Hacker News Reader

Comment by wpm | Hacker News Reader

There's a 1TB Silicon Power SSD in 2230 form factor on sale on Amazon right now. PCIe Gen 4, far faster than I'd ever get over the wee PCIe lanes available on a Pi 5, so I can theoretically, and probably would go even cheaper.

So why should I get one from the Pi Foundation?

View on HN

You didn't include the price of the one you found on Amazon, if it's this one, it's $69.97, the same price as the one sold by Raspberry:

https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-200MB-Compatible-SU01KG...

I'd buy the one from Raspberry just because I know they've tested it and it works well. (plus I prefer to not buy from Amazon, but that's just my personal preference)

OK what testing did they do?

Does the Pi Foundation issue a QVL for SD Cards? SSDs?

Not to shill for a company, but probably because it's rated to work with it. Similar experience you get with "enterprise equipment".

"You could use any other drive, but our drive has been through rigorous testing" kind of situation.

Ideally we wouldn't need this since standards exist, but time and time again somebody is bound to take a shortcut and break things. Be it Raspberry in their PCI-E implementation or the drive manufacturer skipping a few NVME functions to save few kilobytes of firmware.

Think of it as a guaranteed "trouble-free" experience if you just want to plug it in and work.

I have been boiled by these cheap SSDs once, and it was a firmware related issue too.

200USD for half-assed 4TBs of SSD storage that may or may not work depending on what you plug it into.

PS: It was a Silicon Power SSD as well, so really do watch out for that stuff.

I've never had a M.2 SSD not work with a proper device, but I guess that might vary.

I see you've never had the awfulness of dealing with the weirdly-keyed SSDs or the SATA SSDs! They're terrible! I had one of those laying around in an older mobo and I wanted to just put it in another machine, nope. I found an SSD that's the same size, got an M.2 to USB adapter that handles all of them, then just used dd to copy the data over (since they're the same size, you can just dd it directly). Not fun.

Buying the wrong type of SSD is not the SSDs fault.

Aren't SSDs notoriously one of the most counterfeited items? I'd trust one from the Pi foundation over Amazon any day.

Yeah, but who is the OEM supplier?

Further to the technical points of a sibling comment, I imagine supporting the Pi Foundation is a motivator for many. I'd rather pay a little more for a product directly from them than not, if it helps to keep them going.

Most of the things are things people have already done. This is not the first SSD connected to a Pi.

The reason to get theirs is support or get something that's already tested and you know will work out of the box.

From what I've read that (assuming you mean this one [1]) has a decent reputation as a mainstream budget PCIe 4.0 SSD. It is $70.

However, also on Amazon right now on sale is the 1 TB Samsung 990 EVO Plus [2], which is generally considered to be a higher-end drive with better performance and longevity which is currently $65.

The Silicon Power is a 2230 and the Samsung is a 2280 so if one is using the official SSD hat the Samsung won't work. The official had only supports 2230 and 2242. However there are many 3rd party hats the do handle 2280, and I've also seen a base that goes under the RPi5 instead of on top.

The 2 TB Samsung is also on sale for $120, compared to the 2 TB Silicon Power for $140.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-200MB-Compatible-SU01KG...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DHLFWBQ1?th=1

If I had to guess, it's so companies can order 1000s of them through the same channels they're getting the Pis from

Because marketing?

I suppose if you're buying something for someone who is new to all of this, it might be worthwhile to have many things be RPi branded so if there are issues, there's only one party to worry about.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/z3lziq/thoughts_o...

"Silicon Power has the highest failure rate of any brand we've used."

"I'm very late to this thread but I wanted to say their SSDs are garbage."

That's like saying there's a $25/hr. dev who knows Rust and is based in Los Angeles. So why hire better?

What if there was a $50/hour Rust dev in Los Angeles but you pay $50 per hour to them and they pay another dev $25 an hour to do the work?

This is a white-label SSD. It's a bad deal.

Silicon Power has one of the worst SSD controllers. If you value your data, you throw that away.

2230's are not all that common, so having another non-amazon source for them is a good thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com