Need SSD advice

[johnodon]

I want to get a ~500GB SSD to pass through to a WIN10 gaming VM.  I'll admit that my knowledge of the SSD technology is sparse.  I see terms like 'trim', 'TLC', 'MLC', etc. but never bothered much to research.

 

For my use case, are there any specific requirements?  I am eyeballing this one:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820173154&ignorebbr=1

 

TIA!

 

John

[BillClinton]

Here's somewhere to start.

 

 

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[BillClinton]

Not knowing for what purpose you want the VM for, it will be hard to say if that SSD will suit your needs. SLC, MLC or TLC probably won't make too much difference for your needs.

Trim support is important as it will minimise your SSD filling up with files you think you have deleted. (It's like a garbage collection system for removing trashed files).

 

 

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[johnodon]

This VM will be used for gaming (GTX 950) for my boys.

 

John

[mr-hexen]

ANY SSD will be a HUGE improvement over ANY regular hard drive.

 

I use 256GB Adata SP550's in two laptops I have and they have been flawless.

[tdallen]

I use and have had good luck with Samsung Evo SSDs on my Windows machines.  I gather that they handle overprovisioning a little differently than most, though.  SSD technology prefers that you don't use the entire capacity of the drive for storage.  The extra or over-provisioned space is used to facilitate the way that data is written to the SSD (updated data is written only to blank pages, and then the old page is erased).

 

A common approach is for the vendor to supply a 120GB SSD.  Under the covers it's really 150GB.  The extra 30GB is the over provisioned space.  Samsung, on the other hand, supplies you with a 150GB SSD and then recommends that you only establish a 120GB partition on it.  Works fine on Windows with their Magician software, but I haven't played with how I'd approach it on unRAID yet.

 

I'm happy with the drives, though - they've been great.