The testing of the flash memory of Solid State Drives (SSD) is a continuous activity for several years already. Many specialists and enthusiasts report that, as a rule, the real capabilities of SSD are rather moderate. Defying theoretical statements that SSDs will be able to run N times longer than a standard hard drive, statistics show that this type of storage devices are unable of reading and writing big amounts of data over several years. One of those tests targeted Samsung 850 PRO that uses 40nm 3D MLC V-NAND technology, and it showed surprising results.

Regardless of 850 PRO’s decent age, almost three years, and a price that is 50-100% higher than an average budget SSD, the product retain its place among the most popular SSDs on the consumer market.

According to Guru3D, that refers to one of the German publications, 256GB version of Samsung 850 PRO outlived all the competition – Crucial BX200, OCZ Trion 150, Samsung 750 EVO, SanDisk Extreme Pro and SanDisk Ultra II. Moreover, some of the devices stopped working not because of a memory failure, but a premature power failure.

The winners of the test were SanDisk Extreme Pro and Samsung 850 PRO of different sizes. Each one survived at least 2.2 Petabytes (2200 TB) of data being continuously re-written on it. “The last survivor” endured 9.1 Petabytes of data, which is 60.7 times more than guaranteed by the manufacturer.