[RndTbl] SSD warranty - curious

Trevor Cordes trevor at tecnopolis.ca
Thu Jul 4 03:19:26 CDT 2013


Just got some new Samsung 840 series SSDs in stock and read the little
included warranty booklet (on dead trees).  It's the first I've seen to
include bytes-written count as a warranty parameter!  It states you get
3-years OR "when the SSD has exceeded its TBW (Total Bytes Written,
though some websites call this Terabytes Written, but those are 2
hugely different things!) threshold as may be indicated by Samsung's
Magician Software", whichever comes first.

Not a bad idea, really, although:

a) How the heck can we as users estimate how many bytes we're going to
write in the average year, even within 2 orders of magnitude?

b) I assume the "Magician Software" will not run on linux/bsd.

Their 840 PRO series gives a 5-year warranty and what sounds like a
higher TBW.  Now that Intel is moving to 1 and 3-year warranties, and
Samsung drives so far don't sound (in reviews/comments) like total
garbage, they might be worth looking at.

Looking at their web site, I see some conflicting information.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/about/MlcNandFlash.html

says "Samsung is so confident that a typical client-PC user will never
be able to exhaust the lifespan of the drive that it is guaranteeing
its SSDs for unlimited mileage - there are no workload restrictions in
the 840 Series’ 3-year limited warranty."

Huh?  Doesn't that contradict the dead tree in my hands?

You can see a copy of the dead tree here:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/warranty.html

Nowhere can I see to find the exact for-warranty-purposes TBW number
for the 840 series.  Oh well.  I guess the warranty is 3 years unless
their RMA dept determines that you've exceeded some magic unknown
threshold that probably only they know about and always works in their
favor ;-)



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