SATA SSD Brand recomendation.

[wraper]

Aha, in that article they say Samsung 840 ssd was terrible due poor quality TLC chips, they fixed the issues in the 850 by switching from TLC to 3D nand.
So no reason to think the 870 is bad, but I can't tell.
All I can say is my 500 gig 850 held the data perfectly fine for almost 10 years, mostly used for Windows OS.
I stored games and downloads in a 2TB HDD.

The issue was not NAND quality but poor handling of cell discharge by early FW resulting in slow read speeds of older data, and that was fixed by a FW update. Later SSD with 3D NAND were still TLC in EVO models, and now nobody even makes MLC SSD in consumer segment. Now TLC is "good", because you get QLC in cheaper SSD.

[Infraviolet]

I settled on a WD Red SA500 "NAS" style SSD, potentially being commercial grade it ought to be designed with a focus more on longer life against higher "performance". Although the adverts say it is designed for NAS usage, if you look in to the details you find it doesn't have any of the unusual "give up quickly in event of a corrupted read" features a typical NAS drive does, rather it behaves just like a normal internal SATA drive. It is fine to boot (Linux) from. Another advantage was the type has never had any reports of needing firmware updates, none have ever been distributed, so it looks like they got the firmware of this Red drive type right first time, unlike the troubles they had with SA510 Blue drives, and unlike the troubles with various Samsung and Crucial models that wore themselves out fast due to firmware bugs which needed updates to fix them.

I do get the feeling though, that in the SSD market, the stuff built to the highest quality, apart from commercial grade SATA stuff, is all designed for putting in to systems that use NVME, often SATA SSDs look to be built with lowering manufacture cost as the primary design intention. This isn't a good situation when you need an SSD specifically to replace a 2.5" SATA HDD, as I did recently (I had a long thread about the struggle to pick the right sort).

[fzabkar]

See the sh1t soldering on this SanDisk product:

https://futurezone.at/produkte/sandisk-ssd-ausfaelle-western-digital-attingo-datenrettung-problem-hardware/402664391

https://image.futurezone.at/images/cfs_932w/8312468/img6373-11.jpg
https://image.futurezone.at/images/cfs_landscape_1864w_1049h/8312462/202306160949371.jpg

[Geoff-AU]

All SSDs are junk. Buy "Goldenfir" and don't bother.
https://aliexpress.com/item/32657147484.html

Not other place, exactly there. I recommend.

Yikes.

All 10+ SSDs in the link above have worked absolutely fine for 6 years.

So let's be crystal clear..  The link you have above sends out "known good" drives but they're "known good" only if you ordered them 6 years ago, and your sample size is 10.

I think i'll stick with name brand, thanks. 

[deadlylover]

Maybe not the most logical choice but if it's annoying you that you have to buy modern "garbage", how about an older enterprise/datacenter SSD? If you get lucky you can find things like the Intel S3610 or S3710 for relatively decent value on eBay (Samsung and Micron are also big players, throw up a "used" search on eBay).

Of course you get no warranty but ehhhhh. Just be sure not to overspend compared to a new drive in terms of $/TB.

[wraper]

Maybe not the most logical choice but if it's annoying you that you have to buy modern "garbage", how about an older enterprise/datacenter SSD? If you get lucky you can find things like the Intel S3610 or S3710 for relatively decent value on eBay (Samsung and Micron are also big players, throw up a "used" search on eBay).

Of course you get no warranty but ehhhhh. Just be sure not to overspend compared to a new drive in terms of $/TB.

I wouldn't touch that old garbage with a ten foot pole. SSD usually do not wear really... unless used at data center. Also modern SSD have way less firmware issues (intel wasn't spared of them either), much stronger ECC than old drives and usually fail gracefully into read-only mode instead of just locking like early drives. BTW quick googling suggests S3610 was quite problematic, did not check another one.

like the Intel S3610 or S3710 for relatively decent value on eBay

I don't think paying the price of a brand new low/mid end SSD price for a beat up drive is a good value. Also most of them come from China, so you cannot trust the use shown by SMART. A load of obsolete "brand new" enterprise SSD from China, yeah right.

[fzabkar]

Some observations by a person who actually recovers data from NAND storage ...

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?p=308770#p308770

As for modern SSDs failing gracefully, that's not what happens. They most often fail without any warning, and they most often don't become read-only. Typical failure modes are "firmware panic" where the drive drops into safe mode, identifies itself with a factory alias and reports some low capacity, eg 1GB.

[Postal2]

... I think i'll stick with name brand, thanks.

Buy a brand sticker and stick it on.

I buy SSDs there all the time, the last ones this year. Inside is a chinese controller and a nand without a name.

[fzabkar]

What happens to second and third grade NAND flash?

https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?p=23002#p23002

[Psi]

Agree that MX500 is good value for money, however there are rumors that newer MX500 are QLC (if they are not already.)
So I'd want to check that before buying a MX500 today.

But the typical TLC based MX500 that most of us have used are totally fine

[wraper]

... I think i'll stick with name brand, thanks.

Buy a brand sticker and stick it on.

I buy SSDs there all the time, the last ones this year. Inside is a chinese controller and a nand without a name.

I won't buy those chap SSD for anything serious because they often contain either low grade NAND (NAND manufacturers sell the same IC in several quality grades, including total trash) or NAND IC salvaged from e-waste.

[mqsaharan]

Anybody has any idea about the quality/reliability of ADATA products. I'll appreciate any input. Although, I am asking it after the fact, at least, it'll give me some peace of mind.

I was in almost the same situation back in 2021. My main computer's HDD died very unexpectedly. With the limited research that I could do at that time and very limited knowledge about SSDs, I finally picked ADATA SU800 512GB SSD. So far, it is working all right. Every now and then, I try to get an idea if it is working all right by looking at SMART values. But I am not sure how reliable even these are. As per their toolbox, I have written about 7TB to this drive in the past 3 and half years. And it is advertised up to 400TBW. If its electronics doesn't fail, I am hoping it might last longer than my computer.

[Postal2]

....I won't buy those chap SSD for anything serious because they often contain either low grade NAND...

Anything serious needs to be stored on a hard drive. SSD for the system. Everyone sells the same garbage at different prices. Why pay more?

Anybody has any idea about the quality/reliability of ADATA products.

All SSDs are made on nand chips. The classic aging option for these chips is the acceleration of charge leaking over time and overwriting. Just the next time you turn PC on, you will find that some part of the data is lost.

[Phil1977]

For good workstations I'd always go for SSD companies that are in close cooperation with the chip-manufacturers. Many years in R&D compartments teach you that quality rises if you have close contact to the experts.

I absolutely don't care if a manufacturer is Chinese or not. Let´s face it, China is involved in any product out on the worlds markets, and if the quality control is guaranteed it´s not worse or better than any other origin.

A German computer technology journal of very high reputation did a lot of reliability tests for nowadays SSDs. As far as I got it there are two things to be aware of:

- Server applications with enormous terabytes written - for this application you should use special hardware
- SSDs in the end of their lifespan loose their data if archived somewhere. It´s no good idea to take your data SSD out of the computer where it was active for years, and put it into the archive to get the data years later. If a SSD was heavily used, you should copy it´s data somewhere else and discard it.

Beside that SSDs are not more or less reliable as HDDs in an office environment. Just do backups.

[wraper]

Anybody has any idea about the quality/reliability of ADATA products. I'll appreciate any input. Although, I am asking it after the fact, at least, it'll give me some peace of mind.

I was in almost the same situation back in 2021. My main computer's HDD died very unexpectedly. With the limited research that I could do at that time and very limited knowledge about SSDs, I finally picked ADATA SU800 512GB SSD. So far, it is working all right. Every now and then, I try to get an idea if it is working all right by looking at SMART values. But I am not sure how reliable even these are. As per their toolbox, I have written about 7TB to this drive in the past 3 and half years. And it is advertised up to 400TBW. If its electronics doesn't fail, I am hoping it might last longer than my computer.

ADATA is totally fine and is one of the largest SSD brands.

[wraper]

....I won't buy those chap SSD for anything serious because they often contain either low grade NAND...

Anything serious needs to be stored on a hard drive. SSD for the system. Everyone sells the same garbage at different prices. Why pay more?

HDD are not more reliable at all, actually SSD are more reliable by publicly available statistics. HDD is only better if stored unpowered for years. And for storage in portable devises SSD is way better as they're not afraid of mechanical shock.

Everyone sells the same garbage at different prices. Why pay more?

How it's the same as those cheap SSDs often contain "removable media grade" or even worse high cell defect NAND that is not supposed to be used in SSD to begin with. Attached document from SpecTek (Micron subsidiary that deals with their rejects) to show they'll happily sell junk.

[wraper]

Here is and example of junk NAND in cheap SSD. Three lines over original marking is SpecTek basically saying no guarantees, YMMV.

[Phil1977]

Attached document from SpecTek (Micron subsidiary that deals with their rejects) to show they'll happily sell junk.

And for some give-away USB stick I happily buy this junk.

It can't be that extremely bad. I have a batch of the very cheapest SD-cards for purposes where I do not care about loosing them. Some of these cards suddenly died, but many of them are absolutely okay. There are lots of applications where it is better to have cheap memory than to have no memory.

And with high-quality SSDs I never experienced a single hardware failure so far **knockknocknock**

[wraper]

And with high-quality SSDs I never experienced a single hardware failure so far **knockknocknock**

I had Plextor 1TB NVMe fail into read only mode. But all files were intact as far as I can tell after copying them at a fraction of normal speed.

[Postal2]

.... Three lines over original marking is SpecTek basically saying no guarantees, YMMV. ...

That is, first the official marking is applied, then the test is carried out, then oh, it didn’t work, let’s cross out everything?

[wraper]

.... Three lines over original marking is SpecTek basically saying no guarantees, YMMV. ...

That is, first the official marking is applied, then the test is carried out, then oh, it didn’t work, let’s cross out everything?

There are several tests at different stages. This could also be for mechanical defects, missing solder balls, high defect rate batch written off as a whole, whatever.

[wraper]

Also I would not necessarily trust marking at all. It may be marking applied on unmarked reject chips by 3rd party or old marking sanded off first, ashough you can usually figure out the latter. Parts sourcing is a really dodgy business in China as they even grind AMD/Nvidia bare silicon dies to apply a new marking.

[coromonadalix]

always have backups, i had ssd died on me brand new ...  remove the sticker ...  pure junk ...     lucky me it was not important  BUT ....

also
I had an Western Digital who died because of spikes in the psu, and the psu is not a cheap brand btw ??  the computer was on sleep,  the ssd simply died / shorted out

i was on Asus TUF ... ditched the mobo (was still working fine)  changed for an Msi who as  better supply lines protections and added UPS on the ac line


i would have said  stay on the reputable brands .. but be sure of what your system can take and offer ...   now the spikes are well handled and i have a beep from the ups telling me  ...

[Postal2]

...  remove the sticker ...  pure junk ...   

...And vice-versa apply the sticker - pure brand.

[BrianHG]

....I won't buy those chap SSD for anything serious because they often contain either low grade NAND...

Anything serious needs to be stored on a hard drive. SSD for the system. Everyone sells the same garbage at different prices. Why pay more?

HDD are not more reliable at all, actually SSD are more reliable by publicly available statistics. HDD is only better if stored unpowered for years. And for storage in portable devises SSD is way better as they're not afraid of mechanical shock.

Everyone sells the same garbage at different prices. Why pay more?

How it's the same as those cheap SSDs often contain "removable media grade" or even worse high cell defect NAND that is not supposed to be used in SSD to begin with. Attached document from SpecTek (Micron subsidiary that deals with their rejects) to show they'll happily sell junk.

The chart you provided only goes up to 5 years for the SSD.  I need 10+ years guarantee.  All my hard drives for the last 15 years, (except for 1, been through 2 power supplies slowly dying, and my current 10 year old laptop one.) still have my data intact.  Even a number of my burned DVDs and BDs seem to acquire defective bits.

I dont like short term solutions.  Though, with 2 backups of everything, I believe 2 good SSDs should retain my data for 2 decades.  I hope.  Or, am I missing something?