ADATA SP920 SSD & Some Thoughts on Rebranding Products
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,033 words · ~5 min read
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the Jazz mini is a beautiful and compact aluminum stand for your smartphone that
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even holds tablets up to 8 in Click now to learn more to begin with this is an
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SSD update and discussion about the practice of rebranding products as much
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as it is an overview of the adata sp920 SSD so let's get into why this product
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exists if you're like me and you've been like amp about third generation
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sandforce drives since they were shown off at computex 2013 by a data no less
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then you'll be disappointed to know that despite ad's close relationship with
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sanfor Force this isn't a sanfor force 3000 Series drive and we'll have to wait
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a little bit longer for that but that doesn't mean it's a bad product it's not
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the first time we've seen SSD manufacturers Source different
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controller technology and nand to make
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sure that their products stay competitive I mean heck even Intel has
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done it so ad went shopping and the
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sp920 actually ended up using mostly the same internal guts as the brand new
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performance drive from crucial the m550
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so at the core of the sp920 is a Marvel 9189 controller with a crucial design
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firmware and either eight or 16 chips
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soldered to the PCB that feature micron's state-of-the-art high density
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20 NM 128 GB Nan flash also present is a
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cluster of capacitors on the PCB that hand handle flushing data from the RAM
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cache to the non-volatile man flash in the event of an unexpected power loss
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this is a feature that is traditionally more common on Enterprise drives where
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an unexpected power loss is actually much less likely to occur so it's great
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to see it implemented on a consumer drive as well now the choice of m550
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Hardware enables a data to deliver a great set of features at a very
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competitive price point with solid performance you get trim and active
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garbage ction you get AES 256-bit Hardware encryption with support for
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Microsoft e Drive and I mean you get like smart and adaptive thermal
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monitoring and protection all that good stuff but couldn't you just as easily
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get all this by buying a crucial m550 directly why does this product exist
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let's talk frankly about rebrands for a moment what's good and what's bad about
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them first the good things one is when they offer some kind of a tangible value
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ad like a longer warranty or better accessories number two is that it's easy
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to find on this drive and evaluate its usefulness for your needs because you
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can go and look at a review of one of the equivalent ones even if a site you
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like hasn't reviewed this exact one number three is that more competition
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does Drive aggressive pricing for consumers and number four is that you
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get long-term support for the product that is in essence backed by a very
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large company with a vested interest in keeping each and every customer happy I
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mean an example of this is something like a laptop if like e machines uh
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doesn't invest the R&D to keep giving you graphics card driver updates for
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your budget desktop it's okay because ultimately it's an NVIDIA graphics card
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and they're going to support it in the long term anyway but what about the bad
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stuff when it causes confusion because there are so many options a customer
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doesn't know what to buy I see that as potentially harmful but many others
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would argue that more competition is always better so that ties into one of
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the positive points number two is when a Rebrand ends up being slightly different
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in a way that's not very well documented in this case ad data didn't do a
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particularly good job of calling out that their 128 gig and 256 gig models
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don't perform as well as the higher capacity ones or the crucial m550
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equivalents at that capacity review sites have performance numbers for each
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capacity broken down but adata site only
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lists the one tbte drive this difference in performance is honestly something
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that the average person wouldn't notice without benchmarking the drive and it's
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due to the use of fewer higher density flash chips instead of more lower
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density chips and it saves a bit of cost but also reduces the drive sequential
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right and read speeds so I see it as something that should have been called
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out very very clearly but the bottom line is should you buy the sp920 and the
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conclusion comes down to this power loss protection and class leading encryption
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support make this drive a super safe place to put your data and the sp920
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while not the best performing drive on the market is extremely price
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competitive compared directly with its twin brother the m550 ad data delivers
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the same 7mm to 9mm adapter and three-year warranty but throws in a
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cronis migration software there's a key on the back of the drive and a 2 and 1
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half in to 3 and 1/2 in adapter something that crucial doesn't even
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offer in a kit anymore so two thumbs up for those things guys like and share
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