SP 1TB SSD 3D NAND A55 SLC Cache Performance Boost SATA III 2.5 7mm (0.28) Internal Solid State Drive (SP001TBSS3A55S25)

I directly copied over my O.S. (Operating system) from a mechanical Hard drive (HD) to the SSD using Macrium Reflect. The boot time of Windows 10 / 64-bit is never speedy {even with the SSD - about 20-25 seconds from BIOS logo to windows login}. The noticeable speed difference will come when you launch bulky applications like: Photoshop, games, photos, etc. Boot time will vary depending on different factors. The Silicon SDD speeds are the same as the Samsun 860 EVO 1TB (Up to 550/520MB/s seq read/write speeds). My tests are showing A55-1TB Silicone SSD with 550/440MB/s (screenshot posted with this review). My speeds are not tested with an Empty drive the A55/SSD was tested with a fully functioning OS on it (20% of the drive filled during testing). This is a fast drive at a reasonable price. IF, anything should occur with the hard drive over a period of time I will return to update this review (if possible). I am using three different variants of the Silicone SSD: 1TB, 480GB, and 256GB. (desktop, laptop, desktop) All three SSD drives are meeting or exceeding their competitions speeds. A note to all Windows users, please change your advance settings / hard disk timeout in your control panel unless you dont care about very noticeable lag spikes when you open or launch applications/documents. This is under control panel, top right search box type power, left window Edit power plan. Change advanced power settings, Expand Hard disk by clicking on the + symbol to the left of it. Click on the + symbol to the left of turn off hard disk after, click on Setting change to 0 minutes. (do this for M.2/NVME/SSD) otherwise you will wonder why your highspeed drive is acting slow. UPDATE: I have now purchased about 5 Silicon SSD (2.5) drives. ALL 5 are still working very well 5 months in. I have done speed tests on a few of them every month (I have multiple sizes: 256, 512, 480, 1TB) The speeds are stable. Meaning you will get a slight variation (either faster or slow) in the speed test numbers but nothing dramatic. If you are concerned about data loss, get a second hard drive (mechanical if you wish). Go get Macrium Reflect, home edition, and you can make a direct copy of your OS boot drive into an image file. Macrium is a UK based software company that has powerful free (home edition) software. YouTube has wonderful videos on how to do this, very simple. Remember to buy a USB stick (2GB more than enough) to make a media boot for recovery purposes.

UPDATE: 6/7/2023 =============== I just received my RMA replacements for the 3 drives drive below - this new batch 23015096 has some changes again, shouldnt be a surprise by now... Firmware: H220916a Size: 2.05TB/1.86TiB DRAT/DZAT *is* supported Case is now made of metal instead of plastic Quality remains to be seen and given the extreme variance within the product line my prior review still stands. A potentially OK replacement does not make up for the inability to provide a good product the first time - data is too valuable to risk to random drives. UPDATE: 5/17/2023 ================ I now have 3 more failed drives - all have serial numbers starting with YTAK from batches 23000184 and 23003845. These 3 latest failures powered down during a reboot and then refused to power back on at all. No system recognized them now. For those keeping score, I now only have 3 of these drive left alive, their serials start with AA (2TB, Firmware V0303B0), BB (2.05TB, Firmware SHFM60.0), and BC (2.05TB, Firmware SHFM60.0). Drives BB and BC are from the same batch. The AA drive is the first drive in this line I purchased end of October 2022. The BB/BC drives are from March and April 2023 respectively. The failed three (YTAK drives) are from December 2022 and February 2023. All drives were purchased exclusively from the Silicon Power merchant here on Amazon. The A55 2TB drive line is a complete disaster - do not trust your data to these drives. Regrettably these latest failed drives are under warranty but not within the Amazon return window so I am stuck with a RMA drives which will result in A55 replacements that cant be trusted... Too bad I have to give at least 1 star for a review - this product doesnt deserve even 1 star... UPDATE: 5/8/2023 =============== Verified that batch 23011662 with firmware HPS2704M is bad. All drives in this batch fail with the same errors when subjected around 5 hours of continuous writes. Since there is no way to determine which drive belongs to which batch when ordering (or even if any future batch will resolve this) the product is no longer able to function as intended - it corrupts data when writing. They were nice while they lasted but I cant rely on drives that change their internal hardware so frequently and then with relatively high probability of producing faulty devices as a result. I may consider them again at some future point but at this point I cant trust these drives to store my data. Rating is formally reduced to the minimum (1 star) as such a volatile produce design is unacceptable. If you get a good drive it will be fine but drive roulette is not game to be played. UPDATE: 5/7/2023 =============== Formally reducing review by 1 star (now 3 stars) because of the new 23011662 batch with firmware HPS2704M drives. The drive in my prior review was of this batch and so was its replacement. Both drives show ATA errors already (this new one as soon as I plugged it in) and neither drive supports SMART self-tests (prior batches/firmware did - as do ALL other SATA drives Ive ever used). SP tools do not (yet) recognize these drives so they cant run tests on them nor is there any new firmware to update to. The ATA error appears to be some sort of bug in the firmware that may not necessarily affect drive functionality so in a slightly risky move I am attempting to resilver onto this new replacement - time will tell if it suffers the same fate as the one it replaced. I also have another unopened drive of this same batch. I will be waiting a little before opening and testing it, pending the results I see here. This represents a significant reduction in quality control and makes me question further purchases. For now I am considering this a batch specific issue but if this continues I may need to review my star rating and find a new drive manufacturer. UPDATE: 5/1/2023 =============== I have purchased 8 of these drives so far for use in my ZFS pool. Overall I am pleased, especially for the price - they are replacing mechanical drives of comparable specs and as expected greatly outperform the spinning array. Quality control seem to be an issue though - of the 8 drives (technically 9 drives) two have now been defective shortly after arrival. As in showing I/O errors within 10hr of operations. This latest entry had a firmware version of HPS2704M and had ATA errors starting around 4hr resilvering mark (heavy write operations). It also refused to run SMART self tests - a bit odd since it does report SMART data... I might just have bad luck but we shall see as I have more drives to replace. 2 of 9 being faulty isnt good odds from my personal experience. The drives that work are working fine - no issues there so it seems that so far either they die quickly or work fine. Other interesting bits of information that might be useful to some - I run raidz2 with 8 drives per vdev. This last drive would have been the final replacement to an all flash vdev. I was getting sustained resilver speeds of around 350MB/s for several hours (i.e. up until failure). Back when the vdev was more spinning than flash I was getting speeds around 200MB/s for resilvering to flash and about 70MB/s resilvering to SMR 5400RPM drives - so overall a decent sustained performance despite being DRAMless. UPDATE: 2/6/2023 =============== The drive with firmware SN12429 (2.05TB) had write errors, only detectable via dmesg and ZFS error counts (SMART, badblocks, self-test, etc. all said everything was fine). Drive had to be RMAed. RMA process was quick and easy. Replacement drive has been received but is using firmware V1031C0 (2.00TB) which lacks DRAT/DZAT (not a big deal, just leaves me a little confused as to which firmware and feature set is supposed to be current and further proves the hardware variance despite using identical models and external appearance). (No firmware updates are available as per their firmware tool.) UPDATE: 1/6/2023 =============== Since for my use cases the limitations from my original review are acceptable I purchased another of these drives just a couple months later and I am surprised (in a good way) to report that the latest drive I received has a different firmware (possibly controller and/or NAND chips - not going to disassemble to verify). This new drive has firmware SN12429 and is 2.05 TB (1.86TiB) so slightly larger than the older drive. This new drive also DOES support DRAT/DZAT. Trim appears to function on my LSI 9211-8i (IT mode) under ZFS (2.1.4) with this drive. Other than those difference the drive appears to be otherwise identical to the older one. Hopefully this change remains in future drives, if so this is a decent drive for RAID/ZFS home use. Star rating remains unchanged as there is no way to know which version of the drive you have until you plug it in. Original Review (11/1/2022, Still Valid) ======================= Does what it should for the most part. It does slow down once you fill the SLC cache (as expected). Plastic casing (common for lower end SSDs) gives it a cheap and non-durable feel. This shouldnt matter too much unless you are doing a lot of hot swapping of the drive. GParted reports 1.82TiB usable space, the same as the 2TB HDD it replaced (so storage is a true 2TB not 1.92TB like some other 2TB models - this matters when replacing drives in arrays). Does not support DRAT/DZAT (Deterministic Read ZEROs After TRIM) - meaning no TRIM when connected to an LSI/Broadcom HBA. So while SP claims TRIM/RAID support it wont fully operate in all cases. Unfortunately the LSI/Broadcom HBAs are quite common and popular. Firmware V0303B0

I got this basically non-stop since November 2022 and its been great. Ive had no trouble moving it around to various computers, and anything I have on it loads up nice and fast. I know technically this isnt as fast as some of the other drives out there but for last gen/pretty simple gaming and other applications I havent really noticed a difference. Highly recommended for storage for setting up a MiSTer or other similar FPGA or emulation box or other small project.

Excelente lo recomiendo

De los 5 ssd que he comprado uno me salio defectuoso no le doy 1 estrella por que me aprobaron la garantia y seguiré comprado hasta que lo mejoren

Just got and tested it with CrystalDiskMark8 using an external $10 USB3.0 adapter. Testing again after installing internally in a late 2015 iMAC and after writing over 3TBs to it during several cloning/installation procedures. So far so good.

The drive itself seems pretty good especially for the price. My only complaint thus far is there are no mounting screws provided. How much would it cost them to include 4 mounting screws. 85 cents?

Sped up my system TREMENDOUSLY!

Got this to upgrade my external hard drive for my Xbox series x and it is a noticable improvement. Note that you will need a sata to USB 3.0 cable to use on xbox.

This is my forth Silicon Power SATA SSD. Never had Problems with them. They are coming complete clean (unformatted) Good price/value ratio. This is the only low price SSD Brand I trust, 5 yr warranty sounds also not bad. Scan the QR on the backside - Amazon put its Sticker over the contact information.