Which one is more reliable: Samsung 990 Pro NVMe vs. Samsung PM897 SATA?

I'm not so good with specs and I'm trying to decide which of these 2 drives is the most reliable. I'm not looking for speed, I want to make sure my data is safe (as it can be!).

Samsung 990 Pro 4TB specs:

- PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0
- Samsung V-NAND 3-bit MLC
- 5-year or 2400 TBW limited warranty

Samsung PM897 3840GB specs:

- SATA 6.0 Gbps, 2.5 inch
- Samsung V6 (128 Layer) TLC V-NAND
- DWPD: 3.0 (5yrs)

I'm a newbie, but I did catch that "3-bit MLC" is, in fact, TLC. But I have no idea what V6 TLC is and how it compares to the consumer TLC :)

9 comments

Without firmware update 990 is a time bomb

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-firmware-update-released-ssd-health
- counter strikes new bomb.
The 990 is faster but the PM897 will probably outlive it.
If you're looking for data stability, look at how business does it. You can never guarantee reliability, so opt for redundancy instead.

Rather than just a single disk, Get 2 in RAID1 and replace a disk whenever it fails.

RAID sounds complicated, but it's actually pretty simple to set up. Most modern motherboards have support for it nowadays, you just add the 2 new disks in the BIOS and it will pool them together.
The PM987 would have a 21.024 PBW endurance rating compared to the 2.4 PBW of the 990 Pro. Not sure if it has PLP though but it looks like it has the capacitors for that feature based on the pic from TPU.
Backed-up data is safe data.
I would use Samsung PM897 rather than 990 pro, simply because PM897 is enterprise drive, and it should be more reliable.

Also, compare both drives DWPD, the higher it is, the more reliable drive is. https://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/dwpd
- Thanks for the detailed explanation!
  
  I hope it helps a bit.
  
  Usually enterprise drives have the dwpd in their specs, and consumer grade not likely to have it.

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