Cheap SSD doubt

[cobito]

I'm looking for a cheap SSD for a family member that will be used in a MacBook Pro as the main drive. The computer is used for basic things: Firefox and Office mainly. They will also store a large number of photos with Apple's photo program (I can't remember the name right now).

In 2018 I already replaced the 500GB mechanical drive that came from the factory because it was cracked by a 240GB SSD of which I don't remember the brand or model. I also doubled the RAM to 8GB,

In total, it's not necessary to have too much performance but reliability and capacity. I've seen that they sell Intenso drives of 2TB for about €120. Something like that would be what they need, but the price makes me distrustful because of the difference compared to other brands.

Why are they so cheap? Are they very slow? Very unreliable? Do they work well at first but when you do a couple of write cycles they start to go very slow?

Thanks.

[Sylver]

@cobito I did the same thing recently on an old MacBook Pro, I replaced the mechanical drive that was already falling apart with a Kingston A400 240Gb and the improvement was noticeable.

In the case of Intenso, I personally have not tried them, but it is true that I have read many people complaining that they are slow without more, as they install and test them, they give a substantially lower performance compared to any other brand.
That said, they speak well of their reliability.

Perhaps for the use it will have, it would be more interesting to opt for a 1Tb SSD drive (cheaper than 2Tb) but from a first brand like Samsung, Crucial or similar, with the guarantee of performance they offer.

Regards

[Clipper]

@cobito
Check out the kioxia.
They are branded and not expensive "relatively"
Regards
P.d it's Toshiba.

https://www.geeknetic.es/Kioxia/que-es-y-para-que-sirve

[Sylver]

I think Kioxia does not manufacture 2Tb SSDs in 2.5", only in M.2 NVME format.

On the other hand, comparing a Kioxia Exceria 960Gb 2.5" with a Samsung 870 QVO 1Tb 2.5", the difference in performance is notable, and the Kioxia is only 2€ cheaper.

Best regards

[defaultuser]

@sylver it seems to me that Kioxia only has decent drives starting from the M2 "pro", everything before that is a bit slow.
What you have to look at mainly is the I/O operations ratio, which is where the budget ones fall short the most, because knowing the controller caches and more details already involves a lot of research thanks to the manufacturers' arbitrariness in delivering the specs they feel like, when it's an article with potential you'll see how they flood you with information, but when it's a product with shortcomings you'll get less info, to be diplomatic and not say they'll hide it from you deliberately and conscientiously.

And to top it off, 2.5" SSDs are expensive for what they currently are, and there's not much supply in high capacities, I think they're making a mistake, there's a market for a secondary SSD 2.5 drive between 2 and 4 GB with moderate performance and economy that they're missing out on.
It seems to me that they prefer to think that people with laptops will go where they say, and from there the fuss with the 2.5 SSDs, because as soon as those users smarten up and start buying m2 to sata 2.5 adapters to save money and have better performance at the same time, they'll have to eat the 2.5 ones.

[Sylver]

@defaultuser I agree. Right now, things are divided between low-capacity "cheap" drives, high-performance and medium-capacity expensive drives, and very expensive high-capacity and high-performance drives.

I haven't researched M.2 to SATA 2.5" adapters, do they detract from performance or are they worth it? I say this because I'm also in that situation with some equipment...

Regards

[defaultuser]

@sylver Well, looking at some cards I don't see active components, it seems that for M2 with sata interface you don't have to do anything (same as not using all contacts of the M2 connector), and as I was saying for laptops with sata (without M2 it is understood) I don't see a problem.

Another thing would be an M2 Nvme disk, that would have to be looked into.

[cobito]

Thanks to all three of you for the comments.

I've been looking into the M.2 to SATA adapters because I had no idea about them. Apparently there are two types: the basic NFGG ones that cost about €12 and which seem to be very simple (they only have components related to power supply) since the protocol is nothing less than SATA and they only adapt the physical interface.

Then there are the NVMe adapters that cost about €25 and which seem to have some kind of controller or buffer to convert protocols since, obviously, they convert from SATA to NVMe and vice versa.

Looking at the Kioxia 1TB, it seems to be NVMe, so an adapter of the complex type would be necessary, so the price of this would be around €25 more expensive than the Samsung 1TB.

On the other hand, in the link left by @Sylver, the Kioxia has a similar read performance to the Samsung (the Xioxia seems to outperform the Samsung but I think the differences would be imperceptible to the common mortal). However, in writing there is a difference to take into account in favor of the Xioxia.

Knowing this, I'm going to opt for the Samsung option. The extra cost of the Xioxia over the Samsung (about €25) I don't care about, but the fact of having to use an adapter I don't like because the complexity (and therefore, the probability of failure) increases.

Moreover, the performance in general is not that important: on the one hand, to use MS Office, Firefox and look at photos, the read rate and the I/O rate are not critical (if someone corrects me if I'm wrong). On the other hand, writes will be sporadic. Moreover, they will be done from a USB drive, so the bottleneck causes a difference in rates of an order of magnitude with respect to any decent SSD drive.

And all this without taking into account the active part of the adapter, since SATA and NVMe are very different protocols and I see it as unlikely that this adapter does not penalize performance, although I have no idea about this.

[Clipper]

@cobito once I tried to put a PCI express to m2 adapter and the results I read were not interesting at all, in my case it was a *3 port and the speed was equivalent to a 2.5 SSD, so I didn't gain anything (except if I got it on sale and used it later in a PC with an m2 port)
So I imagine that a Sata to m2 adapter will have the same problem, it will be a bottleneck.
Regards

[defaultuser]

@cobito said in Cheap SSD doubt:

Then there are the NVMe adapters that cost about 25€ and that look like they do have some kind of controller or buffer to convert protocols since, obviously, they convert from SATA to NVMe and vice versa.

Exactly, those would have to be looked at closely to see how much they can affect performance and so on.
Remember that my comment about these adapters came in relation to the specific case of laptops that want to upgrade the disk (same size) and only have sata 2.5", in that case they could optionally mount an M2 ngfc-sata with the adapter if they see better options in M2 than in native 2.5". The thing is that there are fewer and fewer M2-sata disks now that I think about it.