How Not to Buy a SSD • Hacker News Board

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#181

Post by chao- » Tue, Aug 26, 2025, 11:19 PM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #175

chao- wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a Micro Center near you, they have been reliable. I recently had to replace an entire array of SATA SSDs with models that could support DRAT/DZAT*. Their Samsung 2.5" SATA SSDs came with the original Samsung stickers sealing them, and they scanned each one to attribute it to my purchase. I'm sure it as much to protect them as me, i.e. that if I returned a drive, I gave them back the drive with the exact D…

Micro Center ran one of those "Free 128GB flash drive next time you drop by!" offers last year. I picked one up. It was fake :(

A useful data point, and disappointing to hear.

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#182

Post by pipes » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

jchw wrote: post #127

pipes wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you buy directly from vendor? Genuine question!

At the very least, Western Digital and Seagate both simply do direct sales on their websites: https://www.westerndigital.com/products https://www.seagate.com/products/shop/

Thanks. I suppose that was obvious after all :(

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#183

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:29 PM UTC

senectus1 wrote: post #2

Had the same issue with a Crucial drive from amazon. looked just like the real thing but for some small discrepancies. Performed like an absolute dog and the SMART data was waaaay off. amazon just refunded me the whole amount and I pulled it apart to see what was inside: https://imgur.com/a/NUSuuEh quite annoying, though also amusing.

[deleted]

Re: How Not to Buy a SSD

#184

Post by randpx » Mon, Sep 01, 2025, 7:20 PM UTC

ryankrage77 wrote: post #132

stroebs wrote: post #15

I’d also like to point out that those Kingston A400’s are notoriously terrible and had a firmware bug that caused the behaviour you describe if you don’t update it before it happens. I purchased 10 genuine new from a verified vendor and 6 had to be RMA’d within the first year.

agreed, I don't think the drive is fake, they're just that bad. Only SSD I've ever had fail spontaneously on me (the one other SSD failiure was my fault for accidentally unplugging it during a firmware update).

> _ actually a failed or RMAd genuine 128GB Kingston SSD who got its firmware modified by a third party_