Adata M2 NVME SSD - take it or leave it?

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Apr 27, 2019
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As I am thinking of upgrading my rig with NVME SSD(s), I found out that, opinions rather to buy it varies from "yes" to "HELL NO".

Although it has 3yrs warranty which points out that Adata stands behind it, and it is a reliable product, users (customers), points out that it is not.

please help.

If you vote for no, please offer an alternative.
 
I'm using both an SX8000 and SX8200 in my system, aside from a disastrous time with StoreMi they've both been rock solid stable and fast from day one.

(The SX8200 is currently my boot drive with my older SX8000 working as a cache drive. It was previously my boot drive.)

They do run a little hot if you don't have airflow over your m.2 slot, only negative I can think of.
 
So SX8200 is a good choice?
Make sure you get the SX8200 PRO.
It's a bit faster than the SX8200 and surprisingly, usually cheaper.

As with all things NVME there's benefits to getting bigger sizes, both performance and reliability wise.
 
I got one of the SX6000 back in early 2018. Worked really good.

Used it lightly for a year, and it crapped out.

ADATA sent me a replacement and didn't jerk me around.

And that is my report on the ADATA SX6000
 
I just bought an ADATA 512GB M.2 NVME SX8200 Pro

Works, no complaints yet. ADATA has usually been pretty strong overall.
 
Avoid ADATA. I have their SX8200 and there is a 65263 bug that gives the wrong temperature and marks the drive as bad. I called their support team who reports there is a bug that they refuse to fix beyond Windows 10 1803 as the product 'is no longer supported.' Ridiculous for a product less than a year old. My NVME may be under warranty but I have no idea how its performing beyond tests and daily use.

Moving forward I plan on replacing the ADATA NVME with a Samsung or WD model when I see a really good sale and make the ADATA an external drive using an enclosure.
 
Avoid ADATA. I have their SX8200 and there is a 65263 bug that gives the wrong temperature and marks the drive as bad.
Is that what that was? I had that happen for about a month, then a Windows update happened and it went away. Never had an issue with the drive's performance or reliability so I just kinda ignored it. One day it was just back to registering correctly and I haven't had a problem since.

I was able to run benchmarks and tests on my drive, and aside from temperature, everything registered perfectly fine.

I assumed it had something to do with primocache or my particular monitoring software. (I use HD sentinel for monitoring my 8 hard drives.)
 
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Is that what that was? I had that happen for about a month, then a Windows update happened and it went away. Never had an issue with the drive's performance or reliability so I just kinda ignored it. One day it was just back to registering correctly and I haven't had a problem since.

I was able to run benchmarks and tests on my drive, and aside from temperature, everything registered perfectly fine.

I assumed it had something to do with primocache or my particular monitoring software. (I use HD sentinel for monitoring my 8 hard drives.)

I installed ADATA's latest Toolbox and the drive appears normal now. Still, ADATA's initial attitude towards the problem was a huge turn off for me. I may still replace it someday.
 
I got one of the SX6000 back in early 2018. Worked really good.

Used it lightly for a year, and it crapped out.

ADATA sent me a replacement and didn't jerk me around.

And that is my report on the ADATA SX6000

The SX6000 Non-Pro (original)? It was known for a high failure rate. This was because it uses Micron's 32L NAND (which is denser at 384Gb) and DRAM (original design used HMB instead) with a sketchy Realtek controller. The newer SX6000s - Pro and Lite - use Micron's 64L, HMB, and an improved controller.
 
Is that what that was? I had that happen for about a month, then a Windows update happened and it went away. Never had an issue with the drive's performance or reliability so I just kinda ignored it. One day it was just back to registering correctly and I haven't had a problem since.

I was able to run benchmarks and tests on my drive, and aside from temperature, everything registered perfectly fine.

I assumed it had something to do with primocache or my particular monitoring software. (I use HD sentinel for monitoring my 8 hard drives.)

Some Windows 10 builds had issues with SM2262 drives unless you had the right driver (there's 3 drivers applicable to these drives) with regard to SMART readings. The HP EX920 also had a firmware temperature bug (always read 54C) which was mostly mitigated, information here.
 
Make sure you get the SX8200 PRO.
It's a bit faster than the SX8200 and surprisingly, usually cheaper.

As with all things NVME there's benefits to getting bigger sizes, both performance and reliability wise.

Used to be significantly more expensive! They had to drop the price on the Pro to compete with the Phison E12-based drives. In reality, the hardware on the SX8200 Pro is effectively identical to that on the SX8200. The Pro has had a firmware update (which did improve general performance) and also some changes to the controller (SM2262 -> SM2262EN) to allow for higher peak performance, specifically writes. Unfortunately that made the drive less consistent in many cases. But the point is, it should be more or less the same price, they tried to market them as two different SKUs but are now forced to replace the original to compete with drives like the P34A80.
 
In response to the OP's question, Adata makes good quality NVME drives. They generally have Micron or Intel nand and Silicon Motion controllers. They are aimed at the value segment, giving near high end performance for much less money or a large amount of space at bargain basement prices, depending on the model.

Make sure you get the SX8200 PRO.
It's a bit faster than the SX8200 and surprisingly, usually cheaper.

As with all things NVME there's benefits to getting bigger sizes, both performance and reliability wise.

Well, it is actually more complicated than saying the Pro is better. I'll get into this more below.

Used to be significantly more expensive! They had to drop the price on the Pro to compete with the Phison E12-based drives. In reality, the hardware on the SX8200 Pro is effectively identical to that on the SX8200. The Pro has had a firmware update (which did improve general performance) and also some changes to the controller (SM2262 -> SM2262EN) to allow for higher peak performance, specifically writes. Unfortunately that made the drive less consistent in many cases. But the point is, it should be more or less the same price, they tried to market them as two different SKUs but are now forced to replace the original to compete with drives like the P34A80.

This is correct. The SM2262EN controller makes some tradeoffs. The peak numbers are bigger, to compete with the Phison E12 drives and so bigger numbers can be printed on the box. That should help sell drives. The downside of that is the lower end performance got much, much worse. When the drive is getting close to full for example, the original SX8200 performs way faster.

That said it is getting harder to find the non-Pro models and when you do see them they are more expensive now. So, this is really not that big of an issue since buyers don't have much of a choice. As the owner of a SX8200 non-Pro, though, I felt no desire to upgrade to a Pro model. My preference is for the more consistent performance vs having some bigger peak numbers. Also, I ended up buying a E12 based drive that I'm going to swap in.

Anandtech reviewed the SX8200 Pro and did a great job documenting the performance tradeoffs made.
 
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The SX6000 Non-Pro (original)? It was known for a high failure rate. This was because it uses Micron's 32L NAND (which is denser at 384Gb) and DRAM (original design used HMB instead) with a sketchy Realtek controller. The newer SX6000s - Pro and Lite - use Micron's 64L, HMB, and an improved controller.


The original 6000's run really hot. Mine is currently sitting there in my rig doing nothing and its 62 degrees! This is also with a large heatsink (1" square) stuck to the controller. I'm not bothered as it's not a critical drive and at the time I bought it a couple of years ago it was really cheap.
 
The original 6000's run really hot. Mine is currently sitting there in my rig doing nothing and its 62 degrees! This is also with a large heatsink (1" square) stuck to the controller. I'm not bothered as it's not a critical drive and at the time I bought it a couple of years ago it was really cheap.

Yep, I guess I did not outright say what I meant in my explanation, but it was prone to overheating for the reasons I listed. The controller specifically was not well-designed. The Phison E7 also had this problem but often had uneven PCB components (MP500) which made cooling the drive more difficult, although of course the controller should be the primary focus there.
 
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