The 2019 Internal SSD Buying Guide

Eeeeek, it used to be so easy to figure out what to buy and how much it would cost!

This coming from a guy who just recently purchased an SSD (Crucial) and installed it in his personal Dell E6500 Laptop. I wanted something faster, and not pull the battery down so quickly!
 
Huh. The WD Green SSDs are SLC? And in fact are the only SLC drives in that list.....

I was surprised to see no mention of cache - the impression I've gotten is that one of the notable features of the cheapest SSDs out there is that a lack of internal cache has a significant impact on performance, but I didn't see any mention of that.
 
This goes in line with a forum thread on my forum for me (and others) to log SSD recoveries that we see. I'm not very disciplined in recording every one that rolls through, but I'm hoping to record frequently enough that we might be able to see trends, such as SanDisk seems to be garbage.

https://www.recoveryforce.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=1284#p1284
Very good info. I have not seen any failed Sandisk but after looking at the thread, I bet Murphy will step in and change that. Might want to watch WD blue SSD'd they are also made by Sandisk or the other way around who knows. Never had one of those go bad either.
 
Very good info. I have not seen any failed Sandisk but after looking at the thread, I bet Murphy will step in and change that. Might want to watch WD blue SSD'd they are also made by Sandisk or the other way around who knows. Never had one of those go bad either.
With my posts, it has to be noted that all the drives we get are going to be failed drives. Models and brands will vary over time. My concern isn't so much about which brands fail, they all will, but which brands and models are easily recoverable after the failure.
 
With my posts, it has to be noted that all the drives we get are going to be failed drives. Models and brands will vary over time. My concern isn't so much about which brands fail, they all will, but which brands and models are easily recoverable after the failure.

Thanks. Don't know about others but a simple tabulation would be interesting. Say make, model, date, physical damage, recovery. Especially from someone I know that doesn't have an axe to grind. I'm well aware of the whole statistical sampling thing but it would still be an interesting data point. For spinners I use the Backblaze reports but still toss in a grain of salt or two for them. Come to think of it we have several data recovery specialists on the forum so maybe they might contribute as well.
 
I've found that Intel SSDs fail more than other brands. Anyone else found that?

We've had good luck with the enterprise models we use in servers, although we've only got a couple of dozen out there (so far). I use Samsungs almost exclusively for non-server applications and have not had a single failure so far (probably have a few hundred out there by now).

I have an 15-employee architect client that uses me for their server work and any other day-to-day stuff, but has his workstations built by a long-time family friend. Ugh. Anyway, these machines are typically i7s, 32GB of RAM & SanDisk SSDs. 2 have failed in the last year at less than 12 months in service. I use every opportunity to remind them that there is better out there if, for example, they used us to source their machines. Still hoping he'll see the light.
 
I use Samsungs almost exclusively for non-server applications and have not had a single failure so far

In the SSD market there really does seem to be a big element of "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM Sandisk." I'll note that all of my personal devices with SSD are on Sandisk drives though not their Pro line.

Edit: Holy crap looking back I can't believe I wrote this when I wasn't sleep deprived. Not Sandisk. Samsung. Samsung Evo, though not the Pros. :oops:
 
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We've had good luck with the enterprise models we use in servers
I was referring to lower cost consumer Intel SSDs. In Aus they seem to be trying to compete with Samsung on price, and have the same warranty periods. In the past I was like 'surely can't go wrong with Intel' but it seems I did.

I've also had one Samsung Evo failure (out of a hundred or more), and no failures of cheap Sandisk, Kingston, WD Green, Crucial (similar number in total).
 
Granted I've done less than 50 SSD deployments.... I have yet to have one fail.

I'm interested to learn how successful recovery has been from failing / faulty SSD's? I continue to tell people that upgrade to SSD's or already have them that data backup is critical (which it is) and going further to stay that SSD's are almost never recoverable. Is this still true?
 
I've found that Intel SSDs fail more than other brands. Anyone else found that?

Is Intel still pulling the 'excessive writes, your Intel SSD is now in read-only mode' with their SSDs after reaching your amount of predetermined writes?

(Very bogus practice!)
 
Is Intel still pulling the 'excessive writes, your Intel SSD is now in read-only mode' with their SSDs after reaching your amount of predetermined writes?
In my experience the Intel SSDs had little use (e.g. home use for 6 months) then just completely died.
 
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