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How Not to Buy a SSD

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Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#91

Post by stavros »

bullen wrote: post #73
justsomehnguy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can confidently say this was exactly "How to buy a SSD". More like "How to spend $3k and think you did something". For this amount what you spent you could get any, literally any SSD, use only 64Gb and be fine for decades. Or use more than 64Gb and be fine for... decades anyway. You literally could buy a server class mixed workload SATA drive with a DWPD of 4 . https://www.solidigm.com/products/data-center/d3/s46…

You would think that, but I also have Samsungs industrial 3.5TB drives and they are flaky at best. Eternal growth does not exist, SSDs peaked in 2011 for durability without complexity. Just like DDR3 has the lowest CAS latency with ok bandwidth and longevity. DDR4 actually breaks after 10 years. DDR2 probably lasts more than 100 years. Think about that, any device manufactured in the coming 50 years will be outlived…

I don't use SSDs, but the HDDs in my NAS started failing one by one after a few years. Whenever one failed, I just put a new one in, and that was it. ZFS rebalanced things automatically and I went on with my life.

It just sounds like you spent $3k to solve a problem you could have solved with $200...

Unrelatedly, does the name "Realms of Despair" mean anything to you?

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#92

Post by gruez »

bullen wrote: post #73
justsomehnguy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can confidently say this was exactly "How to buy a SSD". More like "How to spend $3k and think you did something". For this amount what you spent you could get any, literally any SSD, use only 64Gb and be fine for decades. Or use more than 64Gb and be fine for... decades anyway. You literally could buy a server class mixed workload SATA drive with a DWPD of 4 . https://www.solidigm.com/products/data-center/d3/s46…

You would think that, but I also have Samsungs industrial 3.5TB drives and they are flaky at best. Eternal growth does not exist, SSDs peaked in 2011 for durability without complexity. Just like DDR3 has the lowest CAS latency with ok bandwidth and longevity. DDR4 actually breaks after 10 years. DDR2 probably lasts more than 100 years. Think about that, any device manufactured in the coming 50 years will be outlived…

>Just like DDR3 has the lowest CAS latency with ok bandwidth and longevity.

Source? AFAIK successive generations eventually had the same or slightly CAS latency in absolute terms. However, because CAS latency is measured in clock cycles, and successive generations have higher clock speeds, the latency "number" is higher, but that's an illusion. DDR3-1600 CL8 has the same latency as DDR4-3200 CL16.

>DDR2 probably lasts more than 100 years.

>Think about that, any device manufactured in the coming 50 years will be outlived by 32-bit Raspberry 2!

What's the point of it lasting 100 years if it's terribly out of date? An IDE drive from the 2000s is basically unusable today, 20 years later. CPU from around the same era is basically on its last legs because software support is being dropped[1]. Your SSDs are going to suffer the same fate. And that's not even factoring in other considerations like power consumption, and the hassle of trying to connect 30 drives to a computer.

[1] eg. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/18mrxjk/debian_end_o...

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#93

Post by morninglight »

PeterStuer wrote: post #62

At the start of the eCommerce business, people flocked to Amazon because they had trouble trusting smaller retailers. These days it is the opposite. These brands went from trusted sellers to whitewashing marketplaces for the most dubious fraudulent drop-shippers by means of things like "sku-pooling" (you by design can not and never will know who shipped your specific item into the giant pool at Amazon). So now I shop…

Amazon's problems with fraudulent memory products were well documented in 2023 when GRC published their test results for a dozen such drives purchased from the site. In response, GRC developed a free program, called "ValiDrive", to scan and test drives for this growing problem.

ValiDrive performs a quick, random-sequence spot-check across the drive's entire declared storage space. At every location it verifies the successful storage and retrieval of random (unspoofable) test data.

https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm

The program has been extensively tested, is freely downloadable and comes from a well respected site with a long history in the security business. Steve Gibson announced this development in 2023 and it has been downloaded over 600,000 times.

https://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm

In addition to this effort, Steve has been creating an in-depth weekly podcast called "Security Now" for over 20 years. An archive of all 1039 podcasts and transcripts can be found online where they are freely downloadable.

https://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#94

Post by dataflow »

reeddavid wrote: post #10
Moru wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious with what you mean with "Even sold by Amazon". The last few years I see nothing but reports of cheap fake products over Amazon. Years ago I ordered some T-Shirts to test and they were all fake versions that barely survived the first wash. Haven't ordered anything since then.

I think this comment references something many people don't realize: Even items that say "Ships from Amazon, Sold by Amazon" could be counterfeit, because the inventory from third party sellers is co-mingled with Amazon's own inventory. If you see "Ships from Amazon, Sold by RandomCompany" you might worry about counterfeits. But the "Sold by Amazon" item might also have been sourced from (or counterfeited by) "Random…

> co-mingled

Note it's actually commingled - it's not a typo despite looking like one.

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#95

Post by pavel_lishin »

Havoc wrote: post #76
PeterStuer wrote: post #62

At the start of the eCommerce business, people flocked to Amazon because they had trouble trusting smaller retailers. These days it is the opposite. These brands went from trusted sellers to whitewashing marketplaces for the most dubious fraudulent drop-shippers by means of things like "sku-pooling" (you by design can not and never will know who shipped your specific item into the giant pool at Amazon). So now I shop…

Worth pointing out that Amazon is mixed. Not everything is pooled. You can look at the "Dispatches from" field to tell whether its FBA or not

I'm not willing to do extra work for something that should just be standard.

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#96

Post by pipes »

morninglight wrote: post #93
PeterStuer wrote: post #62

At the start of the eCommerce business, people flocked to Amazon because they had trouble trusting smaller retailers. These days it is the opposite. These brands went from trusted sellers to whitewashing marketplaces for the most dubious fraudulent drop-shippers by means of things like "sku-pooling" (you by design can not and never will know who shipped your specific item into the giant pool at Amazon). So now I shop…

Amazon's problems with fraudulent memory products were well documented in 2023 when GRC published their test results for a dozen such drives purchased from the site. In response, GRC developed a free program, called "ValiDrive", to scan and test drives for this growing problem. ValiDrive performs a quick, random-sequence spot-check across the drive's entire declared storage space. At every location it verifies the su…

Excellent! I wanted to check a new SD card I bought from Amazon. It's pretty much the best as card available for use with a steam deck, yet often it needs to be reinserted which is making me suspicious

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#97

Post by pipes »

jchw wrote: post #4

In general I am afraid to buy storage devices except directly from the vendor at the moment. I've heard that there's also lots of fraudulent HDDs being sold with botched SMART data, even on Amazon, even marked as "New", even sold by Amazon. Scary proposition unless you're dying to test out your RAID array redundancy.

How do you buy directly from vendor? Genuine question!

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#98

Post by accrual »

morninglight wrote: post #93
PeterStuer wrote: post #62

At the start of the eCommerce business, people flocked to Amazon because they had trouble trusting smaller retailers. These days it is the opposite. These brands went from trusted sellers to whitewashing marketplaces for the most dubious fraudulent drop-shippers by means of things like "sku-pooling" (you by design can not and never will know who shipped your specific item into the giant pool at Amazon). So now I shop…

Amazon's problems with fraudulent memory products were well documented in 2023 when GRC published their test results for a dozen such drives purchased from the site. In response, GRC developed a free program, called "ValiDrive", to scan and test drives for this growing problem. ValiDrive performs a quick, random-sequence spot-check across the drive's entire declared storage space. At every location it verifies the su…

I know Steve Gibson as the author of "Trouble in Paradise", a tool for validating and testing zip disks and drives back in the day. He even aired on one of G4 TV's tech channels once. This guy knows and loves testing storage.

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#99

Post by p1mrx »

morninglight wrote: post #93
PeterStuer wrote: post #62

At the start of the eCommerce business, people flocked to Amazon because they had trouble trusting smaller retailers. These days it is the opposite. These brands went from trusted sellers to whitewashing marketplaces for the most dubious fraudulent drop-shippers by means of things like "sku-pooling" (you by design can not and never will know who shipped your specific item into the giant pool at Amazon). So now I shop…

Amazon's problems with fraudulent memory products were well documented in 2023 when GRC published their test results for a dozen such drives purchased from the site. In response, GRC developed a free program, called "ValiDrive", to scan and test drives for this growing problem. ValiDrive performs a quick, random-sequence spot-check across the drive's entire declared storage space. At every location it verifies the su…

ValiDrive is Windows-only and closed source. Does it have any advantages over https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3 ?

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#100

Post by icebergonfire »

traceroute66 wrote: post #45
moepstar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even sold by Amazon Honest question: after all the reports of co-mingled inventory, plain fakes etc. being sold by Amazon - for years i might add - do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket? I went from spending > 10k€ per year to less than 5%, probably not even that, on there, all by their own fault. And i see no reason to buy there anymore: - the defau…

> do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket? Not the person you're asking, but yes, I do. You know the biggest reason wny ? Their no-bullshit returns policy. Seriously. Click button, get your returns label. The refund is sent to you as soon as the courier or post office has scanned the barcode. Hell, sometimes Amazon just refund you and don't even want the…

> Their no-bullshit returns policy.

Caveat emptor though, I trusted this policy as well and got my account closed for unclear reasons. They hinted at returns fraud (not the case) and a high return rate (not the case either).

I provided detailed records of everything and even escalated this to jeff@amazon.com, no luck.

Still have a few hundred euros in Amazon Echos in storage that I cannot use anymore.

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