Sandisk SSD, is it Reliable?

matty1053

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Dec 6, 2015
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Hey all,

I am very curious if the SanDisk SSD's are reliable or not. I currently have a Samsung EVO 850 250gb, and it's getting kind of full. I am looking to get a 900+gb SSD, so I have a bit more room. Seeing SanDisk on newegg and amazon, I am very curious how reliable their storage components are.

Thanks all for answering,
-matt
 
Solution


Hybrids drives give a performance boost to frequently used programs and files. These will mainly be your OS and any programs you use daily (like your email client, browser, etc.). But the performance increases are not as good as you would get with an SSD. I wouldn't go the hybrid route if I were you. It would be a big downgrade from your current SSD.

The common setup is an SSD for OS and programs (I include games in programs) and a large HDD for storing media and files (movies, music, and docs).

If your 250GB drive is full because you are also using it as a storage drive, consider adding...
Why do you need another SSD?
Your SSD is only meant to be home to your OS and software, not games etc.
It shouldn't be filling up if you're only doing what I mentioned above.
Games should go on the HDD, as they do not gain any performance benefits from being on the SSD, only faster loading times.
Unless you're editing or handling video, you don't need another one.
It depends what SSD you're talking about, the Sandisk Ultra is solid, but if you're going for the SSD PLUS, there are better options out there.
 
I'd ask myself the question do you really need all of that at SSD speed, is it actually worth the cash. Nothing wrong with sandisk though. Look to some of the reviews, some don't perform all that well (by SSD standards), but they are still in the pack of results
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
What will you be using this for?

Slowly but surely, over the last few years, I am transitioning to SSD only.
Except for all that large stuff.

But my needs are different than yours.

Sandisk reliable? I have 2.
1 x 120GB, several years old.
1 x 960GB Ultra II, about 1 year old.
 


PC games don't see any benefit from SSD installation, not sure why you'd blow the cash on that tbh.
Given the current market, it is becoming more and more common for SSDs to drop in price.
I wouldn't recommend going SSD only now, maybe a few years down the line when prices get a bit lower, but for now SSD for software and OS, and HDD for games is the way to go imo.

Especially for those of us who don't want to waste money! :)
 

bitwright

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Jun 12, 2014
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I've had a SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SSD for about a year, and I have no complaints about it. I bought it during a Black Friday sale last year, along with a 480GB SanDisk Ultra II that I installed in my mother's laptop. She loved the increased speed and so far has had no complaints.

SanDisk SSDs make for good budget SSDs, especially if you can get them on sale. Just don't expect them to be as fast as your Samsung 850 Evo. Judging from the reviews though, it seems that these drives are hit or miss in terms of technical problems. Either you get one that works and you'll be super satisfied with it. Or you'll get a dud drive that will fail soon after purchase.

If you are looking for a big drive and trying to save some money, then I would risk going for the SanDisk drive, though I'd wait for a sale if I were you. The warranty on these drives is long enough that it should cover any early failures due to you getting a bad disk. Just keep the data on your old disk around for a bit, until you're sure you get a good drive, and you should be fine.
 

bitwright

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Jun 12, 2014
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SSDs may not add to game performance in terms of FPS but, as you said, they do load faster when on SSD. I have seen videos showing that this can help with games that suffer from texture pop in issues since they allow textures to be loaded from disk much more rapidly. They also help reduce or eliminate loading hitches in games that don't have a loading screen between areas but instead prefetch data when the player nears an area's boarder.

Personally, I just treat games like any other program and install them in my SSD. After all, I bought an SSD specifically to make loading faster across all programs on my PC, from the OS down to games, so I don't see why I should treat games any differently. Plus, having a larger SSD just makes disk space management easier.

Sure, if you can only afford a smaller drive (or are cheap ;) ) then I can see installing large games on an HDD instead. But if you can afford it, I say getting a large SSD is worth the price.
 
Believe it or not, those seconds saved are going to turn into hours. I played games with a HDD and people would load in before I did and would already get a advantage over me. This doesn't apply to all games, but honestly I don't have any bad feelings against any SSD brand as long as it's a known brand. There are different tiers, sure, but as far as reliability, any SSD is going to outlive a HDD if it's not defective, so I wouldn't worry.

It's always a good thing to keep backups of important files, if you buy a secondary external HDD which you can backup to using a USB 3 enclosure then you might feel a lot better buying a "worse" SSD.

However, from the looks of it, saving games (a lot of steam games let's you save your progress on their own servers). I think that you're overthinking this, most consumer SSD's run very fast as long as they're still using the cache, which typically stretches up to 8 GiB, which is usually at around 500 MB/s to 200-300 MB/s after the cache runs out which is still not a big deal IMO.



All the best!
 

matty1053

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Dec 6, 2015
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Well I do multiple things on my PC. I do have a few games which I notice a much quicker load time than others. (My friend and I did a comparison between loading GTA V up to multiplayer. I loaded 12.3 seconds quicker than he did. [note: he has a 2tb WD Performance HDD @7200 rpm).

And one reason why I am wondering, is that HDD's do fail a lot more (personal experience, and mouths around town). Plus, will lose their 'performance' throughout the times you constantly use it. (This was from a friend who owns a PC store, and does build systems for a living. He put together 500 computers for a school districts STEM and Computer Science program(s). They all have 1tb SSD's in them. He said the staff was complaining that loading times are very slow after the year usage they got out of the 1tb HDD's. Whole other story, I'll cut it.)

Anyways, another quick question...
What about SHDD? (the hybrid drives). Would that be the better route? Or shall I just go with the SSD?
 

bitwright

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Jun 12, 2014
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Hybrids drives give a performance boost to frequently used programs and files. These will mainly be your OS and any programs you use daily (like your email client, browser, etc.). But the performance increases are not as good as you would get with an SSD. I wouldn't go the hybrid route if I were you. It would be a big downgrade from your current SSD.

The common setup is an SSD for OS and programs (I include games in programs) and a large HDD for storing media and files (movies, music, and docs).

If your 250GB drive is full because you are also using it as a storage drive, consider adding a large HDD for storage. You can find 2TB HDDs in the $50-$80 range.

If your 250GB drive is mainly filled with installed programs, consider an upgrade to a 512GB SSD plus a new large HDD.

If you have a laptop that can only fit one drive, and you don't want to store your media/files in an external HDD, then the ~1TB SSD would be the best option performance and space wise. Though it is also the most expensive option.
 
Solution

Esenbek

Commendable
Aug 28, 2016
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1,660
yeah, SanDisks are fine, I used their 256gb version, no issues, currently I'm using 512gb m.2 Samsung pro 950, and keeping all my games on it, but had to buy 1tb so I can have even more games, and guess what, I bough SanDisk 960gb version :)
 

m5wind

Prominent
Nov 11, 2017
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510
i have a ROG gl552vw laptop, all games installed in the hdd has stutter or lag, but when i installed them in my ssd the games is very smooth, for me intalling games in the ssd is important...