Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Caution with cheap SSDs

18 months ago, I purchased a SSD called the ADATA SX8200 PRO. Initial reviews showed blistering speeds and low prices. On my laptop, the SSD is as fast as the reviews indicated.

More recently, some are claiming poorer performance on some newer SX8200 PRO drives, and that ADATA has been downgrading components over time. Swapping components over time is normal, but the change in performance is the issue being claimed. ADATAs box and advertising emphasized specs "upto", so there is some coverage there.

For now, I will be returning to branded SSDs (e.g. Samsung, Western Digital, Intel, etc.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/lk2f5i/breaking_news_adata_sx8200_pro_m2_ssd_performance/

Adata was never a reputable brand. Sorry to hear you got taken in.

Crucial, Seagate, and Kingston are the only other brands I'd consider purchasing from. Besides those you mention.

Thanks Jay. I just got lucky as the review units and early units were unbelievably good.

Unfortunately, it seems some people did not get what they expected. Most won't know the difference but it's the principle.

Interesting, in the first 60 seconds of the LTT video linked, he literally says AData is a trusted brand.

Also interesting, the same LTT video linked ALSO says that the same downgrade scam is being claimed of Kingston (also noted as a reputable brand)

You must be aware that in business, the line between reputable and disreputable can be crossed in the blinking of an eye . . .

On a related note, I've bought some cheap micro SD cards online only to find they were crap. The moral of the story is: you get what you pay for - most of the time ...

There have been reports of SSD forgeries that find their way into regular sales channels. They may be inferior products rebranded fraudulently, or instances of name brand products sampled for quality control tests that failed, but still found their way into sales channels.

NAND Flash forgeries are ridiculous. Just Google "Sandisk fraud" and you'll find dozens of reports of forgeries. It's amazing that it's worth it for fraudsters to go to the effort, with how thin the margins are.

How is this topic even remotely related to digital pianos?

Not worse than many posts in supposed-to-be topics. This one at least loosely relates with VSTs, and I suppose that was the reason for the OP. That said, threads like that should be prefixed with an "OT" per forum rules.


http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/268928.html

JoeT knows very well it’s not just remotely related, it’s directly related to VST-s but he hates them which is why the grumpiness

I’ve been very happy with SanDisk products throughout the years.

Yeah, as much as gravity relates to VSTs.


I work with VST plugins every day.

The issue is when forums go off topic, the quality of the advice usually goes rock bottom. This thread is no exception. When a piano forum would start talking engine issues, because cars are loosely related to moving pianos, people will happily start exchanging opinions, but the usefulness of the advice will be nothing more than complete bollocks. What has been said so far about SSDs is at the same level.

I don't agree.

Moving my instruments to SSD cut the loading time tremendously. And I'm surely not the only one to have done so.

Consequently ... that there exist cheap SSDs that don't meet specs is a perfectly acceptable topic.

And if you're not interested in the topic, it's very easy to not read the thread.

I agree that SSDs and VSTs are perfectly related. I have all my music devoted computers fitted with SSDs. One of them has 3.5TB shared in three SSDs. All are from reputable brands and bought from reputable dealers. So far all is going well. I would hate to have a problem due to a faulty / false / rebranded SSD on any of my computers.

BTW, SSD prices are higher than a year and a half or so ago (pre COVID). So my next update, a 4TB SSD, has to wait.

Apologies JoeT.

Good NVME drives can significantly improve the VI experience with much faster loading times and smoother performance.

Samsung ruled the lands for years. But more recently, other companies stepped up their game with better price/performance and I had recommended these as alternatives at PW. Given that several outlets have called out ADATA's sketchy marketing, I wanted to revise this guidance.

A lot of large VSTs like Synchron take up a ton of space (and then a lot of folks here have multiple VSTs!). Also, there are still modern systems being shipped with relatively small 256-512GB drives, so I appreciate the occasional discussion about SSDs. Thanks newer player!

If a Sandisk flash fails its quality test and is sent to an unscrupulous electronics recycler who resells it, the margin is much higher because they paid nothing for it.

Sure, but the thing is, these are usually not binned/failed genuine units. They're "legitimate" counterfeits, ground up. And they ship in high quality (also counterfeit) packaging and carriers, including hologrammed "seal of authenticity" marks. It's pretty amazing the lengths modern counterfeiters go to for essentially commodity items.

I just read an article that claims that counterfeit products across all product domains form a $1 trillion/year industry worldwide. Some of the more insidious ones are: counterfeit pharmaceutical products, counterfeit batteries that cause fires, and counterfeit motherboards with security trapdoors.

I was burnt years ago by cheap memory cards for my camera.... I lost most of Northern Italy on that trip. For computer, camera, etc...... I only stick to name brands such as Sandisk, Samsung, etc.

I am amazed that something so sophisticated as these devices can be made like crap, or cheaply, or whatever.

Peace
Bruce in Philly