I bought 5 of these less than two years ago, though they were the 500 GB model. Every single one of them has failed - some within 45 days and just outside the return period. The last one, which I honestly forgot was still running and thought I'd replaced, failed this morning.
These SSDs are absolute garbage and their warranty replacements are a joke (read: you're outta luck, Chuck). Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me 6 times, well, shame one me for buying them again, I guess. lol. I had one fail prior to this batch, but assumed it was an oddball.
Pro tip: Never buy Silicon Power (SP) SSDs. I you have any in use, make sure you have backups running daily and that you check those backups every so often.
Seems like the 3v3 regulator is what goes out on these, but I'm not going to bother trying to repair it since I've got backups.
Oh, the warranty is 5 years. The Amazon return period was 30 days, and they failed outside of that window.
For their warranty claims, they make you jump through a lot of hoops to even get started on an RMA, plus I had to pay shipping. Ultimately, I figured they'd just send another piece of junk, so I cut my losses and bought Samsungs to replace them.
That makes me feel lucky that Australia’s consumer laws are decent. If that happened here, it’s the customer’s choice whether they want to deal with the manufacturer or the retailer.
Damn, all of my ocz ssds are still working. I know they're garbage, so I'm not doubting you. I'm just amazed mine have made it this long. They're still in my PC.
I have one of the originals, but I retired that one due to how slow it's write speeds were.
But my two Vertex and one Agility are still kicking.
Both batches from Amazon (months apart). I also bought one of that brand a few years ago (2017?) that ultimately failed within 2 years as well.
I said this in another comment, but best I can tell, the actual flash chips seem to be fine and it's the support circuitry (power regulator, SATA controller, etc) that seems to be failing.
I'd assume it's got something to do with the system you're using them on, some issue with power or something that better quality drives are able to handle, but not these.
These are cheap, yes, but if everyone ordering these was failing just outside the return period, they'd have far more 1 star ratings.
Summary: two Silicon Power P34A80's died within a few months of use, the second one was the warranty replacement of the first. In both cases sectors suddenly became permanently unreadable.
I don't know if that's the failure case for them all, but I did read that on a forum and successfully recovered data from one of them by soldering on a temporary 3v3 regulator from my parts box.
I bought a 512 GB one of these 5 1/2 years ago, and it’s been reliable. The exception is when I hit ~10% free space a couple times. The drive immediately suffered from horrendous read times, and locked up my system. Worked fine when I freed up enough space. Nowadays, I only use it for extra Steam library storage, since I don’t trust it, but it hasn’t let me down since
I've been buying Samsung (both SATA and NVMe), though I'm sure someone will tell me they went to crap too. At least the ones I have are on track to hit the 3 year mark.
For less critical things, I've used PNY pretty successfully (haven't hit 2 years yet, but haven't had any failures either). They're less expensive, and I usually stick to the 120-240 GB ones (basically they're boot drives)
I still have the very first SSD I ever bought, a 120GB Samsung 830 that is well over 10 years old. It is the OS drive in my server and thus running 24/7. No errors yet.
All my machines use WD nvme/sata, with a laptop running ADATA nvme. The only ssd I've had fail was at the very very bleeding edge of ssd availability ("sale" of ~$100 for 30GB) with a Kingston drive, unknown flash mfg. Oldest (other than the Kingston) is when I installed (family member's box) a Samsung sata drive (830? 840?) that's been a trooper for the last... 11 years? No issues otherwise.
Oh, the original ssd (unknown brand) that came in that laptop, which I immediately cloned to+replaced with the ADATA, I stuck in my nas last year. It lasted less than 6 months, with no prior writes and the only reads being the clone, until the nas. Also I got warnings less than 6h before total failure. It was working as a cache drive. Replaced with WD Red nvme drives (2 vs the 1) and those are working fine. Pissed me off, that laptop msrp at... $2700? I bought at $1400 + nvme and ram. For them to want such a fucking nutty upcharge and then use a no-name nvme that dies with moderate use (plex system mostly, couple users) is bullshit. Not surprising, it's came out of an Acer Predator, but fuck.
E: oh and that little pos decided to die when I was on vacation at a convention, so scrambling to get to a laptop and tell the nas to stop using the failing/failed drive, worried about the data, was a panic detour that I did not need...
I've seen a lot of people recommending Teamgroup. They tend to be cheaper than Samsung but with supposedly better quality than other cheap options. I haven't looked up any studies yet though.
My issues with Samsung nowadays is that they offer a very low TBW warranty compared to other brands like Kingston.
I wanted to buy a 1TB storage for my games and I couldn't decide between Samsung and Kingston. Samsung had a 600TBW warranty for the 1TB model, Kingston had 800. I ended up choosing the KC3000 from Kingston.
Bonus: use the machine with the $10 drive at your desk, so when it flashbangs you, it will jolt you awake and get that blood pumping. Like a sudden exercise routine! 13 out of 9 cardiologists recommend it!
Best I can tell, the actual flash memory chips are fine. It's the support circuitry around them that seems to be failing.
That said, the data could probably be recovered if I was so inclined and wanted to spend time/money on it. I have backups, so I'm content never buying or looking at one of these pieces of junk ever again haha
Related, but am I correct that only 3 companies make platter drives? WD, Toshiba, and Seagate? Been idly looking for new drives (no rush/issue) for my nas and that's what I found.
At least make sure you have good backups and definitely plan for it to fail (if you can't replace it immediately). These seem to be "when" they fail rather than "if". Of the 6 I had fail, only one gave any warning signs; the rest just disappeared from the bus and never came back.
This is the only brand of SSD where I've experienced a 100% failure rate (I rate my drives over 3-5 year spans). Lol, for comparison, I've got a Kingston one from 2014 and an Intel one from 2015; both are still kicking and in daily use.
I've had good luck with the two inland nvmes I got from microcenter if you're trying to save a buck. Samsung 970s have been good too, I've got 8 of them running at work.
I almost bought an SP NVMe SSD yesterday for a client who insisted on saving every penny possible but went with another cheap brand because I saw a lot of reports of failures with the NVMe ones as well. Now I'm hoping the other cheap option that was available won't suffer the same fate.
Oh I am very aware of that but this guy doesn't seem to be. He came to me with his daughters school laptop because he had purchased an external harddrive so she could put The Sims 4 on it. They were having issues installing the game on it.
He bought a 40$ 2TB external harddrive that was fake and kept crashing when you tried to access it. At least I managed to get him to spend a bit more on upgrading the SSD instead of having his daughter suffer through loading games from a shitty USB HDD.
What's wild is I have had a 1TB one of these running for like 4 or 5 years now without issues, and I've had 2 nice Samsung's (a 970 and 980) die in that time frame. I've basically come to the conclusion that modern consumer storage can't be trusted or relied on in general. Robust back-up solutions of anything I'm worried about losing, preferably to a cloud service (or 2)...