Do you remember last year when hard drives were particularly cheap? After the chia coin plummeted, the price of many hard drives was even half of what it is now!
Our editorial department had a wave of group buying at that time.
And then actually: flip! cart! finish!
According to complete statistics, the damage rate has reached 80%.
The piece that Tony bought himself was broken three times.
The warranty period is reset every time the disk breaks, if you continue to maintain this bad frequency.
Then Tony can expect to get a hard drive with a permanent warranty.
In the continuous drop and return, Tony constantly thinks about the underlying logic of the hard disk, and forms a set of selection methodologies to strive to empower bad friends.
Speak human! Today we are going to tell you how to choose a good solid state from the various components of M.2.
(If you are looking at the SSD recommendations, at the bottom of the article we will also share the hard disks that Tony thinks are the most worth buying at this point in time for your reference.) ）
So what is M.2 solid state?
Crudely speaking, long such solid-state drives are M.2 solid-state.
Its biggest feature is that it is small in size, does not need to plug in the power cord, and also supports faster speeds, who does not like such an SSD?
But this thing doesn't look like any other hardware in a computer. Other hardware is a radish a pit, if you buy a 3080, the seller basically dare not send you a 3060.
The M.2 is difficult to pick, in large part because there are three main components on this small plate.
They are: the main control board that performs the control functions, the firmware that acts as the operating system of the hard disk, and the particles used for storage.
These three main components have many specifications and are very troublesome to pick. But at the same time, they also have a big impact on the performance of the hard disk.
>/ Let's take a look at the hard disk particles first
Why say granules first? It's not because it's the most important, but everyone is more familiar with it, and friends who pay attention to hardware can talk about it twice.
First of all, we must make it clear that there are three indicators for measuring particles: speed, life, and price
Let's make a less rigorous analogy, if the hard disk is the express station in front of your home, the number of shelves inside is fixed, then SLC is a shelf on the shelf only one express, MLC is to put two, TLC three, QLC four.
The fewer couriers on the shelves on the same floor, the faster we find couriers. And because the number of times to pick up and place express delivery every day is small, the life of the express delivery rack is longer.
The disadvantage is that if there are fewer couriers on the shelves on the first floor, the operating costs of the express station will also become higher.
So correspondingly speaking, whether it is read speed, particle life, ranking is SLC > MLC > TLC > QLC.
Prices from expensive to cheap are also SLC> MLC> TLC> QLC.
Toshiba SLC and MLC particles of the same size
The price is exactly 5 times ▼
Swipe left
Of course, manufacturers sometimes make a fuss about the naming of particles. Last time Tony bought a hard drive, he saw a 3Bits MLC.
It's actually a TLC particle. In a similar situation, we just have to remember: 1Bit = SLC, 2Bit = MLC, 3Bit = TLC, 4Bit = QLC
The name with "bit" on it, don't care what LC this thing is, all according to the above rules.
Back to the selection of particles. If you happen to have deep pockets, whether you want to buy an SLC or an MLC, it's up to you.
But Tony is honest, the hardest thing on a hard drive right now is the particles.
Even with the worst QLC particles, a 1T hard drive has a write life of around 300TBW.
Even if you keep writing 100GB of content every day, it's enough for you to build for eight and a half years.
And compared to the particles, the speed increase brought by the master control is more obvious. Therefore, when we buy a hard disk, we should actually pay more attention to the master controller.
>/ The main control board is actually more important
What is the main control board? If you compare an SSD to a computer, the main control board is equivalent to a large set of motherboard + memory + CPU on the computer.
It mainly plays three roles:
The first is to allocate resources rationally and strive to make all the granules have something to do, so as not to cause drought and drought and flooding.
The second is data transfer, so that your storage unit can communicate normally with the data on the computer.
The third is responsible for the completion of various higher-level instructions inside the SSD.
For us, the master is the most important component on an SSD, even more important than a particle. Because the theoretical limit performance of a hard disk is determined by the main control board.
And the main control board is not yet bundled with the brand. Even a big factory like Intel, sometimes due to cost considerations, will use other masters on their own consumer products.
This also means that we can't necessarily buy big brands to buy their own control.
Fortunately, it is not difficult to find the main control model. As long as it is a released hard disk, you can find the model of the main control board with a casual Baidu.
With the model of the main control board, we can find the specification book on the official website of the main control manufacturer.
Let's use Hui Rong's master control as an example here.
There is a lot of information in the datasheet, but the most noteworthy thing is the highest performance column.
In these parameters, the higher the continuous read and write speed, the faster the file transfer, the faster the random read and write, and the computer starts, the shorter the game loading time.
The second thing to pay attention to is the PCIe protocol.
If your motherboard only supports PCIe3.0, then I recommend that you better not buy the M.2 of PCIe4.0, although it can also be used, but it is a bit of a waste of money.
As for the firmware of the hard disk, there are too many versions to summarize a set of identification methods.
But brainless to pick big brands, the problem is generally not big. As long as there is a head and face to do solid manufacturers, the firmware will not be too pulled.
Because the firmware has to rely on its own research and development, those particularly small manufacturers, really may not be able to do it well.
>/Summary
In summary, if you want to pick a piece of M.2 solid state yourself, then Tony recommends shielding out particularly small manufacturers first, preferring a better main control board, and finally looking at the particles used.
But if you're too lazy to pick or aren't particularly confident, you generally can't go wrong with going straight to a big brand. Tony also selected a few products with better wind ratings, and everyone can look for them from inside to see if there is a hard disk that meets their needs.