ADATA SSD

If any members here use one, does the ADATA SSD have a good reputation for reliability?
This is why I'm asking.

This past Friday I did a little bit of an upgrade to my desktop PC.
There was a new ADATA 500GB SSD installed, the fan at the top of the back of the tower was replaced and, the OS was upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7.

This upgrade was done by a local computer business.
This business has been in business for almost 30 years so I assume they know what they are doing.

This morning, although the computer was running, nothing would display on the monitor.
So, I had to manually turn off the computer.
From that point on, it turned into a series of multiple restart attempts by me and different messages appearing on the monitor during these restart attempts.
The auto repair in process message appeared a few times.

A couple of times the computer actually did start working again but that would only last for maybe 10 minutes and then it would for lack of a better term, crash again.

Now the computer won't even start up.
When I press the power button, it tries to restart, then stops, then tries to restart and it's just a continuing cycle of automatic restart attempts.

Does this sound like a SSD issue or maybe a Windows 10 issue?

A bench test was done on the computer the day before the upgrade was done and it showed that one of the memory ports is damaged and I was told that the only fix for that was a new motherboard and or a new cpu.
My impression was that the new SSD would compensate for the damaged memory port.

I'll be taking the computer back tomorrow to find out what has happened.

canongear wrote in post #19103572
If any members here use one, does the ADATA SSD have a good reputation for reliability?
This is why I'm asking.

This past Friday I did a little bit of an upgrade to my desktop PC.
There was a new ADATA 500GB SSD installed, the fan at the top of the back of the tower was replaced and, the OS was upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7.

This upgrade was done by a local computer business.
This business has been in business for almost 30 years so I assume they know what they are doing.

This morning, although the computer was running, nothing would display on the monitor.
So, I had to manually turn off the computer.
From that point on, it turned into a series of multiple restart attempts by me and different messages appearing on the monitor during these restart attempts.
The auto repair in process message appeared a few times.

A couple of times the computer actually did start working again but that would only last for maybe 10 minutes and then it would for lack of a better term, crash again.

Now the computer won't even start up.
When I press the power button, it tries to restart, then stops, then tries to restart and it's just a continuing cycle of automatic restart attempts.

Does this sound like a SSD issue or maybe a Windows 10 issue?

A bench test was done on the computer the day before the upgrade was done and it showed that one of the memory ports is damaged and I was told that the only fix for that was a new motherboard and or a new cpu.
My impression was that the new SSD would compensate for the damaged memory port.

I'll be taking the computer back tomorrow to find out what has happened.

I had a 2 TB ADATA drive in a brand new computer and the drive failed after about 6 weeks. It crashed the computer. It exhibited intermittent performance after that (I put it into an enclosure and tested it that way). Sent it back to ADATA and they replaced it with a new one. No fun, though - chaos for a while recovering data and trying to find out what was actually defective.

The new one is a couple weeks old now and working fine. I'm very careful doing backups, though, in case something happens again.

Archibald wrote in post #19103574
I had a 2 TB ADATA drive in a brand new computer and the drive failed after about 6 weeks. It crashed the computer. It exhibited intermittent performance after that (I put it into an enclosure and tested it that way). Sent it back to ADATA and they replaced it with a new one. No fun, though - chaos for a while recovering data and trying to find out what was actually defective.

The new one is a couple weeks old now and working fine. I'm very careful doing backups, though, in case something happens again.

Good to know.
If the new SSD is the problem, I'll consider asking for a more well known brand to be used if available.
Maybe ADATA is a well known brand but I've never heard of it.

I realize that any brand of SSD could have issues but, prior to this new SSD being installed, there were no issues with the Samsung SSD that came installed with the computer over 5yrs ago.

canongear wrote in post #19103581
Good to know.
If the new SSD is the problem, I'll consider asking for a more well known brand to be used if available.
Maybe ADATA is a well known brand but I've never heard of it.

I realize that any brand of SSD could have issues but, prior to this new SSD being installed, there were no issues with the Samsung SSD that came installed with the computer over 5yrs ago.

I should clarify that mine was an M.2 PCIe drive, model SX8200. I don't think you can judge reliability from a sample of 1. I had not heard of ADATA either but I think they are a significant cpompany. Tom's Hardware seems to like them.
https://www.tomshardwa​re.com …-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955.html

I hope my new one works out, because they are such neat drives. I am considering putting a 2 TB one into my laptop. It is just a humble Dell XPS 13 with a 256 GB drive. But a 2 TB drive will work (I tried it) and it would be amazing to be able to travel with that much space for photos.

I'd be trying to boot off a USB stick to see wether the issue is related to the drive or if something else is causing the problem, either way doesn't look good.
(from the description, symptoms could be anything from motherboard to PSU or even memory related)

joeseph wrote in post #19103662
I'd be trying to boot off a USB stick to see wether the issue is related to the drive or if something else is causing the problem, either way doesn't look good.
(from the description, symptoms could be anything from motherboard to PSU or even memory related)

The intermittent behavior described is similar to what I had. It was far from clear initially what exactly the cause was. I still had my old boot drive and swapping it back in got the computer running again. Subsequent testing showed the SSD to be intermittently faulty. Took a couple of weeks in all to figure it out. But yeah, in the OP's case, it could be something else. I guess it will be up to the computer shop to deal with it.

canongear wrote in post #19103572
A couple of times the computer actually did start working again but that would only last for maybe 10 minutes and then it would for lack of a better term, crash again.

Now the computer won't even start up.
When I press the power button, it tries to restart, then stops, then tries to restart and it's just a continuing cycle of automatic restart attempts.

Does this sound like a SSD issue or maybe a Windows 10 issue?

A bench test was done on the computer the day before the upgrade was done and it showed that one of the memory ports is damaged and I was told that the only fix for that was a new motherboard and or a new cpu.
My impression was that the new SSD would compensate for the damaged memory port.

I'll be taking the computer back tomorrow to find out what has happened.

A couple of possible issues. You've had a drive replaced and a fan replaced so that means the wiring was disturbed. I would have your repair facility carefully check all the cabling for loose connections. Make sure every connector is well seated. Can they put the old hard drive back in (might have been wiped) or swap another drive in temporarily to recheck behavior?

You mention

There are utilities to test RAM and I wonder if that is what you mean by a "bench test". One good tool is at https://www.memtest86.​com/. Your difficulty might be in getting the PC to run long enough to use the tool.

I also wonder about your statement that the SSD would compensate for the damaged memory port. Is it physical damage to the memory port that prevents it from being used or makes it unreliable? Perhaps your repair shop is talking about removing a portion of memory, say from a mechanically bad slot, then relying on a larger paging file to compensate. In other words, if you had 16GB of RAM, you could remove 8GB and still operate on the remaining 8GB.

ADATA is a well known drive manufacturer that is used a great deal in gaming machines. The drives generally get good reviews. Having said that a reviewer subjects a drive to a few hours of use. Drives do fail, sometimes early on (often called "infant mortality"). That I believe was the case with Archibald's issues, perhaps a slim chance that the failure was aggravated by not initially using the heat sink with his new drive.

Last thing, what is the make and model of this PC?

John from PA wrote in post #19103723
A couple of possible issues. You've had a drive replaced and a fan replaced so that means the wiring was disturbed. I would have your repair facility carefully check all the cabling for loose connections. Make sure every connector is well seated. Can they put the old hard drive back in (might have been wiped) or swap another drive in temporarily to recheck behavior?

You mention

There are utilities to test RAM and I wonder if that is what you mean by a "bench test". One good tool is at https://www.memtest86.​com/. Your difficulty might be in getting the PC to run long enough to use the tool.

I also wonder about your statement that the SSD would compensate for the damaged memory port. Is it physical damage to the memory port that prevents it from being used or makes it unreliable? Perhaps your repair shop is talking about removing a portion of memory, say from a mechanically bad slot, then relying on a larger paging file to compensate. In other words, if you had 16GB of RAM, you could remove 8GB and still operate on the remaining 8GB.

ADATA is a well known drive manufacturer that is used a great deal in gaming machines. The drives generally get good reviews. Having said that a reviewer subjects a drive to a few hours of use. Drives do fail, sometimes early on (often called "infant mortality"). That I believe was the case with Archibald's issues, perhaps a slim chance that the failure was aggravated by not initially using the heat sink with his new drive.

Last thing, what is the make and model of this PC?

The original SSD is still in the computer.
It was left in on purpose as it's "married" to the new SSD.
That's the term the person used who did the upgrade work.

I find it odd that it doesn't show in device manager though.
Must have something to do with it being married to the new SSD.

I had concerns about losing my Lightroom catalogue with the new SSD being installed so that's how things were done.
I was told to try things that way for a week or so and if things worked properly, I would take the computer back and the original SSD would be formatted and used as extra storage.

As far as my statement about the new SSD compensating for the damaged memory port, that was my understanding as how it was explained to me.
I'm probably totally wrong about that though.
I asked why a new memory stick couldn't simply be installed and was told that wasn't possible due to the port damage.
Something about the ports working in parallel with one another.

I asked what damaged the port and was told that it could've been installed improperly or it was just age.

I know some basic stuff about computers but not enough to go into detail about things.

The computer is a custom build done by another local computer business.
Got it about 5.5 years ago.

Mentioning that the original SSD was left in the PC and device manager doesn't see it again makes me think of some wiring issues. After thoroughly checking all the cabling, and I emphasize thoroughly, I would disconnect the new ADATA drive and boot off the old drive, then retest things. Make sure you run the memory test utility I mentioned, and I'd run it for 24 hours.

Turns out the issue wasn't the new SSD but a bad memory module.

The bench test that was done last week did indicate an issue related to memory so they decided to look a bit closer at that area today.
They swapped the memory modules back and forth between the ports and that's how it was discovered it was a module and not a port.
Still not quite sure why it was originally thought it was a damaged port.

Regarding the original SSD that was left in the computer, turns out it wasn't hooked up.
Found that out when I asked why I couldn't see it listed in the device manager.
Wasn't hooked up on purpose as it still has Windows 7 on it and that might have caused problems.

Will wait a while to see if there aren't any more issues and then will take the computer back to get the original SSD formatted and use it for extra storage space.

So now with the new SSD and both 8gb memory modules working properly, the computer is so fast that it sent this post before I finished typ

canongear wrote in post #19104089
Turns out the issue wasn't the new SSD but a bad memory module.

The bench test that was done last week did indicate an issue related to memory so they decided to look a bit closer at that area today.
They swapped the memory modules back and forth between the ports and that's how it was discovered it was a module and not a port.
Still not quite sure why it was originally thought it was a damaged port.

Regarding the original SSD that was left in the computer, turns out it wasn't hooked up.
Found that out when I asked why I couldn't see it listed in the device manager.
Wasn't hooked up on purpose as it still has Windows 7 on it and that might have caused problems.

Will wait a while to see if there aren't any more issues and then will take the computer back to get the original SSD formatted and use it for extra storage space.

So now with the new SSD and both 8gb memory modules working properly, the computer is so fast that it sent this post before I finished typ

Good to hear you are up and running again, and apparently without cost, and also that the ADATA drive is working well!

canongear wrote in post #19104089
Turns out the issue wasn't the new SSD but a bad memory module.

The bench test that was done last week did indicate an issue related to memory so they decided to look a bit closer at that area today.
They swapped the memory modules back and forth between the ports and that's how it was discovered it was a module and not a port.
Still not quite sure why it was originally thought it was a damaged port.

Regarding the original SSD that was left in the computer, turns out it wasn't hooked up.
Found that out when I asked why I couldn't see it listed in the device manager.
Wasn't hooked up on purpose as it still has Windows 7 on it and that might have caused problems.

Will wait a while to see if there aren't any more issues and then will take the computer back to get the original SSD formatted and use it for extra storage space.

So now with the new SSD and both 8gb memory modules working properly, the computer is so fast that it sent this post before I finished typ

One thing to consider would be to use the original SSD in an enclosure.. An enclosure will cost about $15 and then you can connect it as needed at a USB port.

Once you get things straightened out and reliable I would rethink your statement

Seems to me they left a lot of loose ends for something as easy as a drive swap.