
Western Digital WD Black 3D NAND SSD Review - el_duderino
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12543/the-western-digital-wd-black-3d-nand-ssd-review
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Everlag
For those not following the consumer SSD market closely, this is a bit of an
upset. Previously, Samsung was king and basically unchallenged on
price/performance for mainstream and high performance loads. Now we've got
Western Digital, previously seen as a spinning rust king with an SSD side
business, coming in and making an extremely competitive offering. While
they're not strictly better, they're the best the market has seen from outside
Korea or Intel.

If you want to quickly get the long-short of the review, check out the
'Destroyer' benchmark[0] and the price/gb chart[1]. Though I recommend reading
the entire thing, anandtech reviews are a treat.

[0] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12543/the-western-digital-
wd-...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12543/the-western-digital-wd-
black-3d-nand-ssd-review/3) [1] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12543/the-
western-digital-wd-...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12543/the-western-
digital-wd-black-3d-nand-ssd-review/10)

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lawrenceyan
In comparison to general processing, I haven't been keeping up with
advancement in SSD/flash memory technology very much. Is the market still the
cut-throat low margin hell hole I remember it being, or has technological
improvement slowed to a point where performance gain is now much more
difficult to achieve?

~~~
theologic
The NAND industry went into a severe shortage (as NAND goes) along with DRAM.
However, NAND shortage happened due to 2D to 3D. While 3D allows for high cell
density, it also made Capex go from about 8B to around 25B as an industry. One
of the reason Lam stock price has been on a tear. NAND spot pricing went up
somewhere between 200-300% for like on like technology. Margins exploded, and
the industry grew larger than any forecasts. There is a big debate on if the
margins will stay high. While DRAM is still edging up, we may have seen some
lowering of NAND pricing. So cost reduction is coming from mixing to MLC and
TLC with better architectures in the same package.

~~~
lawrenceyan
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle)

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astrodust
Good to see Western Digital will stay relevant. After years of buying their
products I was concerned they'd fade into obscurity without a viable SSD
product.

Conner got absorbed by Seagage. Micropolis rebranded and went bankrupt. Maxtor
got sponged up by Western Digital. Hard to bet on a horse that lasts.

~~~
otakucode
I'm not intimately familiar with the various players in the storage market,
but as an outsider I would guess that Western Digital must be doing alright.
They could have, but didn't, break up the price-fixing ruling that market and
taken it over handily if need be. Amazing that in 2018 it's still more
expensive to get data storage on a dumb grid of NAND gates built out of common
materials than it is to get it on hard drives infused with helium, sporting a
high precision high speed motor, platters coated with rare materials,
neodymium magnets, and, coming soon, lasers!

~~~
jacquesm
> Amazing that in 2018 it's still more expensive to get data storage on a dumb
> grid of NAND gates built out of common materials than it is to get it on
> hard drives infused with helium, sporting a high precision high speed motor,
> platters coated with rare materials, neodymium magnets, and, coming soon,
> lasers!

And the heads, those are incredibly tiny works of art.

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porker
Durability will be the test. I've one data point, but I've had 6 SSDs, most
from Crucial, used for developer-desktop work (VMs etc) and as well as regular
file corruption via 'bad sectors' (didn't think those were standard on an SSD
due to its error checking) they've failed more regularly than any hard drive
ever did, even the ones thrown around in laptops.

I am seriously considering paying double for an Intel SSD next time, as I
understand they are less likely to fail.

~~~
jmiserez
Is that a Crucial M4? I had mine replaced 3 times due to sector corruption as
well, and then trashed it. It also had a bug where it would break after ~5200
hours of use.

OTOH, I never had an issue with my Intel or Samsung SSDs, even with heavier
use.

I agree with you that reliability is key, and it bugs me that reviews still
mostly look at speed and price.

~~~
porker
Mostly MX100's of varying sizes. The one that's currently doing sector
corruption is a MX300 750GB, and the "Too good to be true" new price on Amazon
(in a sale) should've been a warning.

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marcosscriven
Reviews like this always give me an irrational desire to build a desktop
machine again.

~~~
dsr_
The rationality would depend on what you need, wouldn't it?

If you have a nice, stable place to work, you can optimize for that. Big high-
resolution monitors, nice sound system, great keyboard, several pointing
devices to switch between: these go well with desktops.

If you move around frequently, or don't have much space, that constrains your
choices.

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mdpopescu
"Write endurance ratings are a reasonable 0.3-0.4 drive writes per day for
five years."

What? It's reasonable to have a drive where you write once every 3 days? I do
backups more often than that.

~~~
millstone
That's presumably full drive writes per day, i.e. you can write 100% of the
drive capacity every 3 days for five years.

~~~
mdpopescu
Ah ok that makes a lot more sense (and it is indeed more than enough). Thanks!

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TheForumTroll
The Intel use more power than two or three of the others combined in some
tests. You gotta be pretty desperate for Intel fanboy-respect or having a very
niche usage to buy one over a Samsung IMO.

~~~
georgeburdell
That's a little disingenuous. Intel's 700 series SSD does not have anomalously
high power. The Optane SSD, based on a completely different technology, has
power consumption that is higher but is the top performer in many other
metrics.

~~~
wtallis
The recent 700 series drive from Intel—the 760p—is pretty good in terms of
power consumption. The older 750 was, like the Optane 900P, a large power-
hungry card based on their enterprise SSDs and never intended to be used in
mobile systems. Intel has on many occasions re-purposed their enterprise SSD
tech to make a premium SSD for the consumer market, but that strategy has some
downsides.

