Review on 💾 PNY XLR8 SSD9SC240GMDA-RB - 240GB SATA 6Gbps 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive by Curtis Sherman

This is my first experience with a PNY SSD. I've had great success with OCZ, Sandisk, and Kingston SSDs (never had a problem). I put this in a new build with a Gigabyte motherboard and Win 8.1. (This is the 5th PC I've built with an SSD as both the boot and program drives, so I know my way around computers.) And yes, I know how to maintain an SSD (never defrag, never use HD erase) . tools, store most of the data on a second traditional (spinning) hard drive, etc. This PC has had little use, mainly for business purposes (no gaming, video or photo editing). a few weeks ago when Windows 8.1 started reporting SMART event errors (meaning a hard drive failure is imminent). I called PNY support about the problem. They agreed that the drive needed to be replaced under a 3 year warranty. HOWEVER I would send them my disc FIRST before they send me a replacement which takes 7-10 days, send me a new replacement drive (and charge me full price) overnight. They refund the cost of a new drive when they receive my defective drive, which I have to ship back to PNY at my own expense (on top of the $30 fee they charge). The new replacement disk has worked flawlessly so far. Luckily, Windows has a (somewhat hidden) utility that allowed me to create a disk image of my failing SSD and store it on my other data drive (a 1TB WD Blue Caviar internal drive). By then booting the PC from my Windows installation disk and selecting the recovery tools, I was able to quickly restore the disk image to the new SSD in just a few minutes. (Too bad Windows hides this great feature so well, as it's incredibly useful in a situation like this. It should be really easy to find in the Control Panel's recovery or backup tools. Before I discovered it, I opened the Tried source program, DriveImage XML, which actually didn't work very well.) In summary, I probably won't buy another PNY SSD in the future after my experience with this drive "failed" so quickly and with a lousy PNY warranty policy. " ( The $30 should include at least one prepaid return label). UPDATE 6/2015: This time the spare drive died completely without warning! Also the BIOS of the computer did not recognize the drive. Tried with different cables and even on different computers. Totally dead. Same as another cross-shipment with PNY to get another third drive (under warranty) and prepay the cost of the drive ($103.63) plus another $30 for non-refundable shipping had to. PNY received my failed drive (I have confirmation from USPS) but they have not refunded the cost of the drive to my credit card yet! I will definitely never buy a PNY product again and if the last drive fails again I'll just buy another brand despite PNY's ongoing 3 year warranty. Just not worth the trouble. None of my other SSDs (from various manufacturers) have ever given me any problems. And I'm not strong in these discs. I only use my computers for business productivity and photo editing. No games etc. UPDATE 6/2016: Nice for the third time (no)! The second removable disk died again after about a year without warning on the same computer! This time I replaced it with a Samsung but sent it back as it was still under warranty. PNY sent me a replacement. I won't use it. It's not worth my time and nerves.