Retrofitting SSDs - which brand?

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Dynamic

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#204654 11-Oct-2016 14:46

We have been retrofitting SSDs for a few years whenever possible, almost exclusively using Inexpensive Brand X, with very good results. Disappointingly, in the last year, we had had more of their SSDs fail than we have had total traditional hard drives fail.

I'm tempted to switch to Intel drives. The 540S series is more expensive, but not ridiculously so. I'm aware that Intel had an embarrassing firmware bug a couple of years back that (from memory) resulted in SSDs thinking they only had 8mb capacity.

One of my team has suggested Samsung drives, which seem to be priced between Inexpensive Brand X and Intel's 540S series. Has anyone sold a decent number of Samsung drives (50+ a year) over a few year period and be able to vouch for their reliability or otherwise?

Comments welcome.

Cheers

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dan

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#1649251 11-Oct-2016 14:54

id probably sold somewhere between 50-70 Samsung 840 and 850 models in last 3 years, no RMA failures, a few had some performance issues a few years ago, but they were fixed with later firmware update / secure wipe

probably a dozen intel ssds as well, i mainly use them if im putting them in a server, also no failures.

timmmay

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#1649256 11-Oct-2016 14:59

Samsung pro here, have a few and no problems. Samsung evo should be fine as well, bit cheaper and not quite as robust but robust enough for most.

networkn

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#1649261 11-Oct-2016 15:06

Samsung and Sandisk are our two favourite brands. I've never had a failure in either despite having replaced at least a few hundred in the past 3 years.

OCZ are the worst, every single one I've bought or sold has failed.

We have used other brands, but generally, customers are happy to accept our recommendation on Samsung. Its' easily my favourite brand. The Pro's are awesome. I have a 950 PCIE M.2 in my home computer. 2500MB/s read and 1500MB/s Write.

We would be well over the 50 units a year in Samsung I'd say.

darylblake

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#1649273 11-Oct-2016 15:25

Samsung, Sandisk & Intel.

Kingston I believe are ok as well. Although I have seed the odd Dead one around. I don't know much about crucial.. I own a Corsair one as well, has been ok so far... time will tell.

Steer clear of OCZ, Transcend. (especially the Sandforce ones)

xpd

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#1649305 11-Oct-2016 16:20

Kingston are fine IME, but yeah, stay away from Transcend, had a few die.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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Lias

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#1649335 11-Oct-2016 16:50

+1 for Samsung and Sandisk.

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daparrot

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#1649396 11-Oct-2016 18:23

Over the last 12 months I have used about 150 Intel 535 and then 540 drives

and had a really good run with them

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richms

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#1649399 11-Oct-2016 18:35

After a bad run with Seagate ones a few years back I've been Intel only. But then some sandisk deals came up on Amazon so I have 5 of them in my gaming PC and all fine too.

Other than the old Seagate's no failures for me.

Richard rich.ms

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#1649402 11-Oct-2016 18:45

I have used many Crucial SSDs and they were really good. Currently have a 750GB SSD for backups.

Dynamic

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#1649580 12-Oct-2016 08:41

Thank you very much for your thoughts, everybody. I've ordered some Samsung EVO 850's and will likely stick with those moving forward. Basically the same price as the Intel 540S, same warranty, but marginally better performance on paper.

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lchiu7

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#1650522 13-Oct-2016 15:55

Not sure if this is brand related but I had a UMPC built by PB Tech for a friend of mine for his office. Core i3 8GB and Sandisk 120GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro.

Worked well for a few months but now the SSD is freezing all the time causing huge performance issues. I need to go back and find out why but a bit of searching reveals that apparently Sandisk SSD's can behave like this when Windows lowers power to them when idle and then there is a freeze and pause when they startup again. I think there's a fix but I need to make a site visit to check.

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lchiu7

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#1655835 21-Oct-2016 16:03

Just to post my results I applied the fixes as described in this post

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/177819-ahci-link-power-management-enable-hipm-dipm.html

This meant a registry update and then changing the ACHI Link Power Management timeout to 300000ms

This is on Windows 10 anniversary edition.

The lag has gone away the machine is like new again performance wise.

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Coil

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#1655846 21-Oct-2016 16:16

Currently running a Crucial in my Laptop M.2 Drive.
Worked out the best bang for buck for the speed and reliability.

I still suggest Samsung has the best product available in the SSD range.

LesF

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#1659941 28-Oct-2016 17:21

darylblake:

Kingston I believe are ok as well. Although I have seed the odd Dead one around.

Oh dear. I just installed a Kingston, 240GB. Hope it's going to last longer than it's predecessor; originally built my box with a vector SSD in it. That died badly and I couldn't even be bothered sending it back to them to get a replacement, I didn't want their equipment in my box again.

Was surprised at how many brand names were in the SSD cabinet at PB Tech when I went to get the Kingston. I guess a lot of them have the same chipsets inside tho.

michaelmurfy

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#1659967 28-Oct-2016 18:26

Have used Kingston SSD's fine - they're cheap, but mine have lasted years.

Just bought a Crucal 270gb SSD from PB for my new desktop build - time will tell!

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