Am I the only one that doesn't trust nvme drives?

[lan101]

No real question here just an observation really. Seems like a lot of nvme drives fail or just act weird even with fairly low usage.

Got a dell optiplex 3070 recently for a client that only does basic stuff. On the computer maybe an hour or 2 at the most a day. Western digital SN740 series nvme drive with like 200 hours on it...randomly the dell just says no drive detected etc. I just did a recovery image to a standard sata ssd and all the issues seem to be gone at least for now. It just got me thinking that I don't really trust nvme drives like I do sata ssd. Obviously the speed difference is very nice but for probably 95% of my clients they'd not notice any difference day to day. Dell 2000-0141 code.

Had another call like a week ago and just talked to the guy. He seemed fairly computer saavy. Told me about freezing etc. I said it's probably the nvme. He said it was less than a year old...but I said I'll bet that's still it. He tried a different one a few days later and of course all the problems went away lol.

Crystal disk info still showed like 98% good even though it was having issues. I don't believe he tried any other tests with it.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Was the second NVMe also a WD? I've a growing suspicion of WD media, SATA mainly.

 

[Sky-Knight]

SSD storage faults like RAM. It's drastically less likely to fault than HDDs are but goodness... when they do fault it sucks.

Also, NVME drives in tier 1 OEM machines are usually the cheapest garbage ever. I use WD disks almost exclusively and haven't had anything beyond the statistically expected fault rates.

Finally, just like all solid state electronics, your most likely faults are in the first 30 days. Once you survive that, it's basically eternal.

 

[lan101]

Was the second NVMe also a WD? I've a growing suspicion of WD media, SATA mainly.

Yeah 2nd one was also WD as well...I think I will avoid those for a while lol. I've got a samsung 990 pro series that's been solid so far...

 

[HCHTech]

Also, NVME drives in tier 1 OEM machines are usually the cheapest garbage ever.

Agree - we have certainly seen our share of these. We use Samsungs almost exclusively when we do swaps, and I can't remember off hand a single failure.

 

[sapphirescales]

There are multiple factors that contribute to NVMe failure. First off is the low quality of OEM drives. Second is the tendency of OEMs to use QLC drives instead of TLC drives in their greedy quest to save literal pennies. Third is the heat factor. NVMe drives take up less space so they cram them in to tight spaces,. There's also no active cooling in 99% of laptops. And the passive cooling is the thinnest piece of aluminum you'll ever see in your life so it's basically useless. We've found that the most reliable drives are the slower ones probably because the NAND memory doesn't get as hot. I also highly recommend avoiding gen 5 drives because they get a heck of a lot hotter. Also let me put it this way. My USB docking station for NVME drives has a cooling fan in it. I've never seen a hard drive docking station with a fan on it in my entire life. That just goes to show you how hot NVMe drives get.

 

[HCHTech]

That just goes to show you how hot NVMe drives get.

When we do a NVMe swap on a desktop, we almost always add a heatsink. Sometimes, the mounting makes the drives cross underneath the graphics card and there isn't room, but otherwise, we use 'em.

 

[lan101]

When we do a NVMe swap on a desktop, we almost always add a heatsink. Sometimes, the mounting makes the drives cross underneath the graphics card and there isn't room, but otherwise, we use 'em.

Yeah I like those Samsung 990 pro series with the heatsink. That's what I put in my PS5 and one of my main rig computers too. Solid for the money so far it seems.

 

[NviGate Systems]

I use a WDC SN730 512GB NVME as my Linux Home, but it has a heatsink on it. Being the home directoy it does get some use, but not as much as my dedicated boot drive, so it is a bit of a mix.

It was a pull from a dead ThinkPad.

 

[phaZed]

I don't trust any drive, SSD or Spinner. I make full image backups of all my drives to both a internal 8TB HDD in my system as well as to my Home Server, with Macrium.

As for SSD's, I run primarily Samsung Drives - never had a failure.
Secondarily, Crucial drives have been really good for me in both use and sales (No obvious failures or returns outside of normal use and expectations.)

 

[Sky-Knight]

I've used WD Blue / Black SSDs, Samsung EVOs and PROs, as well as Crucial drives. I find they all have comparable failure rates.

I lean on WD because the Dashboard software is easier for normies to use. You have to keep the firmware up to date!

The rig I'm typing on has two WD BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD 2TB drives in it. Sitting under mainboard provided head spreaders and holding about 42C on the thermals. Operational range is -40 to 85C. She's got plenty of wiggle room!

 

[NETWizz]

While I don't trust ANY drive, when it comes to flash I buy the ones known to make the best FLASH memory:

SanDisk
Samsung
Western Digital (owns SanDisk).

That's really it.

Sure if I was building 100 computers that just needed to boot a basic Linux image to do something like display a kiosk or sign or something and it was a 5 minute task to re-image the machine, I would buy something cheaper.

That said for a computer, it is one of the above. The exception is if an HP, Mac, or Dell for example come with something else, I just run with it and don't bother changing it without great reason.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Gotta say..for us..haven't seen "high" failure rates. Haven't even see what I'd call medium or...frequent..even low failure rates.
We sell/support just full biz grade hardware, so Lenovo ThinkCentre and ThinkPads...of the ThinkPads..it's the T, X, or P series. Also one of our guys does Dells...just Optiplex, Latitudes, Precisions. He also tends to do quality upgrades when placing the orders.

If we do any drive upgrades, 99% of the time it's a Crucial drive we put in. We sometimes will get some of the WD Blue solid states (not their horrible blue spinners).

Every computer that leaves our bench...be it a new box unbuckle...or, came in for service, gets the usual vendor driver and BIOS upgrades. And 3rd party drives get their direct firmware update. I've always felt this helps cut down on drive issues...we even did this as standard practices back in the spinner days.

 

[britechguy]

I'm completely non-brand-loyal among the well known makers and have used Adata, PNY, SiliconPower, and Samsung (that I can remember) and have only had 1 failure, an Adata, when it was in the "infancy stage" and it was promptly replaced and the replacement is still happily chugging along to this day.

 

[Metanis]

The only brand I've come to distrust is Kingston. I've had a few failures although it's been years.

 

[lan101]

The only brand I've come to distrust is Kingston. I've had a few failures although it's been years.

Yep just replaced one of those in the past month too lol.