SSD brands... are these "off brand" drives just as good?

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asbath

asbath

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  • #1
    (Full disclosure, I don't actually know if they are "off brand" manufacturers, they're just not the mainstream ones that I recognize, such as Samsung, Western Digital, Sandisk, Kingston, Crucial, Corsair, etc.)

    My media server's Crucial M500 finally died, after about 7 years of use. I'm looking to replace it with another SSD, and was looking at just dropping in whatever Samsung, Kingston, WD, Sandisk, Crucial, or whatever SATA SSD was on sale at the local shop.

    But recently I noticed online some other brands like Silicon Power, Sabrent, SK Hynix, Inland, Apacer, Team Group.... the list goes on. I recognize some brands from having bought accessories (Sabrent) and RAM (SK Hynix), so I know that they're not necessarily new comers to the general industry, but I never knew that they made SSDs in the consumer space.

    Are these branded drives going to be as good as one of the more recognizable branded drives? I don't mean in terms of performance, but general reliability and trustworthiess (forgetting WD's Red drive kerfuffle recently). I remember years ago that ADATA was a brand to avoid, avoid, avoid, but yet there's so many other brands I hadn't heard of or rarely heard of that are flooding the market, so I don't know if I should be considering an Inland or Apacer SSD over a run of the mill, low performance Sandisk that just gets the job done?
     
    cogwheel

    cogwheel

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  • #3
    SK Hynix has been making flash drives for a long time (OEM only until relatively recently though), and as Max A mentions they're also a major flash memory manufacturer. They're just as good as Samsung or WD.

    Also, as Max A said, all the brands you mentioned as not being familiar with have been around for a while and are more mid tier SSD manufacturers with less retail presence. Inland is Micro Center's house brand. Apacer was making RAM modules decades ago.

    A true off brand would be something like "fanxiang" or Ritek (they make optical media, but aren't known for SSDs).

    Oh, and Kioxia isn't an off brand, if you come across them. They're Toshiba's flash business, so pretty much just like SK Hynix, but almost entirely OEM products right now.
     
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    BigLan

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  • #4
    There's only a few companies that make the controller chips for ssds, and probably even fewer actually making the storage chips so these companies are contracting the assembly process and don't design the actual chips.

    Basically you're paying a premium for support - most of the off-brands won't do firmware updates, and if it's a drop-shipper, will they be around in a year if you need an RMA? They probably won't include a copy of Acronis or cloning software (but Macrium is still an option), and they might switch controllers under the same product name, though even Samsung's been caught doing that.

    Of the brands you listed, Inland is Microcenter's house brand (like Rosewill was for Newegg), SK Hynix has been spun off one of the big companies, Team Group has been round a while too.
     
    cogwheel

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  • #6
    heartburnkid said:
    Thought I'd piggy back on this, as I'm also in the market for a new SSD, and I'm seeing a lot of brands like Leven, Dogfish, Kingspec, Kingshark, Kingdata, Gamerking, Orico, CMS, Zheino, etc. Are any of those known quantities?
    Click to expand...
    Those? Nope. About the only one I've heard of is Orico, and I know them from USB stuff only (hubs, cables, enclosures, card readers, etc).

    heartburnkid said:
    The fact that there are so many brands with "King" in the name makes me a bit leery of those...
    Click to expand...
    Probably aping Kingston. Kind of like how so many pseudo-brands of shitty liar li-ion cylindrical cells were named ****fire, aping the well known SureFire.
     
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  • #7
    cogwheel said:
    Probably aping Kingston. Kind of like how so many pseudo-brands of shitty liar li-ion cylindrical cells were named ****fire, aping the well known SureFire.
    Click to expand...

    Yeah, I was thinking that as well. I know Kingston, and they're a good brand. Might just spring for them.

    I'm a cheap bastard, though, so part of me wants to try the no-name SSD even though I know it's a bad idea.
     
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    BigLan

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  • #8
    Prices have come down a lot in the last year or two and I don't think there's much discount on the no-name brands now. Team Group is super budget but have been around a while and have decent RMA process, and they have 1TB drives for $50-60. Kingston and WD aren't that much more expensive either. Inland has great pricing at MC physical stores which helped them get popular.

    I wouldn't trust a no-name from Wish or AliExpress or Amazon as you're either going to get a terribly slow SD card with an adapter, or the old "hacked firmware with 4x the actual storage", or maybe even both.

    Also, there was a Li-ion battery brand called SureFire???
     
    Andrewcw

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  • #11
    asbath said:
    But recently I noticed online some other brands like Silicon Power, Sabrent, SK Hynix, Inland, Apacer, Team Group.... the list goes on. I recognize some brands from having bought accessories (Sabrent) and RAM (SK Hynix), so I know that they're not necessarily new comers to the general industry, but I never knew that they made SSDs in the consumer space.

    Are these branded drives going to be as good as one of the more recognizable branded drives? I don't mean in terms of performance, but general reliability and trustworthiess (forgetting WD's Red drive kerfuffle recently). I remember years ago that ADATA was a brand to avoid, avoid, avoid, but yet there's so many other brands I hadn't heard of or rarely heard of that are flooding the market, so I don't know if I should be considering an Inland or Apacer SSD over a run of the mill, low performance Sandisk that just gets the job done?
    Click to expand...

    ADATA was just because it was super cheap and not that great. They've improved but yet are still in the you better be at budget tier and willing to take risk category. Silicon Power, Inland, Teamgroup, Apacer are all in this same group. But for all of the above they're all about a Decade old so they are Established budget brands.

    Sabrent and Orico both are accessory makers so someone else makes the product for them. Though Sabrent got popular because it had a fast drive you can use in a PS5. I mean great for non-critical uses. But i'd rather just use their accessories.

    Solidigm is a relatively new brand that's Intel's corpse with SK-Hynix ownership run as a separate entity.

    These brands Leven, Dogfish, Kingspec, Kingshark, Kingdata, Gamerking, CMS, Zheino are probably just trash.

    Leven - Look at their website. They're copied Sandisk Extreme SD card photos and just photoshopped them to take off the branding.
    Dogfish

    Dogfish. Well They're Kingdata, Kingshark, Sharkspeed, and Gamerking all wrapped into one as they're the parent of all of them. If you want, you too can be a "Repurchase Wholesalet" by contacting them.

    If they don't have a Your country based tech support site. Don't touch them.
     
    asbath

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  • #12
    Thanks all for the responses.

    I purposely used quotations around "off brand" because I think it's pretty subjective: if you haven't personally seen the brand on a store shelf, you would consider them off brand. At least that's how I see Sabrent, Silicon Power, Inland and those other brands. I did some reading based on your replies, so it's interesting to learn so much about these in-house brands.

    Honestly I won't be buying a SSD from Amazon, since the local shops often happily price match them and I'd prefer to throw money at a brick and mortar store whenever possible. That goes double for a drive from some brand that has "King" in its name... But it's incredible to see the number of options out there go from like 5-6 well known brands to well over 20 brands, even if they absolutely suck and are lying through their teeth.
     
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    hestermofet

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  • #13
    heartburnkid said:
    Thought I'd piggy back on this, as I'm also in the market for a new SSD, and I'm seeing a lot of brands like Leven, Dogfish, Kingspec, Kingshark, Kingdata, Gamerking, Orico, CMS, Zheino, etc. Are any of those known quantities?

    The fact that there are so many brands with "King" in the name makes me a bit leery of those...
    Click to expand...
    I've used Dogfish, Kingspec, and Kingshark. Dogfish is one of the few brands that still make mSATA drives. The other options are Transcend and sometimes Kingston, and they can be unreasonably expensive in that form factor. They are fine for a system you don't care about. I wouldn't use it in your main rig. I've never had a problem with them, but still. I've only used these drives in situations where performance doesn't matter too much (boot drive for TrueNAS, or upgrade for an old computer using an IDE to SATA adapter). I'd hate to have to use one of these everyday, but they are cheap enough to be used as an upgrade in a system you pull out only a handful of times a year.
     
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    hestermofet

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  • #14
    BigLan said:
    I wouldn't trust a no-name from Wish or AliExpress or Amazon as you're either going to get a terribly slow SD card with an adapter, or the old "hacked firmware with 4x the actual storage", or maybe even both.
    Click to expand...
    Never buy anything on Wish, be super cautious with AliExpress, but I've never had the issues you've described with drives from the manufacturers under discussion bought from Amazon. These issues are definitely a problem with suspiciously cheap SD cards, but not with these brands of SSD. The SD cards that have these issues are things like 512 GB or 1 TB cards for $10. Or those 2.5" 16 TB USB hard drives for $30. That's clearly fake.

    I've opened up drives from these manufacturers, and some you don't even need to because of the form factor (mSATA, m.2). They have proper NAND flash chips, not the type of chip you find in an SD card. They also have a proper controller, so they are not an eMMC based USB flash drive masquerading as an internal SSD. They usually don't have a DRAM cache, but you get what you pay for in terms of performance. Thankfully, I can report you also get way more than you pay for in terms of capacity.

    Looking at the seller on a listing is important. Amazon fulfills most of these drive orders, so you have easy returns in any case*, but the seller can indicate if it's a fly by night scam or a real vendor who just sells these very cheap drives, but has been doing it for a while.

    *Amazon will even pick up an item that's not even packed right from your doorstep nowadays, so returns have never been easier.
     
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    hestermofet

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  • #15
    Andrewcw said:
    If they don't have a Your country based tech support site. Don't touch them.
    Click to expand...
    Honestly, who's ever needed the support on an SSD? This thread started because an SSD died, but 7 years after purchase, well after any tier-1 vendor's support window.

    If this was a spinning platter drive, yes, support matters. Not for an SSD though. And even if these drives die prematurely, they cost like 50% less than a name brand. A proper warranty won't protect your data, only give you a replacement drive. And if your original drive was cheaper than a meal at a nice restaurant to begin with.... well, I don't really care if I'm not compensated IF the drive dies if I'm saving so much money up front FOR SURE. It's like buying a toaster based on the length of the warranty. Are you actually ever going to file a claim for something worth so little, and is generally bullet proof? ¯\(ツ)/¯
     
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  • #16
    BigLan said:
    There's only a few companies that make the controller chips for ssds, and probably even fewer actually making the storage chips so these companies are contracting the assembly process and don't design the actual chips.

    Basically you're paying a premium for support - most of the off-brands won't do firmware updates, and if it's a drop-shipper, will they be around in a year if you need an RMA? They probably won't include a copy of Acronis or cloning software (but Macrium is still an option), and they might switch controllers under the same product name, though even Samsung's been caught doing that.
    Click to expand...
    Pretty much that. The only functional difference is the lack of DRAM cache, but even tier 1 vendors sell budget and mainstream models without DRAM. All the other components are identical because so few companies make the parts that actually affect performance. The flash chips and the controller. Like, three to five companies globally for chips and controllers combined. You are merely missing the support, software, and marketing. A lot of the comments on this thread are about how shitty the manufacturer's website is. You are paying for a copy editor who understands English better when you pay more to buy a Crucial drive (amongst other things). You are also paying for product photographers, and better graphic designers. Good web content isn't cheap (well, it is now with ChatGPT, but that's a different story).
     
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    Exordium01

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  • #17
    hestermofet said:
    Honestly, who's ever needed the support on an SSD? This thread started because an SSD died, but 7 years after purchase, well after any tier-1 vendor's support window.

    If this was a spinning platter drive, yes, support matters. Not for an SSD though. And even if these drives die prematurely, they cost like 50% less than a name brand. A proper warranty won't protect your data, only give you a replacement drive. And if your original drive was cheaper than a meal at a nice restaurant to begin with.... well, I don't really care if I'm not compensated IF the drive dies if I'm saving so much money up front FOR SURE. It's like buying a toaster based on the length of the warranty. Are you actually ever going to file a claim for something worth so little, and is generally bullet proof? ¯\(ツ)/¯
    Click to expand...
    The concern with the no-name brands is that the firmware is programmed to misreport the actual amount of space available and the drive never works right and causes data loss right off the bat.
     
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  • #18
    Exordium01 said:
    The concern with the no-name brands is that the firmware is programmed to misreport the actual amount of space available and the drive never works right and causes data loss right off the bat.
    Click to expand...
    These drives are sold in capacities as low as 64GB. There's no point to lie about a capacity like that. I've never owned a 2TB Dogfish or Kingspec SSD, but I have filled up the smaller drives made by them without a problem.

    I've also used them to boot operating systems with FAT32. Any data corruption would lead to boot failures on a filesystem like that with no modern features like journaling. Have I checksummed every last bit I've written to verify integrity? No, but I've never done that with a Samsung SSD either.

    The devices that lie about their capacity are obvious scams, like the ones I mentioned earlier. 1TB microSD card for $10-15, and the like.

    Kingspec, Dogfish et al are very cheap, but they are not suspiciously cheap. Speaking from personal experience with them (which nobody else in this thread has), they are real products, legit SSDs... that just happen to be very, very cheap because they have no marketing budget to speak of, and bottom tier performance for a SATA SSD (which is still north of 450MB/s). No marketing budget, hence, you've never heard of these brands.
     
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    Andrewcw

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  • #19
    hestermofet said:
    Honestly, who's ever needed the support on an SSD? This thread started because an SSD died, but 7 years after purchase, well after any tier-1 vendor's support window.

    If this was a spinning platter drive, yes, support matters. Not for an SSD though. And even if these drives die prematurely, they cost like 50% less than a name brand. A proper warranty won't protect your data, only give you a replacement drive. And if your original drive was cheaper than a meal at a nice restaurant to begin with.... well, I don't really care if I'm not compensated IF the drive dies if I'm saving so much money up front FOR SURE. It's like buying a toaster based on the length of the warranty. Are you actually ever going to file a claim for something worth so little, and is generally bullet proof? ¯\(ツ)/¯
    Click to expand...
    Ah who would ever need support for a SSD. Well. That was Newegg's response when I had a DOA 1TB WD m.2 SATA SSD. They told me to call WD. Which i did. I sent it back and they even send me a 2TB drive back in return as an RMA.
     
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  • #20
    A good retailer will cover DOAs no issue. Beyond 30 days (or whatever the return policy is), that's when you need to rely on the manufacturer, but I think SSD failures after 30 days of use is pretty rare. At least compared to HDDs.

    I'm surprised Newegg wouldn't take it back. For me, it would be a major PITA to deal with the RMA process just for a DOA product, and I'd probably stop shopping with that retailer. Again, coming back to the toaster example, would you put up with Wal-Mart if they told you to deal with the manufacturer if the toaster you bought didn't work right out of the box? Toasters cost about as much as these SATA Kingspec/Dogfish drives, and are similar in the sense that they are both commoditized products with very little difference between each individual model regardless of manufacturer. They all use the same design and components inside.
     
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  • #21
    My anecdotal experience is not good when it comes to SSD's. In nearly 40 years I have not had an HDD fail [knock on wood], but I just had one of my five SAMSUNG 870 EVOs fail. It was only 13 months old with approximately 4000 hours of run time.

    Any future purchases will not be SAMSUNG. Samsung's 5-year warranty will not replace the drive with a new one. But will provide a rebuilt after I jump through hoops.

    Waiting for the rebuilt.
     
    asbath

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  • #22
    RadarEngineer said:
    My anecdotal experience is not good when it comes to SSD's. In nearly 40 years I have not had an HDD fail [knock on wood], but I just had one of my five SAMSUNG 870 EVOs fail. It was only 13 months old with approximately 4000 hours of run time.

    Any future purchases will not be SAMSUNG. Samsung's 5-year warranty will not replace the drive with a new one. But will provide a rebuilt after I jump through hoops.

    Waiting for the rebuilt.
    Click to expand...
    Wow that's the opposite experience I've had with Samsung.. I recently bought a Samsung 980 for an OS drive; it died in year 2. Samsung mailed out a RMA unit after about a week of back and forth emails to their customer support team. Nothing in the packaging indicated that it was a refurbished unit.
     
    Paladin

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  • #23
    The 'never had a hard drive fail in 40 years' tells me that you haven't used many hard drives. :D ;)

    I've been using computers with hard drives for roughly 35 years and I've seen uncounted numbers of drives fail. More than I can even remember. I spent literal days at the side of ailing Compaq servers (the big cube things) feeding drive after drive into them to keep a failing RAID alive long enough to get the data off. They ate those drives like Tic-Tacs.

    SSDs (of decent quality) are unimaginably better than spinning drives. I've had a few bad SSDs too (LiteOn 256GB that did 8MB per second performance, brand new) but it has been much more rare and it is almost always something that is fixed in firmware, quickly. I've had a couple SSDs die in SAN devices too but after years of near constant IO work. Spinning drives go out much faster.
     
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    vwracer409

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  • #24
    I recently had a problem with an ADATA 240GB SSD. Started with trying to clone it, only to find there was a bad sector. I spent a crapload of time generating a new boot drive as a mirror of the original source drive. I'm not really sure why I used the ADATA drive, but I feel I should have stayed with my original choice of SAMSUNG. I definitely won't try PNY again. With it as a destination drive, I couldn't clone anything. Changed to a spare ADATA drive I had, and the clone went smooth as a babies butt. Go figure! Thanks for this post, Very informative.
     
    asbath

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  • #28
    Western Digital also offers a range of SATA SSDs, depending on your usage. The Reds are for NAS purposes, the Blues are good for general use. I have a WD Blue as a games drive (1TB), and it works perfectly well for storing hundreds of gigs of data that I want quickly, but couldn't be bothered to care about how well it performs on a benchmark.
     
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  • #30
    Andrewcw said:
    ADATA was just because it was super cheap and not that great. They've improved but yet are still in the you better be at budget tier and willing to take risk category.
    Click to expand...
    There's nothing wrong with Adata. They have a decent RMA process and they provide firmware updates and maintain a SSD Toolbox utility that gets regular updates. It may not have the gamer aesthetic of Western Digital's WD_BLACK, but it's functional.

    The worst thing Adata did was some component mix changes without a SKU change. The changes had minimal impact on performance, and both WD and Samsung did the same thing.

    Silicon Power, Inland, Teamgroup, Apacer are all in this same group.
    Click to expand...
    SP, Teamgroup, and Apacer have SSD toolboxes/firmware updaters.

    Inland Micro does not have updaters that I can find.

    they are Established budget brands.
    Click to expand...
    Other than Inland, they aren't budget brands. Adata, Silicon Power, Teamgroup, and Apacer all have industrial divisions that make server memory. They may not design their own SSD controllers, but given the problems "gold standard" Samsung has had both currently and in the past with their in-house controllers, using Phison or Innogrit controllers isn't an automatic deal breaker.

    I've used/am using Adata and Teamgroup in my own systems. They've been fine.

    Though Sabrent got popular because it had a fast drive you can use in a PS5. I mean great for non-critical uses. But i'd rather just use their accessories.
    Click to expand...
    Sabrent's been building performance SSDs for years, well before the PS5 shipped. I've had Sabrent drives in my systems for years.

    These brands Leven, Dogfish, Kingspec, Kingshark, Kingdata, Gamerking, CMS, Zheino are probably just trash.
    Click to expand...
    These are actual budget brands. They're not automatically bad, they need testing. I picked up a 2TB PCIe 3.0 Leven TLC drive with DRAM cache to test out.

    If they don't have a Your country based tech support site. Don't touch them.
    Click to expand...
    That depends on what their RMA process is. If there's a local RMA process, or they provide a shipping label, then I don't see an issue.

    A SSD maker is good, until they aren't. When "gold standard" Samsung screws up and tells end users there's no issue with their new SSD losing 1% of life every few days, that puts a pretty bad tarnish on the reputation. When 2TB 980 Pros start locking up and cannot be recovered, that just adds insult to injury. How a vendor handles problems matters, not just that they make their own SSD controller.
     
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    hestermofet

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  • #31
    IceStorm said:
    Sabrent's been building performance SSDs for years, well before the PS5 shipped. I've had Sabrent drives in my systems for years.
    Click to expand...
    Spot on. I'm pretty sure they were the first to release a widely commercially available PCIe 4.0 SSD.

    I sometimes vehemently disagree with your posts (my disagreements are mostly because of opinion, not facts ;) ), but thanks for addressing a bunch of misinformation in such a methodical manner.
     
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  • #32
    Ultimately though, any SSD can fail, so while we can talk about which brands are more or less likely to have a problem or a good RMA process, my money would be on buying the less well known brands (having done your due diligence) and having a good backup strategy in place.

    (FWIW I have Adata and Silicon Power SSDs in my main machine, as well as Micron and Crucial, so far so good...)
     
    Derp Derpus

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  • #33
    I was a dedicated Samsung customer for many years. I still have old 840 Pro's that work fine (while lacking in capacity). Then came the issues with the 870 Evo, 970 Evo Plus, 980 Pro and now 990 Pro drives.

    My last two personal builds have SK Hynix Platinum P41 NVMe drives in them. Faster than the Samsung drives, everything inside them is made by SK Hynix and they were cheaper than the Samsung 980 Pro when I bought them. Only time will tell when it comes to reliability. My last Samsung purchase was a 1TB 980 Pro that's sitting waiting for me to flash it to the new firmware that's supposed to cure the abnormal wear leveling issue.
     
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    Shavano

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  • #36
    BigLan said:
    There's only a few companies that make the controller chips for ssds, and probably even fewer actually making the storage chips so these companies are contracting the assembly process and don't design the actual chips.

    Basically you're paying a premium for support - most of the off-brands won't do firmware updates, and if it's a drop-shipper, will they be around in a year if you need an RMA? They probably won't include a copy of Acronis or cloning software (but Macrium is still an option), and they might switch controllers under the same product name, though even Samsung's been caught doing that.

    Of the brands you listed, Inland is Microcenter's house brand (like Rosewill was for Newegg), SK Hynix has been spun off one of the big companies, Team Group has been round a while too.
    Click to expand...
    How important is doing firmware updates on a SSD? SATA and PCIE are pretty straightforward standards. I guess there could be implementation bugs there or in the flash controllers. How many controller updates have you had to your firmware?

    More likely would be driver updates, maybe, since the software on the system side is comparatively fast-changing.
     
    continuum

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  • #37
    Backblaze is probably as much data as you're going to get from anyone who's allowed to talk about it.

    The SSD Edition: 2022 Drive Stats Mid-year Review

    Andy Klein's much anticipated 2022 SSD Midyear Drive Stats Report is here. Read on to see the findings.
    www.backblaze.com www.backblaze.com

    Shavano said:
    How important is doing firmware updates on a SSD?
    Click to expand...
    Usually not. But when it is, it's often critically important.

    arstechnica.com

    Samsung 990 Pro SSD firmware update should halt—but not reverse—rapid wear-out

    Samsung's SSD reliability has been a selling point up until recently.
    arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
     
    asbath

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  • #39
    For what little it's worth, I ended up picking up a 480GB Kingston SSDNow A400 for $30 CAD on sale at a local shop. It was $10 cheaper if you buy in-store vs online.

    Considering that this SSD will hold the OS, Plex, and the ridiculously harsh Plex cache, I didn't need anything more than that. I've also overprovisioned the drive/partition by 30% since I don't need all that actual space, and this should hopefully get me another 7 years of ridiculous TBW. My previous Crucial died with about 120 TBW (almost double the advertised 72TBW) on last check before it went into read-only mode and bitched about imminent failure.

    I'm also awaiting delivery of a Sabrent NVMe drive from Amazon, to replace the meager 128GB SSD that came with my laptop. I'm reading great things about Sabrent, so why not give them a shot? It only costs $2 more than the competing Samsung 980 Pro, so I'm willing to give it a shot in my personal laptop that has nothing important on it.
     
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  • #40
    continuum said:
    Yar, we've been sourcing SK hynix drives for ages... until the SK hynix Gold P31 they were simply mostly OEM only.
    Click to expand...
    They’ve been making RAM for decades too. They’re a part of the Hyundai chaebol, and the second largest memory chip maker in the world, and third largest semiconductor maker. According to Wikipedia. So definitely not a nobody.

    I guess it’s like Magna Intl. Nobody’s heard of them, but like 20% of the components in virtually every car made by all the big car companies are made by them. Especially the American makes. Most of the parts for self-driving systems are also manufactured and designed by them, even though Waymo, Lyft, Uber, Tesla etc are the actual OEM who do final design, integration, and assembly.
     
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