Well, I'm definitely not recommending Mushkin SSDs anymore . . .

[sapphirescales]

You are the living miracle that seems to be able to sell ice to Inuits and never have a customer care about the price of anything. I don't live or work in that rarefied sphere. Most home and very small business clients are very price conscious, and I understand why and respect that.

Maybe so, but we're talking about the difference of $5-$20 here depending on the size of the drive. If they're going to be that cheap then they shouldn't be upgrading to an SSD anyways. I've never had a customer complain about the price of a Samsung because I don't quote anything else. I mean, heck, I'D rather bite the $5-$20 than install something substandard. We're all in the business of making money, but being cheap never works out.

If we were talking about doubling or tripling the price then I could understand why people would go with the cheap drives, but it makes absolutely no sense to cheap out for those few dollars in savings.

 

[phaZed]

Maybe so, but we're talking about the difference of $5-$20 here depending on the size of the drive. If they're going to be that cheap then they shouldn't be upgrading to an SSD anyways. I've never had a customer complain about the price of a Samsung because I don't quote anything else. I

I believe you're looking at this all wrong. You're not passing along drives at-cost, are you? The $5-20 per drive is supposed to be YOUR money, not the customer's. You're not supposed to be worrying about about "if they're going to be that cheap" because you already have the drive marked UP, hence the cheap customer would be price shopping you on Amazon. So, my drive prices stay at where I like them, if the price goes down $5, I get an extra $5.

There are perfectly fine SSD's that are not Samsung. The choice should be the customer's with a 'little help from the salesman' to upsell to the better/best options.

 

[SlickMinnow]

If we were talking about doubling or tripling the price then I could understand why people would go with the cheap drives, but it makes absolutely no sense to cheap out for those few dollars in savings.

Agreed.... That said, price is not necessarily an indicator of quality (particularly nowadays). And as @phaZed points out, depending on your pricing strategy, the price difference is more likely seen by us rather than the customer. With ssd prices being relatively similar, the questions for me now concern reliability, recoverability, and if there any reason I shouldn't keep the $5-20 in my pocket. Which is why I asked @lcoughey what he sees as a recovery tech.

@Sky-Knight brings in a very valid point particularly, for someone working in quantity. Systematization, familiarization and repeatability certainly make a difference.

PNY or Kingston thoughts anyone?

 

[alexsmith2709]

Agreed.... That said, price is not necessarily an indicator of quality (particularly nowadays). And as @phaZed points out, depending on your pricing strategy, the price difference is more likely seen by us rather than the customer. With ssd prices being relatively similar, the questions for me now concern reliability, recoverability, and if there any reason I shouldn't keep the $5-20 in my pocket. Which is why I asked @lcoughey what he sees as a recovery tech.

@Sky-Knight brings in a very valid point particularly, for someone working in quantity. Systematization, familiarization and repeatability certainly make a difference.

PNY or Kingston thoughts anyone?

I've mentioned on here a few times that i use Kingston. They are the brand i keep in stock and never had one fail in the few years i've been selling them. I primarily use the A400 range, certainly a consumer line but i trust it for my home users. I've even put some in some laptops for a business and they are still going strong.

 

[lcoughey]

As a respected recovery specialist around here, your insight should prove most valuable to me. Do you have any recommendations as to brands of SSD or particular technologies. What do you see a lot of? What do you see very few of (comparatively)? What do you find easier / harder to recover? What makes you cringe when you get it in the shop?

My suggestion is to try and stick within the list of SSDs supported by PC3000 SSD Extended posted here - https://blog.acelaboratory.com/pc-3000-ssd-list-of-supported-ssd-drives-regularly-updated.html

As always, backups are most important to the protection of data. But, that has always been the case. I get data recovery work because data is not being backed up properly, if at all, and drives are failing. With HDDs, the industry average recoverability rate is about 90%. With SSDs, it is less than 20%. Perhaps, as time moves on, that will change for the better, but it is difficult to say with the multiple layers of encryption and digital signatures used by various vendors such as Intel and Samsung.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

My "cheap" offerings for SSD's include WD, Seagate, Sandisk, and Crucial. I have had 1 failure out of the box(WD) that never made it to the customer... I have had ZERO returns or known problems from customers regarding these brands in 5(?) years of selling/installing.

My go-to, "expensive" offering is Samsung.

Oddly enough I've had more Samsung failures than I have had Crucial and WD Blue SSD failures combined!

Backup wise, with todays services and tools, (such as 365 or other cloud accounts)...really should be no panic when a laptop blows up. Go get new laptop, unbuckle, sign into services ...re-sync..BAM..all data back.
So....I get the debates...platter drives and usually be recovered...when they start to fail. And they have a high rate of failure. SSDs...rarely fail, but when they do it's total failure. But..with todays services (like 365)....shouldn't really "lose" data.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Full disclosure I do warn users, especially after they get an SSD installed after a platter faulted. SSDs don't fail as often, but when they do your stuff is GONE.

Onedrive... Onedrive is your friend!

 

[britechguy]

But..with todays services (like 365)....shouldn't really "lose" data.

I am not arguing with your central point, which is entirely valid, but it requires that these services (or some equivalent) be set up and USED.

Therein lies the problem. There are just far too many who don't use what's already available to them, or do something bone-headed like turning off automatic backups or not putting reminders in their calendars (and following through, promptly) if they wish to do manual backups.

The issue always comes back to "no backup available." I only wish that storage, including HDD storage, had been as dirt cheap as it is now when PCs first came into being. Doing backups was once an extremely expensive proposition that virtually no home or small business user could even consider. That was the case for a very long time, and it's likely going to be just as long, or longer, until the reality makes it out "to the great unwashed" that this is truly no longer the case. I'm often shocked at just how shocked my clients are when I tell them that they can get an external USB backup HDD that's 4TB in size (if they need anything near that to begin with) for under $100 on sale, and barely more than that when it's full price. Once certain ideas get burned in to collective memory it takes much longer than the burn-in period to burn out.

As an aside, and though I've only used one so far, the PNY CS900 500TB drive I put in one client's machine has been humming along for some months now without any indication of an issue. I chose a Crucial as the replacement for the two failed Mushkins. Had those not been two in a row, with the same failure modality, in rapid succession I'd have been willing to try them again, too, but not now.

Based on everything that's been shared in this topic I can't see being brand loyal. What one person's had great success with others have had trouble with and vice versa. There's a crap shoot element to electronic components, and always has been. Though some definitely become known as being more problematic than others, those in the "others" category tend to be pretty similar to each other as far as failure rates go.

 

[Porthos]

PNY CS900 500TB

500 TB is a large drive.

 

[britechguy]

500 TB is a large drive.

Consider it a fingernail-catch or fat-finger size increase. Or at least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it! Darn G and T keys being so close together!

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I am not arguing with your central point, which is entirely valid, but it requires that these services (or some equivalent) be set up and USED.

So as far as I'm concerned..that's why I'm here. I setup the computer to...work reliably, and be able to get back up when the brown stuff hits the fan. I choose my services and tools based on that.

For those that don't...well, if someone goes and purchases a car on their own, or buys chicken raw..on their own, if I'm not involved...I don't give two hoots if they run out of gas because they forgot to fill the gas tank, or if they get sick and vomit out both ends for 2 days if they ate the chicken before they cooked it. Not under my watch, not my problem.

 

[britechguy]

Not under my watch, not my problem.

Well, in my own experience, "Not under my watch, that's why it's become my problem." I've had to deal with more drive deaths without backup than I care to recount. I've even done amateur data recovery on a number of devices where I knew (or very strongly suspected) that cloning them to a good drive and hitting that with TestDisk would get a lot back.

But, ignoring drive death and data recovery specifically, the vast majority of my business comes from things "not under my watch" that distinctly do become my problem, as that's what I'm called in to fix, no matter what caused it. That's the real world that I've been living in professionally for a long time now.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

One of the reasons I avoid residential..heh.
Long time here too (paycheck wise in this field)...since 10Base-2 networks were the norm...and editing config.sys to adjust memory during bootup was the norm (old says of DOS).
Education wise in the field...back to BASIC..and prior to that...Fortan77 and Watfive..stored on punch cards!

 

[lcoughey]

Well, in my own experience, "Not under my watch, that's why it's become my problem." I've had to deal with more drive deaths without backup than I care to recount. I've even done amateur data recovery on a number of devices where I knew (or very strongly suspected) that cloning them to a good drive and hitting that with TestDisk would get a lot back.

But, ignoring drive death and data recovery specifically, the vast majority of my business comes from things "not under my watch" that distinctly do become my problem, as that's what I'm called in to fix, no matter what caused it. That's the real world that I've been living in professionally for a long time now.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

I guess some technicians have their businesses set where they are not looking for new customers and have control over all their existing client systems to prevent data loss. I don't live in a perfect world, so I see a lot of recoveries coming in from large corporations who have very elaborate systems in place to make sure data is backed up.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@lcoughey More like, we have a future where all these SSDs are going to hit their end of life... we collectively have no clue when that actually is because SSD's magic... and without backups those machines are just dead, data gone, and people are going to cry.

I'm just sitting here wondering what that changes exactly. Equipment fails... it just does. And if you don't have a plan for it you're going to pay the price. That price is going to be more lost wedding photos... and we're going to help who we can, and there are going to be a ton of people who we can't that just wind up with a new or repaired machine without their stuff.

That was reality in 2004, it's reality in 2020, it'll be reality in 2080. As long as important data can be generated, there's going to be the need to manage its life cycle and if you don't... splat.

Which is why I put people on the M365 Family plan, it's $100 a year for SIX PEOPLE, and they all get their own Onedrives. I also do what I can to teach people how to make offline copies on USB sticks to put in their fire proof safes... but not everyone handles that bit as well.

 

[britechguy]

I've sold hundreds of both WD Blue SSDs and Samsung EVO devices. I don't see a functional quality difference. But the prices are rather comparable too. The difference between the two lies in the support software. WD Acronis / WD SSD Dashboard is IMHO > Samsung DataMigration / Samsung Magician.

So I use WD.

Just as an FYI, the Crucial SSDs come with (via download) a custom version of Acronis True Image for Micron/Crucial for data migration (and backup, I'd presume) and Crucial Storage Executive for managing the SSD itself (including firmware updates, etc.). I'll see how I like either one or both.

 

[Big Jim]

Crucial MX500 is our go to drive for customer upgrades.
Patriot Burst is the drive we put in to any refurb machines as they are a little cheaper.

So far IME, the Patriots have had zero compatability issues with a single drive failure (or maybe 2 can't remember now) and the crucials seems to play up in some older machines, probably had 2/3 machines where the crucial just wouldn't play ball so we used a patriot instead.

 

[cypress]

The main SSD I sell and use now is Silicon Power besides that it is Samsung.

 

[britechguy]

@cypress: Thanks for that info. I've been considering Silicon Power as my "primary go to" based on pricing and the clientele I serve.

So far the Crucial BX500 is behaving just fine.

 

[Porthos]

I've been considering Silicon Power as my "primary go to" based on pricing and the clientele I serve.