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There are isolated problems with current patches, but they are well-known and documented on this site. |
HARDWARE By Ben Myers Solid-state drives did not have a very good week here recently, but it was not their fault. Here are the facts about a trifecta
[See the full post at: Real-life SSD reliability must be managed]
WSAxolotl, 
laksi, 
rc primak, 
Travasaurus, 
JohnW, 
SupremeLaW, 
Cybertooth, 
AWRon, 
WCHS, 
Norio, 
geekdom, 
lmacri Acer, Blixem, Fanxiang, Fledging, FYUU, GIGABYTE, Inland, KingSpec, Kingston, Leven, ORICO, PNY, Sabrent, Silicon Power, TEAMGROUP, Timetec, and on and on.
Some of these are not well known, but you would seriously avoid a Kingston SSD? Several others also have a long standing SSD business, with well reviewed SSDs, for example Sabrent.
Would you also have avoided SanDisk before WD bought them? One of the best SSDs I’ve ever had was a pre-WD SanDisk.
One of the worst is a Crucial.
I would not call Acer, Gigabyte, Inland, Kingston, Orico, PNY, Sabrent, Silicon Power, or Teamgroup unknown. Kingston and PNY (and to a lesser degree, Teamgroup) are established and respected manufacturers of RAM, while Acer and Gigabyte are manufacturers of motherboards or PCs (and if they can handle that, a SSD is easy). The others are up and coming and certainly worth a shot if everything else (warranty!) looks good.
Information on the embedded controller and NAND type can be found in reviews on reputable sites across the web (I would never buy a SSD merely on the manufacturer’s specs), though there is a caveat… several manufacturers, including some that are generally considered reputable, have been caught quietly changing the spec on a given part number, conveniently after the initial round of reviews (generally done when the item is introduced) have already gone to “print” (pixel?). These lower-spec dopplegangers often have substantially worse performance than the versions initially introduced under the same part number. It’s a shady practice that should not happen, but it does, so best to be aware of it.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
The original Sandisk was one of the oldest manufacturers of sold state drives, dating back to the last century. Prior to its acquisition by Western Digital, it had close ties to Toshiba and used primarily Toshiba flash chips in its flash memory products. I have never hesitated to use SanDisk SSDs.
I have three Sandisk ReadyCache SSD’s (32Gb) that were intended to be used in conjuction with existing HDD’s with the operating system. Add them to the system, install the software and reboot. These were ideal for those who didn’t want to re-install the entire OS and programs but wanted a performance boost.
These are now ideal sata III SSD’s for netbooks and older laptops for linux.
Well, maybe I would do Kingston, but it is not my preferred choice.
I had to see about the health of the SSD inside the Latitude, so Clear Disk Info
Sorry but Clear Disk Info is not to be used and the SSD is probably fine. You should have used CrystalDiskInfo instead.
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/clear-disk-info-warning-status-on-ssd/
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/our-world-is-not-very-s-m-a-r-t-about-ssds/
Simple math shows that the number of hours equates to 133 days of use 24/7, or 400 eight-hour days, not very much use for a computer over four years old. Yet most of the SSD’s life was gone.
That doesn’t sound right. Like you say, not much use! I have a small 128GB SSD from another reputable South Korean manufacturer that I bought over 8.5 years ago. It now has over 42,000 hours of use, and I have never taken it easy on that drive. I’ve never given its service life a moment of thought; I used it and I used it hard.
When I was using Windows 7, I used to run hundreds of tabs in Firefox, and that was when Firefox was bound and determined to use up every last iota of RAM (a situation that has returned of late, unfortunately, for me a least). With a HDD, the system would grind nearly to a halt as the drive thrashed… it was only the speed of the SSD that kept the system usable in high RAM pressure situations. I would push on until I was finished doing what I was doing, with the system in a high memory pressure state for extended periods of time. You should have seen what the Sysinternals tool (whose name I have forgotten; it’s been a few years since I used Windows tools) reported. It was paging nearly everything out to the SSD, even the important stuff that is preferred to remain resident.
I uninstalled and reinstalled OSes and changed partition schemes constantly, restoring from backup each time, and I never disabled any service to preserve that SSD. I had Windows indexing off because I did not use Windows search, but the indexing from the aftermarket search tool that I did use, Everything, was enabled. A SSD is a consumable item, after all (and is easily removable; I would never buy a unit with it soldered), and my reasoning was that by the time it is at the end of its rated write cycle count (which does not necessarily mean its actual useful life is over), it will be obsolete, or at least very cheap to replace.
That drive now has 67% of its rated writes left, after almost nine years and 42,000 hours of use.
I know that not all drives have the write endurance of any other, and in 2014, my Samsung 840 Pro was the best you can get for that, but it’s nearly a decade old by now, and even budget drives now have write endurance better than the 840 Pro.
Is it possible the software in question has misinterpreted the SMART data? Perhaps there is a tool that will give you the data in terms of TB of host writes (like the Samsung Magician software for my 840). If it truly is worn down, I would suspect there is something other than just the normal writes through indexing and such going on.
The processor cooling fan spun readily and was free of debris.
But was the heat sink? A laptop fan can be clean in appearance and spin freely even though there is a large wad of debris on the heat sink fins blocking most or all of the airflow. You essentially have to separate the fan from the heatsink assembly to see and remove the junk, which some laptop manufacturers don’t make easy. Ideally, the fan(s) should be removable without undoing the heat sink assembly (which requires repasting if you remove it from the CPU or GPU), but with some designs (like the Dell XPS 9310), the entire assembly has to come out to separate the fans.
This wad of debris is made mostly of fibrous items like clothing fibers (particularly an issue if the unit is used as a literal “laptop”), pet hairs, and stuff like that. Pure dust tends to accumulate to a point and then reach sort of an equilibrium, but fibers will collect across the heat sink fins and make what looks like a little gray felt pad right across the heat sink fins where the air is supposed to pass.
FWIW, PC temps are customarily reported in Celsius, even in the metric-eschewing USA. As one of those metric-phobic Americans, I have no “feel” for how far a given distance in kilometers is, or how fast a given speed in kph might be, or whether a weather report using metric units is telling me that it is hot or cold. I have to convert these to Imperial measurements to have any feel for what they mean, with the lone exception is PC temps. Tell me 130 F or 170 F and it’s like telling me it’s 14 C outside. I have to convert it to more familiar units to “get” it.
My bet is that the hot PC has a plugged heat sink, and that is why the air temps inside the case get so hot. Those kind of temps are going to cook the battery in short order too.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Maybe a plugged heat sink in the HP Envy. Maybe not. I have no idea, because the cover over the heat sink and memory could not be removed. It was not screwed down and it was not attached with tabs. It was more or less integral to the motherboard. Had I been able to remove it, there might possibly have been a way to improve its cooling. This is yet another example of laptop manufacturers following Apple’s lead, making laptops harder to maintain and repair.
As for the Dell Latitude with 4GB of memory and a 256GB SSD, I dealt with a very similar MacBook Air issue a couple of years ago. As you know, Apple uses proprietary SSDs. My client brought me the MacBook a couple weeks out of warranty. It had 4GB of memory and a 128GB SSD, and it would not boot. Its SSD was worn out and unreadable, so all I could do was install another SSD and reinstall MacOS.
The difference between a full bare metal restore or a reinstallation of Windows AND cloning a drive is the customer’s programs and data. As you might surmise, many people do not back up their data, let alone their programs, so the only choice is to clone the drive and preserve the data and programs.
I was put off by the age of the Dell Latitude and especially its 1366×768 screen resolution, else I would have done more. My time is not free, and the time to replace the SSD, clone the 128GB SDD, upgrade the memory and run extensive memory diagnostics would add up along with the cost of the parts, and the upgrades would be not far from the cost of a replacement with better specs. To put it differently, a 4+ year old laptop with substandard screen is not worth the upgrade. I would not sell one as a refurb.
You failed to mention when you said, “Number one on my list is to disable search indexing on SSDs”, that after unchecking Indexing it would ask if I wanted to do it to just Drive C or also all the subfolders. Presumably it would not make sense to just do the Drive without the subfolders so I checked subfolders and an avalanche of processing of thousands of subfolders started up. Since the whole purpose was to reduce drive writes to extend drive life, I think all these processing writes probably just shortened the life of my drive.
Disable search indexing for the entire drive. Takes a while to undo it.
Re: “Takes a while to undo it.”
That’s exactly why we do that immediately after initially formatting any NTFS partition.
No waiting!
I always use Samsung SSDs. Never had a problem. No worries here! Fast, reliable!
- Thinkpad P15s Gen1 20T4-002KUS, i7-10510U, UEFI/GPT, 16GB, Sammy 500GB M.2.
others...
- Mint Cinnamon 21 current, Win 10 22H2. WuMgr. HP laserjets M254dw & P1606dn, Epson 2480 scanner.
Samsung SSDs have a well-deserved reputation for quality. The only downside is that if one has a computer with an OEM Samsung SSD, Samsung’s consumer-oriented utilities do not work. At least, they did not the last time I tried them.
I should comment further on this:
I do not hesitate to defrag the win 11 partition or the win 10 VM in VMWARE in Mint 21. I do NOT shut off any caching things. I DO leave indexing enabled as I discovered that some things (like opening picture wallpaper) don’t work without it.
Samsung SSDs and NVMEs simply take it. That’s why I stick with them. And I don’t give them “special care”. Don’t know about the samsung magician not working on certain OEMs.
I do trim occasionally (easily done in win11 – its’ build in defragger – just tell it to defrag and it just senses that it is an SSD and trim’s it in about 1 sec.) I use things like defraggler to actually defrag it. People say it’s not needed but I have found many times over the years that the result is a more responsive system.
Save money or avoid self abuse? I chose the latter.
- Thinkpad P15s Gen1 20T4-002KUS, i7-10510U, UEFI/GPT, 16GB, Sammy 500GB M.2.
others...
- Mint Cinnamon 21 current, Win 10 22H2. WuMgr. HP laserjets M254dw & P1606dn, Epson 2480 scanner.
ditto your experience with Samsung SSDs
Nevertheless, SanDisk was offering excellent 2.5″ SSDs even before Western Digital acquired that company and, after that acquisition, WDC’s “blue” line of 2.5″ SSDs continued SanDisk’s quality and reliability.
I’m also pretty loyal to Western Digital for manufacturing so many great storage drives over the years; e.g. their “Black” HDDs are stellar, particularly the 2TB version that works with almost all SATA hosts right out of the box.
On our backup storage PCs, we simplify those by hosting C: on a WDC 1TB “blue” 2.5″ SSD cabled to the first integrated SATA port, then at least one 2TB WDC “Black” HDD for archival storage cabled to the second integrated SATA port.
KISS = Keep It Simple, Sally!
On my Windows 10 21H2, I go to Settings, search for “search”, and choose “Windows Search Settings”. There I scroll down and click “Advanced Search Indexer Settings”.
An “Indexing Window” opens, which shows the list of folders I had chosen in the past to be indexed.
Is this the search restriction you wanted, or is this something else which has tricked me into thinking it is?
The 33,006 items indexed shown in this window agrees with the number shown on the Windows Search Settings page.
I have run ClearDiskInfo.exe on two Dell Win10/Pro 21H2 laptops. I keep the two laptops synchronized so that they have the same programs and the same data files on them. Laptop A is the master and Laptop B synchronizes to it.
Laptop A: 6 years old, has a SATA M.2 SSD from LITEON, has 12 GB of memory, has 1.81 GB of page file space, has a power-on count of 5,939 hours & a power-cycle count of 3,350, and has written 23,434 GB and has read 52,294 GB. Yet, its lifetime remaining is 51%.
Laptop B: 3 years old, has a NVMe SSD from SK Hynix, has 16 GB of memory, has 16 GB of page file space, has a power-on count of 556 hours & a power-cycle count of 1,581, but has written 23,014,916 GB and has read 69,637,205 GB. Its lifetime remaining is 100%.
Laptop B’s figures for GBs written and read are staggering, given that it is newer, has run a tenth of the hours that Laptop A has run, and the number of times it has powered up is 1/3 of that of Laptop B. Yet, its lifetime remaining is 100%. How could this be, given the volume of GBs written and read??? This is a big surprise. One would expect with that volume of reads and writes, despite its large page file space, that its lifetime remaining would be less than 100%.
Why are the GBs written and read for Laptop B soo high? It is newer, has run far fewer hours, has powered up far fewer times, and has a very large page file space. Does it have anything to do with the fact that it is a NVMe SSD? Or that it synchronizes from Laptop A?
And, there must be something that explains why the astronomical volume of reads and writes has not affected its lifetime remaining. Could this be due simply to the quality of the SSD (SK Hynix vs LITEON)? LITEON isn’t mentioned in your article, but maybe DELL procured the SSD in Laptop A from an obsure manufacturer?
Yes, those are unusual figures.
Liteon has been a long time manufacturer of lots of different parts and attachments, serving as an OEM supplier to name brands for many years. I have to guess that Liteon manufactures its own SSDs, putting together flash chip and controllers made by another manufacturer, but I am unsure. For people who rip computers apart regularly, Liteon is a familiar brand, but hardly one known at retail. I have encountered a few Liteon SSDs.
Ditto SK Hynix. Not a household name, and a long-time OEM supplier to name brands, although they have recently packaged retail SSDs.
I have seen about the same numbers of DIMM memory sticks from Hynix and Samsung.
Thanks for the interesting article, and the tips to prolong SSD life, no matter whatever else might be going on.
To your tips I would add:
But the best advice overall is to monitor your SSD at least a couple of times a year (e.g. each time the clocks change), using perhaps CrystalDiskInfo, as somebody recommended above.
— AWRon
Re: “restrict browser caching”
we prefer to move the Firefox browser cache to a ramdisk
performance is great, and it offloads wear that would otherwise occur with an SSD or HDD
last time I checked, the freeware version from Dataram can be as large as 1GB
browser.cache.disk.enable set it FALSE
browser.cache.memory.enable set to TRUE
I used these performance tweaks within Firefox about:config to save on SSD writes before Mozilla changed the defaults waaaayyyyy back in time 😉
Works great!
Using it for a long time…. Restricted the amount of using Ram to 1GB.
Personally, I’ve had no issues using these settings on various systems whether it be Windows™ or Linux. No crashes relating to memory on systems with 4Gb RAM – 16Gb RAM. The main thing is that this setting reduces SSD writes..which is what this article relates to.
I done a shed load of research when I got our first SSD before even installing Windows 7. I tend to look after the hardware first, then tweak the OS accordingly to suit. YMMV
before the M.2 form factor became standard, our most powerful XP workstations hosted the OS on a RAID-0 array of 4 x Samsung 2.5″ SSDs, then later 4 x Western Digital “blue” 2.5″ SSDs
these RAID arrays were managed by a Highpoint RocketRAID 2720SGL add-in card:
that Highpoint controller has been superlative, as far as reliability is concerned; their documentation was not very good, at first, but has since improved a lot
the OS partition was typically re-sized at 64-to-100GB, and the remainder was formatted as a dedicated data partition with drive letter E:
having 4 x SSDs in RAID-0 was our attempt to do “load leveling” at a low level, and every one of those RAID arrays has functioned extremely well: I don’t think I have ever needed to replace any single array member drive
most recently, I configured the same C: / E: partition setup with a Highpoint SSD7103 hosting a bootable RAID-0 array with 4 x Samsung M.2 NVMe EVO SSDs, and that HP Z220 workstation burns rubber — it’s that fast, so fast in fact that it performs almost as fast as a ramdisk enabled on that same workstation with 32GB of DDR3
https://www.highpoint-tech.com/product-page/ssd7103
see attached CDM measurement: 11,697 MB/second READS with SSD7103
browser.cache.memory.enable set to TRUE
In FF 105.0.2, this seems to BE the default now, so no need to change.
I used these performance tweaks within Firefox about:config to save on SSD writes before Mozilla changed the defaults waaaayyyyy back in time
as already stated 🙂
as already stated
Sorry, I misunderstood, because the default for the other one, browser.cache.disk.enable is not FALSE, but is TRUE.
as already stated 🙂
I know that I am swimming with sharks here, but I try to glean what I can.
Any more FF tricks to reduce wear and tear on a SSD??
pursuant to reading the suggestion to uncheck “contents indexed on this drive” , I unchecked for the C: drive, thinking that this would stop any further indexing. instead the drive went into high gear, apparently resetting every file on the drive. there are thousands.
after watching this activity continue for several minutes, I hit ‘cancel’.
these were mostly all systemfiles with likely nothing in them to index and likely to have never changed to cause re-indexing.
unchecking probably caused more drive usage than leaving it checked.
p.s. We always end up with at least 3 identical copies of any given drive image of C: .
There is a lot to recommend the power of this logic:
if A = B
and
if B = C
then
C = A
so, when running the “FC” command,
compare A and B
then
compare B and C
if both comparisons are identical, there is no need to compare A and C
I have run ClearDiskInfo.exe on two Dell Win10/Pro 21H2 laptops
We consider Clear Disk Info to be an unreliable indicator of disk life – see the links above from Alex. Run CrystalDiskInfo standard edition (zip) and compare the results.
cheers, Paul
We consider Clear Disk Info to be an unreliable indicator of disk life –
Let’s say a ‘variable‘ indicator of disk life.
Yesterday, ClearDisk said there was 51% of Lifetime Remaining on the SSD and today it says there is 65% of Lifetime Remaining!! And a small increase in Power-on Hours Count and in Power Cycle Count today. However, the temp yesterday was 129F degrees, and today the temp is 118F degrees. Temperature must play a significant role in the ClearDisk’s formula for its guess for Percentage LifeTime Remaining.
So, not necessarily ‘unreliable’ (since the report is likely true to its formula), but as the indicators vary, especially temperature, so does the Percentage LifeTime Remaining.
My office is colder in the winter than the summer, so I expect a greater Percentage LifeTime Remaining coming up. {I have no experience with opening the computer and fixing fans and heat shields, and it’s not worth screwing things up.}
I tend to favour the OEM SSD utilities over any 3rd party utils YMMV
All well and good, if the OEM provides an SSD utility for one’s specific model of drive. Samsung’s utilities only do a complete job with its retail packaged SSDs, work comprehensively for either “retail” or “enterprise” SSDs, with two different sets of Samsung Magician. Samsung OEM SSDs sold to brand name companies are neither, of course.
An “Indexing Window” opens, which shows the list of folders I had chosen in the past to be indexed.
This and Ben Myers’ article has opened a whole another world. My list of folders has only couple thousand. However, I saw a whole bunch of new options I did not know existed. It has a choice of Classic or Enhanced search. There is a list of excluded files. There is a choice of File properties only to search or add on Content to the search. Also found a Microsoft help article with all kinds of stuff on Indexing – what it does and how it works. Whew! When I get a spare week I will have to go back into all this!! But again the question – to Index or not to Index??
The very first thing I do after an SSD OS installation is to right click the drive(s) and untick indexing, been doing that since 2010 on every installation..second nature now
OCZ were a good brand (prior to Toshiba buy-out) if I were to go back in-time, I’d buy them all again and more 🙂
I probably should have posted the entire ClearDiskInfo screen for the Dell Latitude’s SKHynix 256GB SSD. Unfortunately, the small 1366×768 screen did not display all the data, but I could have taken two screen shots and put them together. If the drive reports enough SMART data, ClearDiskInfo is able to estimate remaining life based on counters of bad blocks and/or number of spare blocks remaining.
Change the CDI values to 10 [DEC] in Function > Advanced Feature > Raw Values.
Much easier to read.
The disk does not appear to provide a lifetime marker (mine has a “percentage used” value) so any estimate is a calculation based on other values. One of the issues with SMART, there is no standard.
Maybe the manufacturer has a test utility that will give you additional info.
cheers, Paul
Newegg turns up mouth-watering prices for SSDs with many interesting brand names, some of them familiar from their forays into other technology: Acer, Blixem, Fanxiang, Fledging, FYUU, GIGABYTE, Inland, KingSpec, Kingston, Leven, ORICO, PNY, Sabrent, Silicon Power, TEAMGROUP, Timetec, and on and on. Who are these companies? What kind of flash chips and controller chips do they use? I am not about to bet my reputation on a cheaper SSD with an obscure brand name.
Kingston – a memory manufacturer for decades. While I probably wouldn’t buy them for top-tier performance, their customer support (should it be needed) is excellent.
Silicon Power – I’m going to strike through what I said here; I found I may not be correct regarding their relationship with Silicon Motion (though they have used their controllers). They make some decent stuff.
Gigabyte – Would I use them? Probably not for an SSD, but one of the “big three” of motherboard manufacturers (ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte). And I’m picky; me not using them doesn’t mean bad.
Sabrent is probably not my first-choice vendor personally, but is also well-known in the enthusiast world for some of the faster SSDs.
None of these four are obscure, especially Kingston, but the others are industry brands. The remainder are indeed lower-tier items I probably wouldn’t use, just as I myself won’t use QLC SSDs; if they’re cutting prices on the flash memory (QLC is lower endurance), where else are they cutting?
We are SysAdmins.
We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
We engage in support, we do not retreat.
We live for the LAN.
We die for the LAN.
As someone else who was more picky about hardware, if Abit had brought out an SSD, I wouldn’t have bought it but I did like their motherboards 😉
Well established brand names expand..but not necessarily in the right direction and often to their own demise.
Gigabyte..too many returns RMA’s in the past for any hardware..our survey says No!
Kingston have been in the memory marketplace for years, so they know what’s what as have samsung. It all comes down to component quality used to manufacture the end product, Quality over quantity wins IMO
With many of these SSD brands, it is extremely difficult to assess product quality and specs, even when the brand name is well known for other products, like Gigabyte or Acer. Two or three years ago, I ordered a pair of inexpensive SSDs from Newegg, its apparent house brand TeamGroup. In installed one in a laptop I sold. Fortunately, that laptop is still running. But when I installed the second SSD, it simply did not work, so returned it, never to order TeamGroup anything ever again.
Be careful with Newegg’s “Marketplace Sellers”.
They are falsely claiming “Ships from United States” and they are accepting payments when they have zero inventory in stock to ship.
With several of our orders, these “Marketplace Sellers” promptly emailed a “tracking number”, but failed to transfer the product to the shipper.
After a week or so of no updates, we have contacted the alleged “shipper” only to be told by UPS or FedEx that they do NOT have the package in question.
One item that “Ships from United States” was later confirmed lost in Hong Kong somewhere!
We’ve had to report these abuses to Newegg’s CEO several times already.
Their prices are notably less than companies based in the USA, which are battling with rampant inflation now.
So, with a lower price and reportedly “Ships from United States”, it’s easy to get snagged by these same “Marketplace Seller” abuses.
ugly tactic..the same is prevalent on fleabay and has been for years, which was one of the reasons I closed my account a good while back after 18 years or so being a member. Their loss, I used to buy and sell lots of PC hardware on a calculated risk assesment (100% buyer/ seller)
Be careful with Newegg’s “Marketplace Sellers”. They are falsely claiming “Ships from United States” and they are accepting payments when they have zero inventory in stock to ship.
I regularly shop at Newegg and got burned once by a “Marketplace Seller” myself so I always select the “Sold by Newegg” & “Shipped by Newegg‘ options whenever I shop there now.
BTW, I’ve noticed a lot of on-line shopping sites now allow “Marketplace Sellers” (amazon, walmart, target, etc.) so I always make sure the “Retailer” option is set for the site itself to eliminate possibly getting burned by one again.
Where does one set that “Retailer” option for the site?
Normally it’ll be one of the “options” you can choose on the left side of the screen to limit how many items are display when searching for something on a site.
Here’s another way to demonstrate the problem with Newegg’s “Marketplace Sellers”:
I searched for “slot fan” and, by scrolling down the left margin, the following choices are presented, but some of those Sellers are NOT shipping from “United States” EVEN THOUGH their product pages claim that they are:
Another Newegg “Marketplace Seller” chose to re-ship a replacement for a package that was lost in transit — a pair of Micron DDR4 memory sticks.
They shipped 2 Crucial brand memory sticks, but they did NOT work in an industry-standard HP workstation — instead of booting normally at STARTUP, that workstation generated beep codes indicating a memory problem.
I attempted to return those DIMMs to Crucial, after following their RMA procedure.
After receiving my RMA shipment, Crucial’s RMA team emailed me to explain that the DIMMs I shipped to them were not genuine Crucial brand products, EVEN THOUGH they bore what appeared to be a standard Crucial stick-on product label.
Evidently, those DIMMs were COUNTERFEITS!
This is unfortunately a big problem in the electronics industry (among others). Did you contact Newegg and pursue a refund?
I recently posted about my experience buying a “Chicony” power adapter for my Xenia laptop that turned out to be a counterfeit. This was on eBay. I was able to get a refund for that.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Thank you for the link. It will be useful in my current project in which I will graft an mSATA SSD onto a PATA/IDE cable, part of an ancient Pentium running DOS to control an expensive factory machine. I am awaiting delivery of the part I need to do this. Why am I doing this? Factory machine is reliable and its replacement is $200,000+.
I recently ordered a 2.5″ container for an mSATA SSD and with a 44-pin PATA connector. I expect it to arrive on Monday. Will use to replace a PATA drive in a DOS system. I get to deal with unusual computer work here. That’s why I have an ever-expanding collection of Had to even relearn some of DOS. Not sure how interesting an SSD running thru a PATA interface is to other people these days.
How about looking at vuescan (https://www.hamrick.com/) if you’re looking for manual control of scanning?
I use it with an ancient canon flatbed where no drivers exist for Win1o.
I understand why you would want to keep using a 5400c. There are 2400 reasons. Its maximum scanning resolution is hard to find unless you want to bleed out your credit card.
for an mSATA SSD and with a 44-pin PATA connector
PATA on an SSD? Is PATA even a thing these days? Motherboards are now serial via PCIe (maybe with a PCI parallel slot for old hardware).
cheers, Paul
Is PATA even a thing these days?
Yes, for older systems.
Also, believe it or not, back when SSD’s first came on the market they sold IDE/PATA versions.
I know because I bought a Transcend 32GB IDE/PATA SSD back in Dec 2010 for my old Compaq laptop ($110 @ newegg) and, when I finally disposed of it because it couldn’t be upgrade to Win7, I put the SSD in the docking station I used with my Dell D830 until I build my current desktop in Dec 2019.
There are 2 generic ways to “adapt” or “bridge” from PATA to SATA:
(1) a 40-pin female adapter is plugged into a HDD’s 40-pin male connector, and the motherboard’s integrated SATA port is wired to that adapter + a floppy power connector
(2) a 40-pin female adapter is plugged into a motherboard’s integrated 40-pin male connector, and a standard SATA cable connects that adapter to the SATA data connector on the drive
The latest StarTech model works in both modes:
Bi-Directional support for IDE-to-SATA or SATA-to-IDE communication
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/pata2sata3
A variation of (2) has a 40-pin male connector that plugs into a PATA / IDE cable, and its standard SATA power and data connectors attach to a SATA drive, like this StarTech model:
https://www.newegg.com/startech-ide2sat2-ide-to-sata-with-odd-support/p/N82E16812400465
NB the jumpers in one of the photos.
If you have the time, this YT video shows how poor controller designs can lead to poor performance:
Not all SATA to IDE Adapters Are The Same
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXShc_hDuqQ
I did not see the latter discuss motherboard ATA-133 / IDE settings (if any), and also he failed to ALIGN his SSD.
I would have formatted his SSD using the ALIGN option in Partition Wizard, as one trial-and-error step to confirm if that made any difference with the problems he demonstrates.
Alternatively, as of Windows 7, SSD alignment happens by default when an SSD is formatted.
Is the part you ordered like this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t23Fpp1xx7c
How to use mSATA SSD by MPC1000
NB where he removes a jumper from one pair of male pins.
Re: “graft an mSATA SSD onto a PATA/IDE cable”
If you’re only connecting an existing PATA/IDE cable to an existing 2.5″ laptop HDD, something like this adapter should be plug-compatible with that cable:
Specification: mSATA SSD → 2.5 type IDE SSD
Connection interface: 2.5 type IDE 44 pin (max ATA 133)
There should already be a cable that powers the drive you are replacing with an mSATA drive. Something like this cable:
If power and data are transmitted via the host socket instead of an IDE cable, that socket should already have 44 pins: 40 + 4
see: “Compatible with Master/Slave/Cable Select modes for IDE devices”
here: https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/pata2sata3
https://media.startech.com/cms/pdfs/pata2sata3_datasheet.pdf
https://sgcdn.startech.com/005329/media/sets/PATA2SATA3_Manual/PATA2SATA3.pdf
I will upvote Samsung SSDs. I have been using them exclusively for 5 years without a failure.
My first Samsung SSD [850 EVO 250GB], at 5 years old, is still running strong with good drive health at 22,937 power on hours, and 2,717 power on cycles. Crystal Disk Info shows 89% life remaining.
So I don’t think that minimizing solid state drive wear is anything to be concerned about in the real world with modern SSD drives on modern PCs. 34.9TB written. S.M.A.R.T. raw total LBAs written: 74989573929.
I just acquired my first SSD in NVMe M.2 form factor, so now I have 4 Samsung SSDs. Always bought on sale, of course! 🙂
This thing is really fast! Sequential reads/writes show a dramatic improvement. Here is a Crystal Disk Mark performance benchmark with the new M.2 drive: 
Compared to my old SATA 2.5″ version:
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
Yes, indeed!
It was truly amazing to witness just how close Samsung had come to zero controller overhead:
PCIe 3.0 128b/130b “jumbo frame” = 130 bits / 16 bytes = 8.125 bits per byte
8G / 8.125 bits per byte = 984.6 MB/second per x1 PCIe 3.0 lane
x4 PCIe 3.0 lanes @ 984.6 = 3,938 MB/second MAX HEADROOM
3,460 / 3,938 = 87.8%
Here’s what CDM measured with our RAID-0 array of 4 x Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 NVMe SSDs:
561 MB/second is just about PURR-FECT for a 6G SATA-III SSD:
SATA-III uses the 8b/10b “legacy frame”:
1 start bit + 8 data bits + 1 stop bit
6G / 10 bits per byte = 600 MB/second MAX HEADROOM
561 / 600 = 93.5%
As such, measured in that manner, SATA-III controllers in SSDs are more efficient than Samsung M.2 NVMe SSDs. That’s not totally surprising, when we realize that managing x4 PCIe 3.0 lanes in parallel requires extra data management by a drive’s internal controller.
We compute our efficiency formula like this:
1 – (561 / 600) = 6.5% controller overhead
p.s. It’s too bad that the IT industry oligopoly has “chosen to frozen” the SATA standard.
adopting the PCIe 3.0 jumbo frame and the 8G PCIe 3.0 clock would be a nice boost for future SATA-IV devices: MAX HEADROOM is then 984.6 MB/second vs. 600.
(x1 PCIe <=> “serial” conductor)
auto-detection would also enable future SATA-IV devices to sync with all future PCIe generations e.g. 16G, 32G etc. and, hosts would then “down-clock” if an older SATA device is connected, just as current SATA-III SSDs likewise “down-clock” to sync with 3G and 1.5G motherboard ports
All of the latest GbE network adapters we have been studying lately support auto-detection of multiple raw speeds.
PC Users admonish me for keeping 2 x Windows XP computers running. Just today, I tried cabling a perfectly good HP ScanJet 5400c to an HP Windows 10 workstation. ERRRRRR !! After searching the Internet, I found quite a few HP customers who have been unable to locate a Windows 10 device driver for that scanner. Best part: there is no Windows 7 device driver for that scanner either.
I think it’s outrageous that hardware manufacturers can attempt to obsolete perfectly fine working hardware by not providing driver updates for the latest OS. That should be against the law!
Not hardware related, but I still keep a Win XP VM running so that I can access some old software.
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
For decades, ever since Windows came into widespread use, hardware manufacturers have bolstered sales of new gear by simply not updating drivers for their products to work with the latest Windows release. It is doubly outrageous when the hardware device was very expensive originally and it works flawlessly with no sign of impending malfunction. Scanners and printers are the most used equipment that falls in the no longer supported category. There are workarounds sometimes, but they are often painful, either to find or to implement. Microsoft has long been complicit in making hardware obsolete by simply tweaking its driver model, forcing rewrites of drivers by manufacturers who want to stay in the Windows game.
Of course, we all hear crickets from both Microsoft and hardware manufacturers when this issue gets some attention. To the dismay of hardware manufacturers, the Windows “NT” driver model has become more stable after more than 20 years, leading to the possibility of forcefitting drivers into Windows 10 and 11 setups. It takes some knowhow to do so.
Just a little footnote on Inland SSDs. Like all inland products, there is a strong tie-in with the Micro Center retail and online stores. That’s the only place I routinely encounter that brand. This says nothing about the origins and quality of the Inland components, just one reason many of us are very familiar with that brand.
I would truly trust only a few brands of SSDs, among them Western Digital (Blue or Black) and Samsung (EVO series). For critical systems, those are the only brands I will consider.
-- rc primak
Just a little footnote on Inland SSDs. Like all inland products, there is a strong tie-in with the Micro Center retail and online stores. That’s the only place I routinely encounter that brand. This says nothing about the origins and quality of the Inland components, just one reason many of us are very familiar with that brand.
I would truly trust only a few brands of SSDs, among them Western Digital (Blue or Black) and Samsung (EVO series). For critical systems, those are the only brands I will consider.
Caveat emptor. My one bad experience with an M.2 NVmE SSD was with a Samsung EVO 980 Pro. Within 30 days of purchase from Newegg the drive developed problems, resulting in strange reboots at odd times. The Samsung software tool flagged the problem but could not give a diagnosis. Dealing with a warranty replacement was a nightmare of finger pointing between Samsung (not our problem, file a claim with Newegg) and Newegg (not our problem, file a claim with Samsung). When the agent at Samsung (when I finally spoke to a real person) started yelling at me for being so stupid, I hung up and will never, ever buy a Samsung product, much less their SSDs, again. I have had far better success with Intel or WD drives. That was a CAD$600 lesson I did not need.
I have not yet had a Samsung SSD fail. So I can’t speak to your unfortunate experience with Samsung or NewEgg regarding their customer service or tech support.
When my Intel NUC’s OEM no-name SSD failed, I was dealing with SimplyNUC’s support and sales people. All were pleasant. The tech support people were actual system builders, so they knew what was going on and did not argue with me. They agreed to upgrade me to a better grade of SSD, still in a small size. That SSD lives inside an external enclosure now.
(In light of the recent Windows 11 22H2 upgrade issues, I’m beginning to wish I had returned the whole NUC for a tune-up and a few upgrades. SimplyNUC did offer to let me do that.)
My Samsung EVO SSD from my original NUC has been in use for six years with no issues, and now lives inside an enclosure, having outlived the NUC itself. I have at least one Samsung EVO 860 inside an enclosure and at least one WD Blue SSD inside my new tower PC. All the brand name drives have performed well with no failures.
So I would say your experience with a Samsung drive is highly unusual, unless someone else here knows otherwise. As I say, I can’t speak to Samsung customer support in the event of an SSD failure.
-- rc primak
Within 30 days of purchase from Newegg the drive developed problems, resulting in strange reboots at odd times. The Samsung software tool flagged the problem but could not give a diagnosis. Dealing with a warranty replacement was a nightmare of finger pointing between Samsung (not our problem, file a claim with Newegg) and Newegg (not our problem, file a claim with Samsung).
Was this product sold and shipped by Newegg and labeled with the 30-Day Hassle-Free Returns badge?
For any products listed on the Site as “Sold and Shipped” by a third-party seller, this product is covered by the seller’s return policy.
Newegg Return Policy: https://www.newegg.com/promotions/nepro/22-0073/index.html
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
To the dismay of hardware manufacturers, the Windows “NT” driver model has become more stable after more than 20 years, leading to the possibility of forcefitting drivers into Windows 10 and 11 setups. It takes some knowhow to do so.
I had an audio device that fell into this gap when the manufacturer was acquired and all of the former products were declared “legacy” and end-of-lifed. So no new drivers beyond the existing Windows 7 driver were to be developed. Fortunately for me, the Windows 7 driver continued to work under Windows 10, probably due to essentially the same driver model. 🙂
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
This is a great forum thread and I will read it with attention!
BUT here’s a neat trick for you — taking an old Dell Optiplex 7010 Mini-Tower, which normally CANNOT boot from an NVMe M.2, and modding its BIOS so it CAN boot from an NVMe M.2 inserted into an adapter that’s inserted into a PCIe slot. See this AMAZING article — https://www.tachytelic.net/2021/12/dell-optiplex-7010-pcie-nvme/ And read all the comments below the article.
I’ve done it, using a Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2, and the 7010’s throughput is now 15 times higher, now getting 3400 MBps ± on CrystalDiskMark. I’m delighted – this will become the fourth production workhorse in my wife’s mini-office.
BUT a question —
I might do this again on a second used Dell Optiplex 7010 Mini-Tower — per the same Tachytelic article I link to above and its helpful comments.
Question: I could buy either a
Western Digital 2TB WD Blue SN570 NVMe Internal Solid State Drive SSD – Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280, Up to 3,500 MB/s – WDS200T3B0C for USD $170 on Amazon ◄ cheap
or (again)
Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 2TB NVMe M.2 Internal Solid State Hard Drive w/ V-NAND Technology, Storage and Memory Expansion for Gaming, Graphics w/ Heat Control, Max Speed, MZ-V7S2T0B/AM for USD $210 on Amazon ◄ not so cheap
Is there much difference between the two?
Thanks.
We added the smaller WDC M.2 to a refurbished HP Z240 workstation, but we opted for the model with integrated heatsink.
We also added an internal 80mm fan for active cooling.
We found this next photo on the Internet; this is NOT our Z240, however:
HP’s “front card guide” for the Z240 workstation is now hard to find.
This drawing is close, but not the exact version for the Z240:
All PCIe expansion slots in the Z240 are PCIe 3.0 at present, we’ve added a Realtec 2.5GbE adapter to the x1 slot (circle 17) an M.2 adapter with second WDC NVMe SSD in x4 slot (circle 19), and a TP-link TX401 10GbE adapter in the lower x16 slot (circle 20).
We’re saving the full x16 PCIe slot (circle 18) for a Highpoint SSD6204:
https://www.newegg.com/highpoint-ssd6204-pci-express/p/N82E16816115317
The one we installed in our HP Z240 workstation (see photo we found on the Internet of a Samsung M.2 installed in the motherboard’s integrated NVMe socket):
Western Digital WD BLACK SN750 NVMe M.2 2280 500GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 64-layer 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS500G3XHC W/ Heatsink
https://www.newegg.com/western-digital-black-sn750-nvme-500gb/p/N82E16820250112
Yes, the Optiplex 7010 NVMe article is way cool. Read it a few weeks ago and the guy did so well to figure all this out. He has also put bootable NVMe in other elderly name brand computers.
I had an upper edge Toshiba laptop (I don’t remember the exact type) and after a few years I replaced the original 512GB ssd with a 1TB Samsung evo. When I had to throw away the then broken laptop, I kept both ssd’s, installed them in external cases with proper USB 3.0 interface. and I use them as external storage. I just checked them using ClearDiskinfo (Thanks Ben Myers and Older Geeks) and both disks are in excellent condition (98% and 96% lifetime remaining).
I think they’ll outlive me…
My old Dell tower was slowing down considerably, despite all my tweaks. I maxed out the memory and that helped a little. About a year ago I installed a 1-tb SSD. No exaggeration, the old thing instantly got as fast as any gaming computer I’ve ever seen, with zero problems.
SSD: $90
Performance boost: Priceless
I honestly don’t know why SSD vendors don’t highlight a weakness inherent in all rotating HDDs:
To maintain nearly constant recording density on all tracks, the amount of raw data on any given track is directly proportional to track diameter thus, with a fixed rotation speed, e.g. 7,200 rpm, the outermost tracks store much more data than innermost tracks.
And this weakness exists whether or not any given file is fragmented.
Remember, hard disk drives were once the latest and greatest thing.
Kind of like electric typewriters and (gasp) whiteout.
Are you saying that my 10-core Xeon computer is a slug? ;>)
I had no problem with Cleveland Indians.
Now they’re the Cleveland Guardians of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Your experience explains well why I keep a decent inventory of SSDs to make even the older computers truly usable. People are invariably delighted when they use a computer with an SSD for the first time.
Case in point: A 2000 vintage MS-DOS system rigged up to use a new SSD. Makes it almost pleasant to use, except when I have to correct the commands I type on the command line.
My first laptop with an SSD was a venerable Lenovo Thinkpad 12″ X201, and it ran nicely until I needed something newer.
It drives me bonkers to use and troubleshoot a computer with a mechanical spinning hard drive. It is an absolute shame that computer manufacturers still produce so many computers with hard drives, and the big box stores foist them off on unaware buyers.
Fortunately, SSDs are now priced like the commodity items they are.
I replaced all my HDs with SSD’s (and the system drive with a Silicon Power 512GB NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen3x4 which, in 2020, was $52 vs $40 now) under the assumption that they would last longer, so I hope they do. I also increased RAM to 64GB, even though Windows still insists on writing to the drive (which is the M.2 with plenty of space and indexing it turned off). Of course, often I’m using upwards of 70% of RAM (no gaming or video editing) but see further below.
Crystal Disk info says all my SSDs (ADATA, Airdisk, EMTEC, Team) are “good”, but ranging from 99% to 87%, whatever that means.
I used to run hundreds of tabs in Firefox.
While many others may be incredulous at this, I myself have run hundreds of tabs for years, mainly multiple profiles of Firefox when Tab Mix Plus enabled multiple. Since it decided to become more like Chrome I run multiple portable copies of FF Quantum portable, after using the Izheil Multi-row tabs patcher to enable this.
This for me is much more efficient, as each one can be dedicated to a general purpose.
With all the above and just a Ryzen 3200G on a MSI B450 pro, I rarely need to shutdown and can keep my standard programs running and, with hundreds of tabs and multiple documents (under customized W/11: TB image), rarely with any slow downs. I thank God for such.
peacebyjesus.net
It is an absolute shame that computer manufacturers still produce so many computers with hard drives, and the big box stores foist them off on unaware buyers.
There’s still a downside to SSD drives. The last several times I’ve gone browsing in computer departments at a big-box store, it’s been disappointing to see PCs for sale with 256GB or even 128GB SSDs as the main or even the only drive. Usually now these are the newfangled M.2 NVMe drives. The storage amount still comes off as paltry to my eyes and it leads me to move on to the next PC model on the shelf.
Of course, one can upgrade the SSD or install a high-capacity HDD if needed, but this represents extra work and might void the warranty. I won’t be impressed until new PCs come standard with 1TB+ SSD main drives.
but this represents extra work and might void the warranty.
No OEM will void warranty for replacing a SSD or adding a HDD unless the users has damaged the PC during the upgrade process.
My laptop came with 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD (C drive) and 1TB HDD. it is more than enough for majority of users.
My previous Windows 7 laptop had 128GB M.2 NVMe and 1TB HDD even that was enough and I never was short of free space on the SSD.
It looks like the issue is more complicated than either “open the case and you’re toast” or “no OEM will void the warranty”. There is this:
Whichever type of case you have if you are not sure about the way it opens then consult the manufacturer’s literature as some manufacturers have special systems for opening their cases. Also, ensure that you will not breaking the terms of your warranty by opening the case as some manufacturers put a security seal which, if broken, can void the warranty.
And then (maybe more important from a practical standpoint) there is this:
…Technically, you’ve always been able to bust open consumer electronics yourself without voiding the warranty. Thanks to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975, it’s actually illegal for companies to void your warranty just because you repaired or modified something yourself. They have to prove that your DIY repair or modification caused something else in the device to malfunction. Which means those scary warranty stickers that you see on a lot of consumer electronics are actually meaningless…at least from a legal perspective.
Of course, the repair technician can always say “sorry, we won’t repair this, you broke the sticker”, and your only recourse would be to sue them—which almost no one will do. So, while those stickers are legally meaningless, they still usually serve their intended purpose: scaring you away from repairing your device (or making you pay for another repair after the fact).
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