better for these purposes.
Does anyone have more information about this SSD or more detailed specs than what WD gives because it appears that WD is charging premium prices for a low quality SSD? Where it is unknown whether this actually competes against a Samsung 860 EVO 4TB due to comparing both data sheets and it appears WD has worse performance.
Just by going off WD spec sheet and website information it appears to be have terrible performance compared to Samsung's 4TB SSD and it is just as expensive compared to them, where it appears WD has very low endurance with a TBW of 600TB compared to Samsung 860 EVO 4TB having 2400TB and even weaker endurance than a QLC SSD the Samsung 860 QVO of 1440TB (but only 3 year warranty compared to 5) and the performance difference are bit unknown especially considering WD does not disclose whether it using DRAM or how much/what type of DRAM/cache it uses in this SSD.
If endurance rating is something that's quite important to you, then go Samsung. Just an FYI, one of my Samsung SSDs that died had less than 1TB total write. It was a 240GB SSD. It didn't last over 1 year. Samsung's warranty was good though.
Endurance rating does not matter that much to me if it did i would be over spending on a pro SSD or one of Seagate's NAS SSD which may or may not give more guarantee of endurance or longevity of SSDs.
The TBW of this SSD just got me questioning the quality of WD's SSDs because if WD cannot even advertise decent TBW or guarantee than their SSD should last 5 years with a high amount amount of TBW then it might indicate that the WD SSD are low quality and should be price similar to other lower quality SSD ie QVO and Crucial BX or that WD blue SSD are similar to blue counterparts in HDD space which were once decent quality HDD until they starting labeling low quality WD Greens as WD Blues where the WD blue SSD might just be relabeled low quality SSD with just a better warranty and some slightly better parts.
On TBW, to explain this in full, we need to go back a few years.
When Samsung introduced 850 EVO, the TBW quoted was rather low for the warranty:
250 GB: 75 TBW; 500 GB/1 TB: 150 TBW, 2/4 TB: 300 TBW
Think about that for a second, 300 TBW for 4TB. At that time, all the reviewers felt Samsung under quoted that. So why did 860 EVO's TBW increased significantly? It was actually due to Crucial MX500. See, it was Crucial MX500 that pushed Samsung to release 860 EVO to match the 5 years warranty and provide proper (a big push on) TBW, instead of being overly conservative.
WD Blue SSD was released before 860 EVO. At the time, it only needed to beat 850 EVO, hence the TBW. 600 = 300 * 2. It was good enough at the time. It already doubled Samsung's at the time.
TBW can be manipulated through adding more spare cells / sectors. Generally, high TBW basically means more spare cells. Does more spare cells translate to better quality cells? Not necessary. Crucial was the one who started it, Samsung basically had to beat it. We are not actually talking about doubling the cells. It's still a small number of extra cells. You are definitely not getting 8TB worth of cells in a 4TB SSD, no SSD maker would be that generous.
TL;DR Depending on when the SSD was first released, the TBW would be done to be sufficient to beat the competition. Due to MX500's and 860 EVO's push, it does make previous iteration of 3D TLC NAND SSDs look bad. However, cell quality wise, it wasn't a big jump, just more spare sectors / cell blocks.
@netsurfer: Thanks for you explanation about TBW I am just comparing TBW between these SSD is because WD is lacking on information and details about their SSD compared to Samsung and whether WD is offering a quality SSD that is comparable to Samsung or if WD Blue SSD are just a lower quality SSD and should be priced cheaper than EVO and compete with the QVO and be sold normally in Australia with price that is closer to the price Amazon UK is it selling for if it is a lower quality SSD.
Even though a low TBW is not necessarily bad this SSD was I believe released in around 2019 after Samsung 860 EVO 4TB and it shows when comparing this to WD Blue SSD 2TB with a TBW of 500 it shows that WD does not appear to be offering much additional quality which is normally given for larger capacity SSD which you pay a higher price for as compared to Samsung which do offer something more. Also having higher TBW at least for warranty/consumer guarantee purposes it gives a clear answer that the manufacture considers in the normal circumstances you should expect a certain amount of run hours and for the SSD to be able to handle large amount of writes without breaking down. This manufacture guarantee may or may not be useful but it does give the consumer better argument when if you are doing massive amount of writes on a SSD that it is built to last and if not then manufacturer should replace the product with something that meets the excepted amount of use they expect of every SSD.
I do agree with you on manufacturer using things like TBW as marketing point and to carefully analysis claims made by manufacturers and with WD I am more suspicious of trusting claims made by them due to controversy with WD Red line up and hiding SMR in NAS HDD. It is just I would expect if WD is trying to compete with Samsung SSDs that would at least try to give more information about their SSD and guaranteed better quality for there products.
@AgentXKnight: There are more important things to think about when it comes to SSD. TBW is best use as a measurement for spare cells. The most important thing is that don't take the TBW as an indicator of how long the SSD will last. The TBW is measured in a certain way. If you filled your drive close to 95% all the time, the spare cells won't be able to help you much.
If you write a 4TB 860 EVO close to 99%, and constantly blasts it to re-write that 1%, it is unrealistic to expect you get 2400 TBW.
It's relative. Honestly, for things where TBW / endurance matters, I would simply go MLC. It is also important to remember regular backups are always needed. At 4TB, it is more about price vs quality. Currently, I don't see 4TB as a work SSD, it is more for medium to long term data store with majority of data being non-critical, but may need fast access (which includes games) - luxury item. For important data files, you still need multiple backups. Honestly, why would I bother with heavy workload on a SATA SSD when I have m.2 SSDs to do the work?
Obviously, if you can afford it, 860 EVO specs wise is better. It is technically one iteration newer. Just remember that TBW improvement happened not because Samsung being nice, but due to competition from Crucial. You are paying for more spare cells.
When the 5 years warranty runs out, you are on your own, quoting the TBW won't get you any warranty support. Honestly, I don't believe in the 2400 TBW. Not with my usage, so I'd rather get prepared to replace it after 5 years.
My initial reply: if endurance rating is something that's quite important to you, then go Samsung. I know you are quite uncomfortable with the difference being so large. However, I can see why some people (if not most people) in the market for 4TB would be attracted to this.
@AgentXKnight: TLC cell: 1500-3000 write cycles with 3D NAND. Basically, the TBW values started with something that was rather conservative to start with (Samsung did that). We all knew it was BS for 850 EVO (way too low). WD Blue's value is also a bit of BS (not as bad, but still BS). Samsung did indicate if you went over the TBW for 850 EVO, they will still do the warranty.
Why WD has not changed it for WD Blue after so long? Simple, that value won't make a real difference in sales. MLC SSDs are already out of mainstream.
Wait what does that mean? I just bought the 1tb WD SSD from Amazon. I want to clone my current HDD onto my new 1tb SSD. Are you telling me right after I clone my 1tb drive my SSD is already dead?? I'm a total noob when it comes to SSD.
Relax, OP just got a dud drive.
SSD have a limited number of writes before the cells starts to fail, much like how HDD's motor drives will wear out over time.
WD Blue 1TB has TBW rating of 400, aka 400 terabyte written. That's about 200gbs a day, everyday, for 5 years. Plenty for the normal user.
What I was trying to point out is that consumer grade SSDs are more likely to fail before the total writes are exhausted and even the best SSD makers can have dud drives or models.
In Samsung's examples, their first gen of new technology drives aren't always reliable. I was an early adaptor of some of Samsung's latest SSD tech (TLC (planar) and m.2/NVMe). On both occasions, I ended up being disappointed. As a result, I have elected not to try out their QLC just yet.
At this price, it's absolutely not competing with the Samsung 860 EVO 4TB.
If you want a premium drive then you need to pay a premium price…
I am actually looking at the normal or what Australian retailers consider the regular or the RRP which for this SSD it is I believe around $700 to $800 which is a similar price range to Samsung 860 EVO which can be in the range of $719 to $900 so very similar and also considering that Samsung has price premium based on their brand reputation.
The actual RRP is irrelevant, what matters is what you can actually buy the drives for at this point in time. This vs. the 860 EVO isn't a good comparison because you're comparing a $580 drive to a $800 drive. You should be comparing this to a 860 QVO, which is closer in price (the QVO is still more expensive, mind you).
Between this and the QVO, I would go with this all day. In general, TLC is preferable to QLC, even though the Samsung masks the weaknesses of QLC pretty well with MLC caching.
Obviously if the 860 EVO was $600, I'd say go for the 860 EVO, but it's not and it's pointless to make comparisons pretending that it is.
At the end of the day, what do you want? If you really want a fast drive, then forget about NAND flash and get an Optane drive. It's already reasonably affordable, the price per GB of Optane now is already lower than what I paid for my 120GB Intel X-25M about 10 years ago. If you want a mid-range drive that's good as a boot drive for a responsive system where you'll be doing a lot of random read and writes and you don't want to pay for Optane, then get a good M.2 drive like a 970 Evo Plus, SN750…etc. If you want to just get a mass storage drive or something to put 4x into a NAS, then this is fine.
You can get 4x of these and put them into a NAS in RAID Z1 (i.e. RAID 5) and get 12TB of super fast SSD storage for just over $2,000. That's insanely cheap for what it is.
Is this drive as good as the 860?
Also if you want performance over storage you might look at an nvme drive over a sata drive.
Definitely worth it.
silent and cold storage is an option now! if only I got the kangaroos required to change my 12tb storage pool…
It's the best deal you'll ever get, especially in this rancid era of year, I wonder if the deal would have been even better if the year wasn't so fkd up.
Pretty impressive deal OP!
I might have gone for this if I hadn't just bought a 2TB MX500.
If you got it for $295, then per TB, you're doing fine.
I hate myself for missing such a deal. Played myself.
Would snag a couple of these for RAID5 in my NAS. Can anyone pls provide the Amazon UK original listing link vs the Amazon AU import link? Thanks!
It highlights the 4tb box, so yes it is.