A little dissapointed with my new Solid state drive off ebay. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 11:34:41 am
content: Hi.So I finally bit the bullet and got a new SSD for my laptop since everyone says you should update to SSD if you can find one with enough capacity and for the right price. Didn't get a hybrid one since I want the full solid state so I can not worry about bumping the laptop too much anymore.Took three weeks to come from Hong Kong. When I put it in the laptop, I have to say, it's a complete let down in terms of speed. So I took it back out and plugged it into a desktop machine and sure enough, doing file transfer, the drive is just as slow as it was in the laptop and performs just as slow as the old drive does.But what's really strange is the new drive makes makes noises just like the old mechanical drive. I thought SSD's were supposed to be whisper quiet.

author: joelby
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 11:38:23 am
content: They shouldn't make any noise at all! Mine certainly does not, and it issignificantlyfaster than the hard drive it replaced.I would have a look in your device manager or equivalent to see exactly what the controller says it is. Did it look like a normal hard drive, or was it a bit smaller and a plain box without a visible motor in the centre, etc.?

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 11:43:00 am
content: I mean yeah, you'd swear it's a mechanical drive to look at it. But it does have a sticker which someone wrote in ink: SSD.

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 11:44:27 am
content: Some pictures please?

author: Short Circuit
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 11:45:36 am
content: Probably a fake SSD, as in a rebadged normal drive or a 1.8 inside a SSD-looing case.Generally, buying hot products like memory or storage devices from Asia is not the smartest idea...Many scams around, this being one of the more obvious. Other variations are real SSD's but havingonly a fraction of the capacity that is reported by the firmware, all fine until the actual available flashis filled, then becomes somewhat unpredictable.

author: joelby
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 11:48:30 am
content: Sounds a bit dodgyThey're usually noticeably lighter than a mechanical drive.I agree with Short Circuit - whenever anything involves flash memory of any sort, you probably want to buy from a reputable shop to make sure you're getting the real deal.

author: johnboxall
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 12:01:55 pm
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on June 25, 2012, 11:34:41 amWhat was the eBay item number? Any photos?

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 12:07:32 pm
content: better yet, if you have it in your system working, load up a bit of software called "hdtune" the free version, not the pro, and go to the info tab, it will give you the model number, and i am 99% sure if its making a noise whn you google that you will see its not a solid state drive,also while your in it you could run a speed test and laugh at how slow the fake is, and run an error check and likely get it sent back as a damaged product with more than 1 red spot (red means your drive has more damaged sectors than it can re-allocate, and means its time to replace your hard drive in most cases as its about to die, maybe not, but ebay fakes its very likely

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 12:24:21 pm
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on June 25, 2012, 11:43:00 amSharpies never lie

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 02:19:24 pm
content: A HDD is40-100MB/s for sequential read1-3MB/s for random readA SSD is200-500MB/s for sequential read35-80MB/s for random readWhen you have a SSD in your PC you notice the speed.Random reads are more than an order of magnitude better and sequential reads are nicely tripled or even quadrupled.Sadly i agree with the others, sounds like it's a fake and not SSD at all.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 03:57:12 pm
content: sad to say but you got stiffed ....i got a new laptop last friday that boots off of an SSD. it uses one of the latest samsung mSata drives ( so it does not have a 3 1/2 inch form factor but looks like a micro PCI-x card ). blistering fast.I can clearly feel the difference between the flash drive and the two harddisks inside ( It's a custom built HP Envy 3D. 17 inch beastie with an I-7 , ivy bridge , 3D display , Blu ray , SSD boot drive and two 1 terabyte HDD's built in )

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 04:18:37 pm
content: Amazing they would resort to that type of foolery. Great photos.Quote from: ErikTheNorwegian on June 25, 2012, 12:52:35 pm

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 05:39:56 pm
content: it goes beyond that. they have customized firmware in the usb to flash controlle.r it will show up as a 1 terabyte drive , but physical mem is 4 gigayte or so..only the last 4 gig that you save is really there. try to read any older file and you get gobbledegook ... or 'file not found'there was anothe rone that had a big bolt inside and a samsing 1 gig flashdisk. they only stored the MFT or FAT.. the data wasn't even stored...read the file and everything was empty....

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 06:43:25 pm
content: That's amazing free_electron. That means whomever is doing it relatively well skilled. I wouldnt' be surprised if these counterfeits were made in quantity, with fairly convincing cases, packaging and labels.Quote from: free_electron on June 25, 2012, 05:39:56 pm

author: Zad
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 07:08:15 pm
content: The main benefit of a flash drive is not transfer speed (a RAID pair can easily match flash bandwidth) but the latency. The lack of head seek time and rotational latency means that the data is ready to be streamed much more quickly. 10ms may not sound much, but when an OS is shuffling hundreds of files with potentially thousands of fragments, then the overhead can really add up.

author: DavidDLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 07:27:56 pm
content: Now change the title to "A big disappointment with my new Solid state drive off ebay"David.

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 08:04:27 pm
content: i have an ocz vertex 2 in my desktop the thing didnt even reach its stated 280mb/s read/write settles around 60mb/s write and 150mb/s max read but you can see the difference between loading speed compared to a wd raptor. and its bought from a local retail shop. anyway could you post some pics from the drive you bought and the ebay link for it?

author: Stephen Hill
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 10:47:38 pm
content: Quote from: M. András on June 25, 2012, 08:04:27 pmI would make sure your pc supports SATA3 and your bios is configured to use AHCI mode.Also make sure you confirm your speeds with a proper benchmark tool like ATTO because the maximum speed will only be available under certain conditions.

author: Stephen Hill
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2012, 10:50:34 pm
content: @Ed.KloonkWhat was the outcome of your mystery SSD?

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2012, 08:11:50 am
content: Quote from: Stephen Hill on June 25, 2012, 10:50:34 pmSeller is suspended and to be banned. Not the first time apparently so he is gone for his trouble. I will get a refund. And I keep a mechanical drive I don't really want.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2012, 08:18:52 am
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on June 26, 2012, 08:11:50 amThat's great, who pays your refund? Seems unlikely they could get money out of the seller?

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2012, 08:24:19 pm
content: Quote from: Stephen Hill on June 25, 2012, 10:47:38 pmits sata 2. and f**** the atto benchmark i dont know what that program measures but thats damn sure not real performance. it runs in AHCI mode the stock windows driver runs it better then the amd official, yep it runs on the integrated controller. no matter what i copied or read from it didnt overcome my numbers. and made the similar test using another ssd just to be sure its not a hdd limitation, as for overall perfomance its 10 times better then a hdd atleast. on the otherhand it uses a sandforce controller. that thing loves to compress data and if it cant be compressed the speed goes even lower

author: Stephen Hill
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2012, 08:38:38 pm
content: Quote from: M. András on June 26, 2012, 08:24:19 pmI only suggest ATTO so one can confirm that your drive can use all of the available bandwidth and matches the specs that the manufacturer provide.But your right, in the real world, many other factors come into play.When I built my new computer, I installed Windows on to the SSD with the default BIOS settings. I didn't feel it was as fast as it could have been so I tested the drive with ATTO and the fastest read speed was just under 300MB/s which is the limit of SATA 2. So I checked the BIOS and the default settings was SATA 2 mode. I changed this to AHCI, reinstalled windows and then used ATTO to confirm that the full speed of my SSD and SATA 3 was available. Now I got read speeds of just over 500MB/s in 4k blocks.

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2012, 08:44:40 pm
content: atto provides the stated numbers bye the manufacturer. and the intresting thing about this i tested this on a asus g73 laptop with its intel raid controller, tested with an desktop 2nd gen i7 and its motherboard's raid controller. it provided twice the i/o numbers than my amd/asus motherboard on the desktop but the mb/s stayed almost the same. wonder what will happen with a middle range lsi sas/sata controller via 4X pcie gen 2 interface