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Nik-Ken-Bah

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What is a good brand of SSD?
I'm currently looking at an SSD to load my main distro onto along with four or five others based on Arch, Slackware, etc besides Debian/Ubuntu based Mint so that I have at least three or four other distros play with. I will be using my current 4TB of HDD for storing my data on plus another external storage HD for Timeshift .
I know Sandisk as they are my principle USB sticks I use and one has even gone through the wash at the dry cleaners and still goes quite well.
What are Sandisk, Goodram, Gigabyte and Kingston like when it comes to SSD's?
I am looking at a 1 to 2Tb SSD.
 


I have a couple of these 120GB SSDs cost me under $20.00 a piece.
I wanted small and cheap because I didn't know anything about SSDs,
I've no complaints with them and they're a couple of years old and going strong.


I bought the ones in the gold medal housing and mounted them in an 2.5" to 3.5" adapter called an icy dock which allowed me to mount a cooling fan to keep the SSD cool because they do run hot.

 
I've had a couple of Kingston SSDs, and am running one now, along with a WD SSD for my /home partition. Kingston is decent, kind of low to mid-price and over the past ~3 years I've not had any problems. I bought the WD just because I like WD and wanted to give it a try. Subjectively, I would recommend the Kingstons.
 
Yeah definitely do some research although as for the customer reviews take them with a grain of salt because a lot of SSDs have terrible customer reviews about failure rate.

I think a lot users have problems with them due to not setting them up properly from the start.
Most of the SSDs I looked at had setup and management software available to download for free.

If you find you're uncertain or can't decide which one to buy start off with a cheap one and decide from there because based on my experience from the two I own you won't be disappointed.

I did this after installing Linux on mine.

 
I agree with most of that article, but I always use XFS instead of EXT4.
 
MOST modern SSDs are at least as reliable as spinners. The days of having to worry about leaving unallocated space on the drive is long gone. The rest of the "information" about SSD failure rates are 99% pure FUD. Yes, there are some sketchy drives available, but stick with a name brand and you'll be alright.
 
@poorguy , @Vrai , @jglen490 , @dos2unix , @Wrek

Thanks for your input fellows.
Tom I bookmarked your post on optimising the SSD, will be needing it when I shove the SSD into its spot.
By the way Sandisk is the stablemate of WD.
When I was looking for replacements for my Toshiba HDD WD was one of the candidates I was considering but settled on the HGST HDD as it had the best report when it came to failures.
I have a Seagate external HD sitting along side me and though I bought back in 2010 - 11 it is still going strong and according to the smart diagnosis it has four months and 19 days on the clock but that may be due to the fact that it is only since that I got this machine up and running that it runs up every time I am running this machine. As for when I just had the laptop only it was only connected when I needed to either do a back up through Memeo, the back -up program already installed on the HD or needed to access information that was on it but not on the laptop.
So I am tossing up between, WD, Sandisk, and Seagate
 
TBH I think most SSDs are the same one brand ain't no better than another brand imo.

I've replace several SSDs for users and brand name made no difference, pick a brand I've replaced it.

Regardless of which SSD you purchase and install you will be very happy with the increase in performance it gives.

Any brand SSD is a worthy investment imo.
 
Whatever non-TLC SSD Newegg has on sale, I'd say. Check out the write times, especially, though.
I've had Samsungs from pre-order of 840 Pro. Bought a 120GB Neo Forza for $20 recently. Using it now.
 
Timing only matters if it matters.

From the moment I first started using an SSD (to hold / partition) until now, what little hair I have left is swept back - an SSD it that much faster :D
 
I've had the best luck with Corsair, Crucial, Intel, Kingston, Mushkin, Sandisk and WesternDigital (WD).
But I am mostly using m.2 format drives now. (Currently Intel)
 
TBH I think most SSDs are the same one brand ain't no better than another brand imo.
thumbs-up.png
 
I've had the best luck with Corsair, Crucial, Intel, Kingston, Mushkin, Sandisk and WesternDigital (WD).
But I am mostly using m.2 format drives now. (Currently Intel)
I agree with all except Sandisk and WD. But I understand you fdisk each before fomatting and installing. Perhaps this was a problem of mine with SD and WD.

BTW -- how does m.2 compare to 2.5" SSDs, in your experience, dos2unix?
 
BTW -- how does m.2 compare to 2.5" SSDs, in your experience, dos2unix?

"Most" (but not all) m.2 drives are actually NVME drives (although they are often confused with SSD).
NVME drives are full duplex dual channel drives. So they can read and write at the same time.
"Most" (but not all) SSD drive run in SATA (serial) or AHCI (also serial) mode which is one direction at-a-time technology. Not all motherboards support m.2 format drives (you can buy PCI cards for this).
but almost all new motherboards (less than 3 years old) do.
As a rule they are generally faster than SATA/AHCI drives. Can't speak to longevity really yet, I have no m.2 drives older than 2 years old. They are smaller and have less moving parts, (SSD's don't really have a lot of moving parts, but the drives themselves sit in trays and bays that have to be latched or screwed in. With m.2, one screw and you're done. No SATA cables and power cables to worry about.
 
@dos2unix : Thank you. Another reason to think about upgrading my hardware!
 
No SATA cables and power cables to worry about.
I was watching a vid the other day from Explaining Computers and he was talking about the m.2 storage devices. He showed how to install them on the MB but he also showed that when it was plugged in it disabled one of the SATA ports.
He was using a Gigabyte MB.
So that is something to put into the back of your mind for Ron.
 
Yep! Some m.2 devices are SATA, others are PCIe, even though they use the same physical interface.
 


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