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So, I got myself an Adata 512gb SSD; It was quite cheap and everything.
But, now that I'm reading more about adata SSD's, it seems that they're reliability and quality are very poor (They usually last from 4 to 8 months before dying).
And so now I'm worried, and my question itself is, what experiences do you have with adata? is it really a poor quality brand?
Adata has typically been a lower quality Taiwanese manufacturer. They used to be horrible quality a few years ago, and I haven't tried anything beyond memory which had really peculiar timing. I say "used to be horrible" because I haven't tried anything else from them since. I can't imagine trusting data one of their SSDs.
Samsung EVO's are *super* cheap right now. I have purchased several of those and have had no issues.
I've been reading that lots of SSDs are losing all data if left without power for more than 7 days. I've put buying one on hold, but, I was looking at a Crucial or Mushkin for mine. Samsung EVO are supposed to be the best, but, their price is too extreme for me. Mushkin have always been great with memory though.
It isn't the best SSD Manufacturer out there, but it ISNT the worst. They are generally very cheap, but thats not *necessarily* indicative of their longevity/reliability, it could just mean they use cheaper Flash IC's, Cheaper Controller(Sandforce SF, versus, say, LAMD ), ETC.Quote:
Originally Posted by AOD_subadaga
Like Renwick said, Samsung (850) EVO's are super cheap, $69.99 for 120GB(Newegg.com, probably cheaper on Amazon), $109.99 for 250GB(Newegg.com), But that is in no way a(n) indicator of their overall performance. I own a 120GB and its GREAT, blazing fast, its got great Random (Que Depth 32; QD32) Read/Write speeds, and sequential R/W. It uses a quality Samsung MGX Flash[3D Vertical NAND is used in SAMSUNG 850 EVO SSD's, although "technically" all NAND is "3D", VNAND just takes the flat horizantal NAND cell "spacing problem" that led to a ceiling in capacity and data corruption, made a rectangular U and inversed the gates] Controller
I think youll be fine. You did already buy it, but If you could and It wasnt a hassle, Return it and buy a SAMSUNG 850 EVO or a Corsair Neutron GTX(There more expensive, and youll get less capacity, but they are *one of*, if not the best, 2.5" SSD Lines available, Not including M.2, PCIe, NVMe, ETC. They are blazing fast)
SAMSUNG 850 EVO 500GB(Its most likely a 512GB, with -12GB Used for Wearleveling/Over-provisioning): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-372-_-Product
Corsair Neutron GTX 480GB(Probably a 500GB or *possibly* 512GB with -20/-22GB for Wearleveling/Over-provisioning): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233744
NOTE: The amount of space reserved for Wear-leveling/Over-provisioning isn't necessarily indicative of a Flash Controllers Effiency, Im not an expert, but I do know there are ALOT of things that determine a SSD's and most other hardware(s) overall performance. I havn't read into, but more space reserved for Wear-leveling is probably, the better.
I had an ADATA in my old laptop [sold] for just about 2 years, and my main drive in this machine is a 256 ADATA SP900 for almost a year now. No signs of failure or anything.
My first SSD was a 80GB intel and that was great too.
So yea, my thoughts ADATA is good enough for me. If it fails? well ill let you guys know lol.
The samsung evo drives use a lot more over provisioning because runnin the NAND in TLC mode, significantly shortens the life of the NAND. Instead of making it differentiate between 4 separate voltage levels, the controller must differentiate between 8 different voltage levels. As flash memory goes through write cycles, it becomes less able to accurately hold a voltage, and thus it will reach a point where it begins to have uncorrectable errors far sooner than a MLC SSD.
For example the samsung 840 (TLC NAND, and the difference between it and the 840 evo, is the internal partitioning of some of the NAND to run in SLC mode in order to act as a large write buffer) uses the same NAND chips as the 840 pro, but the TLC flash in the 840 started to rapidly burn through the reserve over provisioned cells while getting uncorrectable errors along the way, thus the 250GB TLC became unreliable after about 100TB
http://i.imgur.com/uQpFMY9.jpg
The 840 pro using the same flash but in MLC mode, lasted up to around 600TB before beginning to burn through the overprovision. Though it did not suffer and uncorrectable errors, it is still best to consider an SSD unreliable after it begins to burn through the spare cells.
http://i.imgur.com/d5QmnOw.jpg
The 850 series using the V-NAND, can handle more writes than the 840's, but you are still looking at the 850 evo's only having a small fraction of the write endurance of the pro series.
If you do not write much to your drives, then the 850 evo's are still good, as their performance for the most part is at the max of the SATA bus, and the only time it shows down to well below the SATA limit, is when you write more than the available SLC cache (which is not common, and wil really only happen if you are moving a ton of large files, or moving some of your steam games from your HDD, to the SSD.
But for most other writes, you will never really fill the SLC cache before it can dump its data to the TLC flash.
If you run many write intensive programs then skip the evo drives, and go right for the 850 pro, or an MLC flash based SSD that is 20nm or above. (for example, I do video editing, and network testing and work with large data sets, and thus I put around 40-50TB of writes on my SSD each year. if I had an 840 evo, I would have taken the drive to an unreliable state within 2 years)
On my old 120GB sandisk ultra (old sata 2 version using 30+nm MLC, it has survived nearly 200TB of writes so far, with no failed cells. While the ECC on the drive has a higher error rate than when new, nothing ha search a level where it will be worried about the reliability of any of the flash cells.
Edit time limit:
For adata, I have used their SSDs and they seem fine. They also do not have too many complaints on the reliability.
I never meant to insinuate that they weren't reliable, I was just giving my thoughts and observations as to the overall reliability of ADATA SSD's in general, by saying there "not the worst" but not "the best" and suggested some other SSD's i've personally found to be very reliable in my OWN use case scenario, which consist of mainly Read Operations and with the only large write operations being OS Install and 1-2 Games(Win8.1 & BF4 right now) which doesn't happen often-Quote:
Originally Posted by AOD_Mokona512
@Mokona, I read up on Multi/Single/Toggle Flash, just because you seemed more knowledgeable in the subject(and enjoy all aspects of the more "meat and bones" of PC/Computer hardware & Embedded Systems). I read almost exactly what you pointed out about the differences in MLC vs. TLC and SLC Flash vs. MLC; I knew a little about Flash Memory/Memory in general before, but now (thanks to you, even though you may not have meant it) i know a little more :)
I read TLC Flash pretty much amplifies the Positives AND Negatives of MLC Memory, being higher power compsumtion because they store 8 different voltage levels(Like you pointed out) instead of MLC's traditional 4, and SLC's 2(SLC is apparently more expensive than MLC/TLC Flash due to the fact it stores less data per cell, 1 bits per cell, and its Durability/Longer Life-span, Faster R/W Speeds, ETC)
Must be why the Samsung 850 EVO SSD's are so have such a low Price/PerGB
Adata used to be pretty low quality, but it seems that they have been trying to change. The only thing I don't have experience with, is their warranty service.
Anyway, we will need longer term testing to see how their quality compares with other major SSD makers, but from testing, and friends who have had one of their SSD's for a little over a year, they seem to work well. (there may be a chance that the increased quality may be due to the company not using a different companies flash and controller (and just designing the PCB, and sourcing the various passives)
TLC mode basically massively increases the error rate, thus requiring ECC to work non stop for all reads. Writes also have to undergo more verification since they are using the same working voltage for SLC, MLC, and TLC, but they are using more voltage segments. The end result is more storage, but at the cost of far more write amplification (when dealing with dirty NAND), and slower write speeds.
I've been running Crucial M4's for a few years no issues, sometimes they have pretty sweet deals too.