It would appear that no-one is talking about iops. IOPS matters much more than sequential file transfer speed and the type of bus you’re connected to. For plotting, I think it is not entirely sequential - most things aren’t unless you’re simply copying a large file and nothing else.
For example, sata connected devices with high iops actually perform better than most PCIe4 connected devices for anything with a sustained write requirement.
And without a doubt, the king of sustained IOPS combined with extremely good TBW are all Intel DC drives. There are stacks of these you can get second hand e.g. eBay. I’ve got 4 very old slow, low iops 240G intel DC drives in a stripe that give me 29 minute plots with madmax. They cost me NZ$32 each (so about US$15 each). I’ve tried the Samsung gear including their datacenter SSD’s and in my experience they just doesn’t cut the mustard by comparison. This is because for the most part, people buy the consumer drives (yes the pro’s are consumer drives too) and are not made to take the kind of beating and deliver the kind of sustained performance that a data centre drive is. However, things may have changed, so I’d be keen to hear from anyone whom has tried both the Intel DC’s and the Samsung Pros and had a sustained random write requirement to hear about their experience. If the Samsung Pro’s are now at this level, then they might be a good option, but are probably still more expensive than what you’d pick up on eBay. And I’d trust an INTEL drive - even second hand, much more than a new Samsung to still be going 5 years later.
I also have a very old Intel D3-S4510 960G SSD. I got it for NZ$320 brand new many years ago. It lists only a sequential bandwidth of 510MB/s write. But it’s read IOPS is 95000 and it’s write IOPS is 36000. You can do way better than this with the newer Intels, but this is what I’ve got. It has a 3.5 Petabyte endurance (compared to the Samsungs 1.2PB and a 5 year warranty - but this comparison isn’t even fair because the INTEL I have is many years old and the Samsung I’m comparing it to is brand new). Anyway, with this I get under 30 minute plots without any optimisation and unlike my 240Gx4 stripe above, (which I striped to increase it’s IOPS due to it’s age), it’s only a single drive connected by SATA.
My point is, you may not have to spend the money on the Samsung kit, and you may be able to get a better config for a plotter using INTEL DC drives, which more than likely have a lot more endurance and give you real speed.
I expect I’ll get a few people surprised at this, but it’s been my experience.
I also bought a few of those firecuda’s in a rush one day, going by endurance only. Their performance is absolutely abysmal. They’re probably OK for a 10 second burst every few minutes only.
Edit: Just found this which seems to indicate the endurance of these Pro Samsungs is also not great. Testing out your hard drives via SMART checks - #11 by codinghorror