My Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD just died suddenly after 6 months of use. is this a common issue?

[Chelan]

My Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD just died suddenly after 6 months of use. Is this a common issue? I'v seen this article https://www.ryadel.com/en/sabrent-ssd-review-rocket-nvme-pcie-m2-2280/ about the same issue. If so Linus should make a video on it.

 

[chemokitty]

I have had 2 die now within 8 months of purchase. They were purchased 5 days apart.

[wONKEyeYEs]

On 6/24/2021 at 7:09 PM, Chelan said:

My Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD just died suddenly after 6 months of use.

Eight months and going good knock on wood.

[Nollid]

Mine is almost 11 months old and just died on me.

[WintorialsLift]

On 6/25/2021 at 6:09 AM, Chelan said:

My Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD just died suddenly after 6 months of use. Is this a common issue? I'v seen this article https://www.ryadel.com/en/sabrent-ssd-review-rocket-nvme-pcie-m2-2280/ about the same issue. If so Linus should make a video on it.

 

Sometimes these SSDs just die. Never had PERSONAL experience with it but reading others experience with it it's a bit shady (IMO)

[G280B]

Had mine for just over a Year and has died when reinstalling windows, to add insult to injury, I have to post the NVMe to USA from UK, not a happy chap at all :(

[soundwave123]

Yes, the Sabrent drives are bad. I bought two drives back in 2020 from two different merchants where both failed in under a year with less than 3 TBW. I had a heat sink enclosure (they may deny warranty coverage if using standard motherboard heatsink). I had random IO issues on the drives and one of them would even randomly reboot my machine once and a while. The replacements still had the random IO issues, so I switched to a different brand a year ago and have not had any issues since.

 

I have seen many discussions about issues with this drive, yet I still see Linus Tech Tips use their drives all the time. The drives are not safe to use and I don't think they should be indirectly advertising them all the time.

[NobleGamer]

2 minutes ago, soundwave123 said:

I have seen many discussions about issues with this drive, yet I still see Linus Tech Tips use their drives all the time.

Clearly the drives are for content creators who do benchmarking, and not meant for regular gamers /s

 

10 minutes ago, soundwave123 said:

The drives are not safe to use and I don't think they should be indirectly advertising them all the time.

 

Because there's some number of replies & threads elsewhere about it? How do we know its a higher failure rate when we factor in the brand recognition and their sales relative to other brands?

 

The most concrete and relatively easiest ways of determining how reliable a drive is would be to find a store/review site that can filters on only verified buyers - Not responses to a thread like this that feed confirmation bias about issues with Sabrent SSDs.

This method is not without its challenges if a brand has given away a bunch of drives to have people review them.

 

Aside from that, the most concrete determination about reliability would be a technical assessment of its components (the memory itself & memory controller), and whether those parts have known issues.

 

So absent either of those two items, we're just left with some personal opinions & experiences. Go ahead and don't buy Sabrent if that's how you feel and your experience - Just seems silly to say they're "not safe" for anyone without something more concrete.

[soundwave123]

On 10/16/2022 at 3:43 PM, NobleGamer said:

Clearly the drives are for content creators who do benchmarking, and not meant for regular gamers /s

 

 

Because there's some number of replies & threads elsewhere about it? How do we know its a higher failure rate when we factor in the brand recognition and their sales relative to other brands?

 

The most concrete and relatively easiest ways of determining how reliable a drive is would be to find a store/review site that can filters on only verified buyers - Not responses to a thread like this that feed confirmation bias about issues with Sabrent SSDs.

This method is not without its challenges if a brand has given away a bunch of drives to have people review them.

 

Aside from that, the most concrete determination about reliability would be a technical assessment of its components (the memory itself & memory controller), and whether those parts have known issues.

 

So absent either of those two items, we're just left with some personal opinions & experiences. Go ahead and don't buy Sabrent if that's how you feel and your experience - Just seems silly to say they're "not safe" for anyone without something more concrete.

You are correct that verified reviews are a decent metric. If you compare this drive to other similar well known brands it isn't even close. The percentage of negative reviews are significantly higher and are mostly related to failure in short periods of time. The other brands negative reviews are a mix of failure, performance, etc...

[NewMaxx]

It's not a Sabrent issue, it's an E16 issue. I post about this a lot on Reddit where people go after E16 deals because of the high TBW thinking that equates to reliability. It does not. The E16 has a higher RMA rate than the E12(S) and E18. You can find posts from me on this (on Reddit) over the last few months even, but unfortunately people see the Gen4 + price tag + TBW and then think an E16 drive is a good choice for RAIDs and write-heavy workloads. Not saying you guys used it for that, but many people do. This applies to all E16-based drives, probably because the controller was rushed out for AMD's X570 launch and is essentially an overtuned E12.

[soundwave123]

21 hours ago, NewMaxx said:

It's not a Sabrent issue, it's an E16 issue. I post about this a lot on Reddit where people go after E16 deals because of the high TBW thinking that equates to reliability. It does not. The E16 has a higher RMA rate than the E12(S) and E18. You can find posts from me on this (on Reddit) over the last few months even, but unfortunately people see the Gen4 + price tag + TBW and then think an E16 drive is a good choice for RAIDs and write-heavy workloads. Not saying you guys used it for that, but many people do. This applies to all E16-based drives, probably because the controller was rushed out for AMD's X570 launch and is essentially an overtuned E12.

Even their E12(S) drives do poorly compared to other major brand Gen 3 drives. Their E18 (Rocket 4 Plus) seems to be doing significantly better than their other drives, though still a bit to early to tell for sure. It maybe that E16 drives aren't so good, but I don't think that absolves Sabrent of responsibility especially given that they are still aggressively selling these drives knowing the significantly higher failure rate. 

[NewMaxx]

On 10/21/2022 at 7:26 PM, soundwave123 said:

Even their E12(S) drives do poorly compared to other major brand Gen 3 drives. Their E18 (Rocket 4 Plus) seems to be doing significantly better than their other drives, though still a bit to early to tell for sure. It maybe that E16 drives aren't so good, but I don't think that absolves Sabrent of responsibility especially given that they are still aggressively selling these drives knowing the significantly higher failure rate. 

They use the same basic hardware as other manufacturers. It's licensed controllers, sourced flash, and BOM. I actually trust some manufacturers less because they swap hardware over time. The P34A80 is probably the best example. The E16 has a higher RMA rate and I've heard this from multiple manufacturers, but the rate is still relatively small in the grand scheme of things. Actually, the controller company, Phison, usually handles the RMAs if they are not just something the user did wrong. In general I think E12(S) drives are fairly reliable and so are E18. But my readers know I've never been a fan of the E16. It has its place and I don't think its outlandishly bad, but many users do buy it for the wrong type of usage...but really, newer drives are better in its spot, anyway.

 

Also we're seeing many manufacturers use really strange flash. I know because people report this on my discord server after I show them how to ID the hardware. YMTC and older flash are not super uncommon. So the no-name brands have more inherent risk there, at least.