Checking The Condition of Hard Drives?

[mark2114]

The subject of SSD's came up here, back in January of this year I picked up an off brand (KingSpec) 4TB SSD from NewEgg at a bargain price, which turns out to not be a bargain.
It has failed, and I am working with 陈卓芬 in China on a warranty claim.
I put some music on it to use on my laptop, and there was nothing on it that I don't have elsewhere.
If they send me a new SSD I will not have any level of confidence given the first one failed after a few months...

[daemonspudguy]

My advice when it comes to buying SSDs is to only ever buy Samsung, Seagate, or Western Digital drives, in order of recommendations. They're more expensive, yes, but they're also from reputable companies and aren't complete shit.

[mark2114]

I will take it further, No storage on SSD's!

SSD's are great for fast boot times, the new PC I just assembled boots to a 1 TB Samsung SSD and I have a second SSD with a boot image on it as a back-up.

[MrFender]

I run a basic 250/500 gig SSD for booting and everything else storage wise goes to a regular HD. From there it's to 8TB WD external drive and a Synology NAS if I'm going to listen to it relatively soon. The WD externals are pretty cheap these days at around $10/TB if you don't mind a slightly used one off Ebay.

[Son of Nothing]

Sorry, but while I've been happy with WD externals for many years, after having one of the 5TB models fail on me just outside of warranty expiry, I'm more inclined to spread my risk. Pay more per TB but go back to multiple smaller drives, of different brands. Still including WD of course, because for a while I also had a really bad run with Seagates. But I'm not willing to lose 8TB of data in one go. I'm even happy to use external SSDs. Just assuming nothing is really of archival quality.

[MrFender]

For some cheap, used 12TB hard drives, there's this on Ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/156046813385

They generally have around 25,000 - 35,000 hours so probably not great for critical use. I ordered a few to put in the Plex server.

[mark2114]

Below is the response I received on the failed SSD...
Spend the money to send a cheap SSD to Hong Kong, wait weeks or months for them to return a new or “repaired” drive I will have no confidence in?
No, lesson learned.



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We will try to repair it or send you a replacement. Please send it back to our Hong Kong address in below：
Address: Unit 208-209,2/F, Block B, Po Lung Centre, 11 Wang Chiu Road, Kowloon Bay, H.K. Tel:21277895 Fax:21277795 Contact: Lucy Chan
Best regards,
Cecily Chen



Shenzhen KingSpec Electronics Technology Co., Ltd.

Add: 20th/F, Block C, Digital Innovation Center, No. 328 Mintang Road, Minzhi Street, Longhua District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, 518000