ADATA S511 Series AS511S3-120GM-C 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: Fine when it works.

Cons: Stability was a major issue. BSODs, random restarts. As others have said.

Other Thoughts: I had no idea what the issue was till I read the other reviews here on Newegg. Glad I did as I was about to replace my mobo.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer, we are sorry that you have had difficulties with our product. If you are still experiencing issues or need additional support please contact our office directly: Phone: 1-888-962-3282 x604; Email: support@adatausa.com. One of support staff members will be happy to assist you with your case.

Pros: Very Fast and will saturate a SATA II connection. Initially setup with SATA II and now I am on SATA III with full speed. So far it hasn't failed me. The case is made of metal and has a good feel of quality to it.

Cons: Random blue screens prior to the firmware update.

Other Thoughts: After the firmware update that came out in November of 2011 this drive has been flawless. No more blue screens. I highly recommend this drive.

Pros: Fast - when it works.

Cons: Constant BSOD problems, completely disappears on reboot all the time. RMA'd for a new one which arrived yesterday. Tried it out today and it has the same problems as the last.

Poor quality control from Adata on these SSDs. Will probably be sticking with OCZ or Samsung from now on.

Pros: Very Fast, excellent price/performance ratio. Easy to install.

Cons: Failed completely after 8 months. Unable to be detected in the bios of 3 separate computers on 3 of 6 gbs SATA ports or with 2 different external SATA to USB converters.

Other Thoughts: Recently purchased the 240GB version of this drive before this one gave out. So far experiencing the same incredible speeds and the price for that drive was excellent as well. I still praise ADATA for their cheap but speedy drives. Taught me that while SSDs seem incredibly reliable, they can fail completely without any forewarning like traditional HDDs usually gave. I still recommend this drive just for the incredible bang for the buck, but do yourself a favor and pick up the extended warranty during checkout.

Pros: Sandforce based, so works extremely well in RAID configurations, due to the garbage collection. With one of these AS-SSD reports 480 MB/s sequential read. Pairing two in RAID-0 gives 930 MB/s. (This requires SATA-III of course).

Cons: Always make sure firmware is up to date. Early versions had stability issues.

Pros: - Insanely fast; well within tolerance of advertised speeds
- Stable, after firmware updates (see cons)
- Reliable for 7 months now

Cons: After a few weeks of use, I did have a few BSODs show their ugly faces, but it was not a chronic problem (maybe once per week).

However, after 2 firmware updates, I have had no further issues. It's now an amazingly and reliable drive.

Other Thoughts: I reviewed this once before, but wanted to chime in about my medium-term experience.

***READ THIS*** New buyers should no longer be at risk of encountering any issues with this drive (other than occasional DOA, but that seems to happen a lot with all SSDs). HOWEVER, just to be safe, the first thing you should do after getting your OS installed, is to check that the firmware is up to date. It's very easy to do; just make sure you're using the stock Windows SATA driver - DO NOT USE A MANUFACTURER'S DRIVER FOR YOUR SATA CONTROLLER. It wont hurt the drive, but the update will not happen. I spent a week trying to figure that out.***

Pros: None

Cons: I could have written all the posts below. Windows crashes, won't find the SSD on reboot. Adata's customer support form on their site doesn't work either, it keeps giving validation errors. Nice.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We apologize for the inconvenience that this may have caused. Please be rest assured that ADATA strives to provide high quality products as well as excellent service for our customers. All SSDs are backed by 3-year warranty. Please contact our customer support center through email at support@adatausa.com or via phone at 1-888-962-3282 ext. 604. Our customer support specialist is available from Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm PST. Please allow up to 24hrs for us to get back to your request.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
ADATA Customer Support

Pros: Fast.

Cons: Crashes Win 7 randomly to BSOD and reboots but does not recognize the SSD as a boot device. Must restart and manually select in BIOS. I am running the latest SSD firmware from Adata released in Nov 2011.

Other Thoughts: Get something else, there are many better choices.

Pros: Fast.

Cons: As those before, my machine randomly crashes and does not recognize the SSD on reboot. Very frustrating. I have been running the latest firmware from Adata for a month and no change. Also with a Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 mobo.

Pros: This SSD works great. It is fast, I only have SATA II on my motherboard. I can't wait to get SATA III and see how fast it really is! I did the firmware upgrade as soon as it came out.

Cons: I had the same problem everyone else had. My Win 7 machine would just freeze, no BSD just the screen and no mouse or keyboard.

Other Thoughts: Everyone had the same problem with the SF 2200 controller. Firmware updates fixed it. The firmware update would not work on it as a boot drive. I had to take the drive out and set it on a USB dock and update it from my laptop.