SSDs are starting to replace mechanical hard drives in many computers, and for a good reason. SSDs are very fast as they have no moving parts. Replacing you hard drive with an SSD for your boot drive can cut boot times in half! But what are SSDs? An SSD or solid state drive is a storage medium that works just like a flash drive or SD card. It uses semiconductor chips that are non-volatile which means that the data written on the chips will stay on the chips. RAM is similar to SSDs except that they are volatile which means most data will be wiped when power is disconnected. The storage in an SSD is managed by a controller. There are many different controllers such as the Phison controllers which tend to be in cheaper SSDs.
When looking for a good SSD you probably won’t want to get a $20 one because they have a higher chance of failing and sometimes are slower than hard drives. If you want to see more information for cheap SSDs see this video by LTT.
SSDs should have a DRAM cache like Linus says in the video. Otherwise they CAN be slower than hard drives.
Also look out for cheap SSDs with the Phison S11 controller like said here in this reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/90glkw/buyer_beware_sata_ssds_with_phison_s11_controllers/
Buyer Beware: SATA SSD’s with Phison S11 controllers
The Phison S11 controller is relatively new, I’ve been deploying SSD’s with these controllers in custom routers since January 2018. They literally just run minimal CentOS + DHCP + DNS and a firewall, so basically no storage load is seen on them. So far this year, two have completely died. They are still detected by the bios, but when accessed they provide nothing but I/O errors. Data, partition tables, etc… all gone. A quick google search for this controller brings up a handful of other users experiencing the same issue across a multitude of different SSD vendors that have opted to use this controller for their latest SSD offerings. I have RMA’d all my remaining drives and have started preemptively replacing all of the ones i have in service. My supplier acknowledged they have had quite a few RMA’s on them for failing in < 6 months.
If you have one of these i highly recommend you backup your data and get rid of it as soon as possible.
You are only likely to see these in low performance SSD’s mind you, seems like they are popular in budget laptops as well.
I myself had a bad experience with an SSD with a Phison S11 Controller. It was the Inland Professional 120gb. After 1 month of use the drive turned into a read only and I got the satafirm s11 problem. This is why I will NOT put it on this list.
Here is my Reddit post on the situation of the Inland SSD:
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/g31yxi/beware_of_inland_ssds/
Beware of Inland SSDs!
Inland SSDs include the Phison s11 controller (see more here: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/90glkw/buyer_beware_sata_ssds_with_phison_s11_controllers/)
I purchased an Inland 120gb SSD and after one month of using it the drive died can no longer be modified. Can’t format. Can’t delete partitions. Can’t even write or delete data!
This is a problem with these kinds of SSDs, but I found no posts talking about them, only ones about Kingston SSDs. I wanted to warn people before they go out and purchase these.
And here is a video I published on YouTube about the problem with the Inland Professional SSD as well as a new Samsung 860 evo 250gb (which I highly recommend as a premium quality SSD):
5. PNY CS900
This SSD is a low cost one that is very reliable. It’s great if you are on a budget and want to speed up your current computer or build. Read and write speeds can come up to around 500 mb/s. Sometimes this drive will come with a copy of Acronis True Image HD 2017 data migration software. This software will easily allow you to migrate all your files and operating system from your old hard drive or SSD to your new PNY solid state.
I would say that this is a very good drive as you can easily move your OS and files over to it. The speeds are enough to give you quick booting and faster copying. I would recommend this as a good budget SSD to freshen up your computer with faster booting times or add to a casual gaming build.
4. SanDisk X400 SSD
This is a slightly higher quality SSD than the PNY CS900. Many of these drives made by SanDisk hold large amounts of data for an SSD. Some can hold around 500gb and some 1tb. If you want to get a large drive here is your option. Prices tend to be higher, however, you will get blazing fast speeds and boot times.
I recommend this if you need a large SSD to replace a large hard drive. Or if you want to have a fast computer this would be a great choice. Just know that the price may be pretty high.
3. Crucial MX series
This is a great choice for a high quality SSD for a reasonable price. These can be great for upgrades as they have great speeds and don’t cost as much as other high quality drives such as ones by Samsung.
I would recommend this for new builds, but keep in mind that the write speeds on this drive are known to slow down over the years. (More substantially than other SSDs)
2. Western Digital Blue
This drive is very similar to the Crucial SSD, but it can come in very high capacities like the SanDisk. The drive is not much more expensive as the Crucial and it has impressive speeds. The sizes range from 250gb all the way up to 4tb.
I would recommend this for a fast storage drive in high capacities. For example you could use this as your steam library and run games and programs quickly off of it.
1. Samsung 860 evo
This drive is more expensive, but very reliable. I have this drive installed in my computer to replace the Inland 120gb SSD that only lasted a month. This drive has amazingly fast speeds and is very reliable. My computer runs Windows 10 pro and boots in 8 seconds.
I would recommend this drive as an OS drive. It works very well and the speeds are very fast. They are reliable and will last for a long time.