Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan Z SLC Cache 3D NAND TLC SATA III SSDs: 480GB $28, 240GB
$18
$25.99
+ Free Shipping
+34Deal Score
36,815 Views
Various Retailers have Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan Z SLC Cache 3D NAND TLC 2.5" SATA III Internal Solid State Drives on sale as listed below. Shipping is free unless otherwise noted.
Thanks to Community Members cheeknowe & bigsnyder for finding this deal.
QA note: These items are no longer available via Amazon, see FP for additional options
No DRAM, FYI. Not QLC, thankfully. Really cheap and not considered really, really reliable for important stuff. But if you want to upgrade your 10 year old Win10 laptop with an old HD, this SSD will allow you to surf the web & do schoolwork like gangbusters. SSD prices went up after the Christmas season, so I'm glad to see this came back down to $17.99.
Model: TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 240GB SLC Cache 3D NAND TLC 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal Solid State Drive SSD (R/W Speed up to 520/450 MB/s) T253TZ240G0C101
Deal History
Deal History includes data from multiple reputable stores, such as Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. The lowest price among stores for a given day is selected as the "Sale Price".
Sale Price does not include sale prices at Amazon unless a deal was posted by a community member.
TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 240GB SLC Cache 3D NAND TLC 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal Solid State Drive SSD (R/W Speed up to 520/450 MB/s) T253TZ240G0C101
Manufacturer:
TEAMGROUP
Model Number:
T253TZ240G0C101
Product SKU:
B09WMP88Z3
UPC:
765441060463
ASIN:
B09WMP88Z3
Brand:
TEAMGROUP
Item Dimensions LxWxH:
3.937 x 2.7559 x 0.27559 inches
Item Weight:
0.09920802 Pounds
Item model number:
T253TZ240G0C101
Manufacturer:
TEAMGROUP
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Like so many other cheap SSDs, you don't know what you're actually going to get until you receive the drive. It appears there's at least two significantly different variants of the Vulcan Z (without even getting into the QLC version). One is based on the SMI 2259XT controller and the other uses the Phison S11. Both are low end DRAM-less SATA controllers. I've had decent luck with Phison S11 based drives but will note they tend to have a very small static pSLC cache. Some of the SMI 2259XT based drives have a massive dynamic pSLC cache, which utilizes the entirety of the free space. They can also be "lazy" about flushing the pSLC to TLC/QLC, sometimes not even starting until it's roughly 4/5 full. This has its pros and cons.
Personally, I've observed several drives using SMI controllers suffer immense (>99%) performance degradation on data stored in native NAND (TLC/QLC). One of the drives I've seen affected was a 2TB Team Group Vulcan Z. I just thought I'd toss out this warning, since this controller is often (but not always) used in the Vulcan Z. For anyone wondering what they got, without having to disassemble the drive, you can potentially tell by the firmware version.
FW version W0... - Likely SMI 2259XT
FW version SBFM... - Likely Phison S11
Affected drives may not manifest the issue until they've ever been filled at least 25% full (for TLC) or 20% (for QLC) AND some time has passed. The issue often does not show up in benchmark programs but can be visible in Task Manager. It can also result in a blatantly obvious performance reduction.
The 480GB is only $10 more. Kid's computer running the 1TB model for a couple of years now. Works great.
Haha, no, I've used REAL no name brands and TeamGroup has many, many reviews of their various SSDs, SD cards, etc, so just because they aren't an old-school name brand, I would say that they are well established.
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If no one else has experience with this brand, here's some general advice: I don't generally recommend no-name brands like this - it's difficult to verify reliability (even though this deal's brand - Teamgroup - doesn't appear stellar, there's always much worse), and there's no guarantee that the seller hasn't maliciously changed the firmware to falsely show, say a 240GB capacity, when the drive really only has 120GB capacity (& you won't figure that out until (months later) you fill the drive with approx 120GB and start running into catastrophic problems).
Will this work well as a drive for putting work documents on it. Few writes per day and occasional retrieval. Also it will be in USB enclosure and always on connected to a laptop dock. MAacrium will image it every 3 hours or so for backup purposes.
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank kirkhilles
03-23-2024 at 10:12 AM.
Quote
from Ariana31
:
Never used an SSD. My RAID 0 Hard Drives still kicking after 15 years.
Um, yeah. Very odd. RAID 0 has zero redundancy so any failure will result in data loss. I mean, I get it, I had a huge and loud 2U server running in my house with 6 old school drives so it's cool... but an SSD is lightyears better all the way around.
Will this work well as a drive for putting work documents on it. Few writes per day and occasional retrieval. Also it will be in USB enclosure and always on connected to a laptop dock. MAacrium will image it every 3 hours or so for backup purposes.
Absolutely! Team Group is actually a pretty respected "cheap" brand and SSDs have come a long, long way over the years. Very reliable nowadays.
If no one else has experience with this brand, here's some general advice: I don't generally recommend no-name brands like this - it's difficult to verify reliability (even though this deal's brand - Teamgroup - doesn't appear stellar, there's always much worse), and there's no guarantee that the seller hasn't maliciously changed the firmware to falsely show, say a 240GB capacity, when the drive really only has 120GB capacity (& you won't figure that out until (months later) you fill the drive with approx 120GB and start running into catastrophic problems).
Haha, no, I've used REAL no name brands and TeamGroup has many, many reviews of their various SSDs, SD cards, etc, so just because they aren't an old-school name brand, I would say that they are well established.
Haha, no, I've used REAL no name brands and TeamGroup has many, many reviews of their various SSDs, SD cards, etc, so just because they aren't an old-school name brand, I would say that they are well established.
Glad to hear. Actually, I was referring to that previous poster's question about this "Kingchuxing" brand name (on sale at eBay). I like Teamgroup myself, and have used it a number of times on various older machines. I'm not using it on my primary machine, in which I installed a decent Samsung NVMe 2TB drive (I don't want to take chances on critical ops).
Love me some cheap SSDs for upgrading older game consoles.
Anecdotally, this only helps games that are installed directly to the drive itself versus ones that need to access the disc. So for PS3 the value is marginal since the speed is limited by how fast the BluRay can be read. Digital games, especially on PS4Pro are a different story and see much more benefit (DRAM not required).
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank BlueVoyager308
03-23-2024 at 03:49 PM.
Quote
from Medic311
:
ive had bad luck with cheap SSDs shitting the brick after 4 or so years
are these any good? reliable for long term? just need a few in some relatives' laptops they are almost out of space with their factory OEM 256GB SSDs so figured i would jump on the 480GB variant in this deal.
Buy quality instead of quantity. Let your relatives decide what to buy.
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Personally, I've observed several drives using SMI controllers suffer immense (>99%) performance degradation on data stored in native NAND (TLC/QLC). One of the drives I've seen affected was a 2TB Team Group Vulcan Z. I just thought I'd toss out this warning, since this controller is often (but not always) used in the Vulcan Z. For anyone wondering what they got, without having to disassemble the drive, you can potentially tell by the firmware version.
FW version W0... - Likely SMI 2259XT
FW version SBFM... - Likely Phison S11
Affected drives may not manifest the issue until they've ever been filled at least 25% full (for TLC) or 20% (for QLC) AND some time has passed. The issue often does not show up in benchmark programs but can be visible in Task Manager. It can also result in a blatantly obvious performance reduction.
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Need a 1tb drive, never heard of this brand
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank CouponFinder99
Make sure you backup any critical information to the cloud or another drive.
Need a 1tb drive, never heard of this brand
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank kirkhilles
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Anecdotally, this only helps games that are installed directly to the drive itself versus ones that need to access the disc. So for PS3 the value is marginal since the speed is limited by how fast the BluRay can be read. Digital games, especially on PS4Pro are a different story and see much more benefit (DRAM not required).
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank BlueVoyager308
are these any good? reliable for long term? just need a few in some relatives' laptops they are almost out of space with their factory OEM 256GB SSDs so figured i would jump on the 480GB variant in this deal.
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