When SSD's go pop

poppellerant

This is why I want to cry inside every time people recommend buying a cheap SSD. There is a reason they are cheap and it's not because the one-hit wonder manufacturers are using some magical technique that the other big brands don't know about - it's because they are cheap and nasty.

There is a certain user on this forum who I have seen linking to cheap SSD drives, even though the systems have low memory - they somehow think putting the pagefile on a cheap SSD doesn't matter, because even cheap SSD drives are somehow built to last these days.

I stick to proven brands such as Samsung and have never been let down as a result. In fact, I have yet to encounter a dead Samsung SSD.

grumpycrab

poppellerant wrote: »

I want to cry inside every time people recommend buying a cheap SSD.

So best to avoid Integral, PNY, Silcone Power, Transcend? Any others?

poppellerant

grumpycrab wrote: »

So best to avoid Integral, PNY, Silcone Power, Transcend? Any others?

Personally I would only trust Samsung drives. I might consider the use of Crucial or Kingston drives for less important scenarios, but not for my main use.

My main PC has a Samsung SSD. My laptop, which sees only occasional use, has a Kingston SSD.

As I said, I prefer proven brands. I regard Kingston as a budget brand that I can count on for a budget - but I certainly wouldn't use Kingston for everyday use, especially the way I hammer my drives sometimes.

Chino

poppellerant wrote: »

Personally I would only trust Samsung drives. I might consider the use of Crucial or Kingston drives for less important scenarios, but not for my main use.

Such is the power of marketing - it would be interesting to hear the evidence on which formed this opinion.

Uxb1

grumpycrab wrote: »

So best to avoid Integral, PNY, Silcone Power, Transcend? Any others?

The SSD in my original post which went pop as put in by the corporate refurbished/seller was a Hypertec Firestorm.
Its amazon reviews for the make are hardly stellar!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hypertec-Firestorm-2-5-inch-240GB-Solid/dp/B005F3BMB8

poppellerant

Chino wrote: »

Such is the power of marketing - it would be interesting to hear the evidence on which formed this opinion.

It has nothing at all to do with marketing. Just Google for Samsung SSD reviews and you will find across the board that they are consistently positive. I don't think anybody needs more evidence than that.

Samsung SSD drives are sometimes a little more expensive than other brands. Their Pro series naturally carry a premium if you need a virtually infallible drive, but my 970 EVO Plus suffices for me.

Neil_Jones

To be honest a Samsung SSD is akin to paying for the name, but a lot of the time the goodness of a drive comes down to the internal components and controllers used.

The Kingston SSDv300 series (the 120Gb) when it first came out was really good performer for a budget drive, and then at some point along the line for whatever reason Kingston changed the components inside the drive and managed to nobble its performance in the process.

As prices of this stuff continues to fall, reliability should, theoretically, continue to improve due to the technology. Mechanical drives capped out speed wise because the mechanics can't go any faster and even the slowest SSDs out there are faster than any mechanical drive.

poppellerant

Neil_Jones wrote: »

To be honest a Samsung SSD is akin to paying for the name, but a lot of the time the goodness of a drive comes down to the internal components and controllers used.

The Kingston SSDv300 series (the 120Gb) when it first came out was really good performer for a budget drive, and then at some point along the line for whatever reason Kingston changed the components inside the drive and managed to nobble its performance in the process.

As prices of this stuff continues to fall, reliability should, theoretically, continue to improve due to the technology. Mechanical drives capped out speed wise because the mechanics can't go any faster and even the slowest SSDs out there are faster than any mechanical drive.

I agree to a certain degree. However Samsung use their own controllers and their own memory, not generic stuff.

I strongly suspect a lot of the prices you see online are based on how much development they perform on the controller's firmware. With Samsung I feel they are proactive with firmwares, whereas cheaper brands are more likely to just be active.

You are spot on about speeds. Before SSD drives I used to only buy 7,200rpm drives to achieve the best speed for my machine. I bought a SATA Samsung SSD thinking that it would be my last upgrade for around a decade (sic). I've now moved on to an Samsung M.2 SSD and haven't looked back.