ADATA Premier Pro SP600 ASP600S3-32GM-C 2.5" 32GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: Good price, RMA process not too difficult

Cons: After about a week of service, this drive crashed my system due to badblocks. I RMAed it and sent it off to adata. I didn't want to wait for the RMA process, I was impressed with the RMA method, and still had faith in adata, so I ordered another from Newegg. When the original arrived I'd just stick it into a different system. No loss. Well the 2nd one came in, it worked for about a week, then badblocks again.

myuser@mybox:~$ sudo badblocks -v /dev/sdc
Checking blocks 0 to 31266647
Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): 0.00% done, 0:00 elapsed. (0/0/0 err
4515228 done, 0:35 elapsed. (0/0/0 errors)
4515229 done, 0:38 elapsed. (1/0/0 errors)
etc until a total of 32 blocks.

As this unfolds I will report back. But right now, I'm not too happy.

Pros: I set up 2 of these in a raid 0 for Windows 8 Pro. After first post I set up the logical array and installed the raid drivers and windows 8 pro without a hitch. Been running it nonstop for about 3 months now and they just hum right along. Well actually not even a hum as they are silent.

Cons: None really.

Other Thoughts: I put a 120mm fan right on the front of the drive bay to keep these things cool. They share it with a 160 gig HDD.

My System:
Biostar TA990FXE mb
AMD FX-6100
2x4 Corsair Vengance ram at 1866
XFX Core Edition 7850 1 gig vid card
600 watt Rosewill Stallion ps
2 x 32 gig Adata SP600 SSD
1 Seagate 160 gig HDD
Corsair Carbide 200r case

Pros: It works fine. Silent.

Cons: You're likely sacrificing a LOT of capacity for a new technology versus the old spinning discs. Whereas I really have no outright complaints with this drive's functionality, it is only 32GB. Which fine if you are running a lightweight OS and mainly using this to boot your system and not a heck of a lot else.

Other Thoughts: I have some old IDE hard drives that I have used in some sort of Frankenbuilds, and comparing, say, the boot-time between one of those and this SSD, yes, this boots faster. How much faster? Eh, maybe 20seconds?? A lot of your perceived waiting to boot could also be waiting for your motherboard to post, which has very little to do with the speed of your hard drive or SSD.

Having said that, I am running a lightweight Linux system, not a fully-laden Windows OS. If you are just certain you will never store anything beyond your OS and a few minor items on your drive, you can get a new Pentagon or Library Of Congress-size 1TB HDD. I'd go that route.

In it's present form (32GB for $40) I think you're just sacrificing too much capacity for supposed "blazing" speed (versus the disc drives) which most people who aren't hideously bored and benchmarking such things are never going to notice.

Pros: - Good price
- Drive actually is really fast.
- The firmware flashing is super easy.
(if you bought this drive and cannot install to it, read my comments)

Cons: - ABYSMAL support from Adata.
- Firmware on shipped drive was 1.3, current was 2.1
- Nothing (web nor manual) suggested updating the firmware if you were having issues.

Other Thoughts: This drive runs a small linux install that I use to manage a bunch of UNIX boxes. Once the problems were resolved, it really does perform very well.

The problem is with support... I opened a ticket after having problems instead of just RMA'ing it to NewEgg. Based on all the vendor responses, I thought they would help.

The auto-responder claimed I would get a response in 48 hours, but that was not the case. I attempted to use the website "status inquiry" page to update my comments with more information, but the web-form gave me an error. I finally did get a second response telling me to run check-disk on the drive, and if that worked it was not their fault... wow...

After a lot of googling, I started to see a trend in other vendors telling customers to check their firmware, so I started trying to find out how to check my ADATA firmware. I did find an ADATA firmware updater that you had to image to a usb key and boot off of, so I tried that. Low and behold, that solved the problem!

So here's the after-gripe... I tried to find a way to get this info back to ADATA, and again I can't close or edit my open case, and the feedback tool doesn't work.

I should give this a 1 egg for the horrible support of a produce they already know is causing people problems... but at the end of the day, I really do find the drive performance impressive. The performance is surprisingly close to some of the better 2nd gen SSD's out there. It's a shame they don't try a little harder to preemptively resolve issues like this. The info in their first "actual" response should have been in their auto-response, and mentioning the possibility of needing to update the firmware (and providing a link to do so) should have been included as well. I was also surprised that none of the usual BIOS setting issues for SSD's (AHCI sata settings, etc) were mentioned. Definitely something Adata needs to improve on.

Pros: Works great, fast as lightning!

Cons: None, apparently.

Pros: It's an SSD, and it was in-stock.

Cons: Worked fine under Linux -- I made sure to move everything write-intensive (swap, /tmp, /var, /home) off to a hard drive array. Still, after six weeks, I suddenly couldn't boot the machine due to hard drive errors. Disappointed -- this cost me way more in fix time than it would have cost to buy a more expensive name-brand SSD.

Pros: Installed windows 7 on it, boot time under 20 seconds. The fastest boot on a non-apple computer

Cons: None

Pros: It didn't catch on fire? Hard to come up with a "Pro" for this drive.

Cons: Experienced File system corruption after one day. Formatted the drive, and got a corrupt file system on the 3rd subsequent reboot.

Other Thoughts: I was leery of this drive initially, and I should have stuck with my gut and ordered something else, now I have to go through the hassle or an RMA.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We are sorry that you have had difficulties with our product. Please contact us directly to assist with warranty for this unit.

One of support members will be happy to assist you.

ADATA Customer Service Phone#: 1-888-962-3282 Option 4

Support Email: support@adatausa.com

Pros: Detected as expected by older hardware. Using as SATA II drive is still a lot faster with no seek delay. Perfect size for a Boot / OS drive for OpenSuse 12.3. Simple and drama free installation.

Cons: Not big enough for use by VM and OS together. VMWare always ends up in the /home directory which, in this case, is the slower spinning drive. This assumes use of one of the VMs in a Linux setup like mine.

Other Thoughts: For a setup like mine it works wonderfully. Installation of the OS (required to get partitions worked out) took half an hour including forcing the installer NOT to try to use the SSD for the home volume (this is a openSuse installer issue and has nothing to do with the drive hardware) and a full format of both drives. Can't say anything about the longevity of the hardware as I've only had it for a day in my system.

Pros: -Relatively inexpensive SSD.
-Didn't wait to the end of its warranty before failing.

Cons: Corrupt data within 10 minutes of installing fresh OS. Could not boot machine on the 3rd try. Reinstalled OS, same issue, but slightly different behavior because different files were corrupted this time. On reboot, Windows automatically started checkdisk insisting there were errors to be corrected. Errored out in the middle of the disk check. This thing stinks.

Other Thoughts: RMA'd for refund. Maybe I just got a dud, but why tempt fate? This is the first ADATA drive I have bought. The Kingston and Corsair SSDs I have have been flawless.