Review: WD Blue SN500 NVME SSD (250GB)

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Apr 4, 2019.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

    Messages:
    48,544
    Likes Received:
    18,856
    GPU:
    AMD | NVIDIA
    A week or so Western Digital announced their new WD Blue SN500 series NVMe SSDs. A value NVMe proposition that is capable of rattling some cages. We had the opportunity to test the 250GB model thoroug...

    Review: WD Blue SN500 NVME SSD (250GB)
     
    chispy likes this.
  2. Darkiee

    Darkiee Master Guru

    Messages:
    482
    Likes Received:
    43
    GPU:
    7900XTX
    I´d say, that has some great value. More than enough of speed and 250GB is enough for OS and some software. I need to remember this product when building new pc for someone.

    Im tempted to ditch my old HDD´s for a PCI-e card with 4 or more M.2 slots. I don´t need much of storage, but WD should bring higher version, like 1GB or 2GB.
    But i really hate the colour of the PCB... :(
     
  3. IchimA

    IchimA Maha Guru

    Messages:
    1,346
    Likes Received:
    280
    GPU:
    7800XT Asus TUF
    Since my OS drive ( ssd ) died last saturday I would advice You against that idea . In all honesty the ssd was from 2013, but it died without warning. And I still have HDD from 95 - 98 that work without a problem . So for me and my data I will always have a hdd in my PC. Good thing IT was only the OS and I did not lost any data
     
  4. Darkiee

    Darkiee Master Guru

    Messages:
    482
    Likes Received:
    43
    GPU:
    7900XTX
    Well, i quess i could go with PCIe M.2 card, and have 2 8TB HDD mirrored for backup? ^^
     

  5. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

    Messages:
    48,544
    Likes Received:
    18,856
    GPU:
    AMD | NVIDIA
    Most people tuck it away under the mobo M2 heatsink?
     
  6. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

    Messages:
    48,544
    Likes Received:
    18,856
    GPU:
    AMD | NVIDIA

    That's just lucky, the number of times an HDD was completely dead from one moment to the other for me easily outnumbers the SSDs that died on me (which is zero).

    Regardless of any kind of storage, ... backup?
     
  7. IchimA

    IchimA Maha Guru

    Messages:
    1,346
    Likes Received:
    280
    GPU:
    7800XT Asus TUF
    True that Sir, right now I am building a NAS and will set up an array just for backup of PC's in the house . Still can't understand what happened . I closed the PC at 12 ...went shopping and at about 19:00 ... no ssd was found :D ... bad luck for me. And I never had a HDD fail since I start building computers in 94. Or maybe one 4 GB drive :(
     
  8. Darkiee

    Darkiee Master Guru

    Messages:
    482
    Likes Received:
    43
    GPU:
    7900XTX
    I know, but not every mobo has is, and if your unlucky that the cheapest case has a glass window? ;):)
     
  9. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

    Messages:
    48,544
    Likes Received:
    18,856
    GPU:
    AMD | NVIDIA
    I'll advance on that with a story that happened to me, I work with two NAS units these days. The client/work/game PCs are all SSD based. They draw volume data from the NAS.

    My NAS initially had RAID1 mirror with two 4 TB HDDs. One HDD died, guess what .. the second one would not recover/identify as valid anymore either while after a format it worked fine, I just could not access the array anymore. Here I moved away from QNAP.

    I then moved to RAID5 in a three HDD setup + 1 hot spare. At one point one HDD failed and you feel it coming already, the array absolutely refused to rebuild with the hot-spare. Days later it turned out two HDDs failed almost simultaneously. I was, however, able to access and copy the data.

    Right now I work with 1 NAS in RAID 5 (ASUSTOR) and then a secondary NAS that backs up the data on the primary NAS (just in case). The latter one spins up once a week for a full backup and then shuts down again. That's my redundant failsafe these days as hey, a NAS can die too. Worst case scenario I miss a few days of data.
     
  10. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

    Messages:
    48,544
    Likes Received:
    18,856
    GPU:
    AMD | NVIDIA
    Aftermarket heatsink are a few bucks on ali-express, come on - including free shipping ;)
     
    Darkiee likes this.

  11. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    8,020
    Likes Received:
    4,398
    GPU:
    Asrock 7700XT
    Pay close attention to those PCIe cards, because many of them provide an assortment of keys (typically, one might be B while the other is M). You don't want to have a bunch of good NVMe drives when maybe only one of them is actually operating at full speed.
    I've considered doing a similar idea (ditch my HDDs for a PCIe SSD) but in hindsight I realized that wasn't worth the money. My NAS doesn't need such crazy speeds. Since it's remote-access data, you lose the latency benefits of NVMe drives and your network will be a bandwidth bottleneck. If you end up RAID'ing your SSDs, you're doing even more damage to your latency. So at that point if you want the best value for a SSD-equipped NAS, SATA makes the most sense.


    Wouldn't a USB drive plugged into your main NAS be a faster, more convenient, and more cost-effective solution? Or is your secondary NAS meant to be a redundant backup, so you have a fully-functional replacement in the event your main NAS fails?
     
    Darkiee likes this.
  12. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

    Messages:
    48,544
    Likes Received:
    18,856
    GPU:
    AMD | NVIDIA
    Don't wanna do 12TB USB HDDs just yet.
    But yes, If device A fails catastrophically, move on to device B in merely seconds.
     
  13. Aekold

    Aekold Active Member

    Messages:
    68
    Likes Received:
    17
    GPU:
    MSI GTX 1080
  14. disco

    disco Guest

    Messages:
    291
    Likes Received:
    0
    GPU:
    Palit Dual 3060Ti
    I don't use NAS, but I have two HDDs for backup which I do 1-2 a month. Just copy the whole drive to them.
    There is no replacement for backup. And in my experience HDD died more than SSD, but I've used far more HDDs than SSDs ('94 onwards).
    And I've used RAID 0 from the good old days of VIA KT133A up to 2012 when I bought SSD and was blown away by it's speed ;)
    I still use my 7 year old Intel 335 180GB which is at full drive health and full estimated life expectancy as a system disk.
    Yes it's slow compared to todays SSD, but it's good enough (read cca350mb/s;write cca 150mb/s).
    I will buy nvme when I upgrade this Ivy to zen2 this year :)
     
  15. cryohellinc

    cryohellinc Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    3,536
    Likes Received:
    2,978
    GPU:
    RX 6750XT/ MAC M1
    A highly valuable product for its price, perfect for OS and general use. Thank you for a nice review @Hilbert Hagedoorn
     

  16. Ndhea

    Ndhea Guest

    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    GPU:
    16
    can you share more about the temperatures ? I want to put a NVME M or B+M into a USB enclosure and I must be careful with temperatures. Please provide details like here
    https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/corsair_mp300_m2_nvme_480gb_ssd_review,7.html

    Is the Corsair MP300 really cooler than the newest SN500?

    Do you have recommendation for a 250gb drive to put into a USB enclosure ?
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2019

Share This Page