Sabrent rocket and no 512e sectors

[NadTheVlad]

The Sabrent Rocket NVMe drives have gone on sale a couple of times.
I am thinking about getting one but wanted to ask about one of the issues that shows up in the reviews for the drive.
The drive doesn't do 512K sectors or emulates those sectors. This seems like old tech, and most of these reviews are for Windows systems. So I am not sure how this will affect a Hackintosh.
I do not plan on using this drive as a backup drive, or an operating system drive. I will be using it as a data drive where I keep all my important files, dropbox, design files, source code. I will be making backups of this drive.

This drive is very fast and install was easy. This is down in the weeds a bit, but an important note is that it uses 4k byte sectors and has no 512 byte emulation (512e). This minor detail cost me 12+ hours of trying to figure out how to make the drive work with what I needed to do with it (clone and encrypt my OS). For clean installs, this should not be a problem. Cloning a hard drive is a problem, however, because you will need to have cloning software that can convert 512 byte sectors to 4k sectors, and even then, the cloning software may not be able to convert the boot partition (which happened to me), which will result in it being impossible to boot your computer. Most modern hard drives have 4k physical sectors (like this one) but emulate 512 byte sectors for compatibility purposes (some programs still are only compatible with 512 byte sectors). This drive does not emulate, which causes the above-mentioned issues. If doing a clean install of Windows, the drive should be fine and is very fast, but cloning did not work for me. Be aware that there may be other compatibility issues with programs, however. My laptop is less than one year old and has a SATA SSD, so this doesn't just affect traditional hard drives.

As a side note, the lack of 512e may also affect the encryption and backup of your hard drive. Popular encryption software VeraCrypt only supports 512 byte sectors, and I could not get Bitlocker to work properly after a clean install of Windows using this hard drive (could have been user error, but I worked on it for a few hours). I decided to send the drive back so I did not attempt to back up the hard drive, but it is also possible that the lack of 512e would also affect the ability to back up this hard drive to another hard drive with 512e, even if the backup drive has 4k physical sectors. Just do your homework on these issues before purchasing the drive.

This is a great drive, as long as you aren't trying to clone from an existing drive.

It's fast, spacious and very cost effective. No problems recognizing it or anything.

However, the lack of 512 byte sector emulation means I cannot clone via a number of popular programs, like EaseUS, Acronis True Image, etc. This is a substantial inconvenience. I wasn't planning on a fresh OS install to use this drive; it's done, the drive works great, but without 512e support or included cloning software that could work around it, this drive takes some substantial work to use at it's full potential.

 

[Narc_uk]

Hi NadTheVlad.

Been looking at upgrading a friends PC ie new build.

Saw this drive for £52 for 512Gb (Amazon, 20th sept) so brought this before I did any proper research, and as I also thought to get one for myself to clone my old drive I started to find out about the 4k sector issue.

Dug a little deeper and it looks like Sabrent have addressed this issue with Sabrent’s Sector Size Converter (SSC) which enables you to change the drive’s sector size, which is necessary under certain data cloning scenarios

Link: Sabrent’s Sector Size Converter (SSC)

Its windows only program.

Will test the drive out as I go through the build progress next month, hope this helps

NarC.

 

[NadTheVlad]

NarC,
Thanks for the info.

I ended up buying the drive and putting it in the hackintosh.

It worked just fine.

This was awhile ago. I did not use SSC

Plugged it in. Formated for APFS. Started using.

Hi NadTheVlad.

Been looking at upgrading a friends PC ie new build.

Saw this drive for £52 for 512Gb (Amazon, 20th sept) so brought this before I did any proper research, and as I also thought to get one for myself to clone my old drive I started to find out about the 4k sector issue.

Dug a little deeper and it looks like Sabrent have addressed this issue with Sabrent’s Sector Size Converter (SSC) which enables you to change the drive’s sector size, which is necessary under certain data cloning scenarios

Link: Sabrent’s Sector Size Converter (SSC)

Its windows only program.

Will test the drive out as I go through the build progress next month, hope this helps

NarC.

 

[dragonmel]

just to update everyone on this company, its shady practices, and this drive in particular

Sabrent like so many other tech companies are doing the design bait and switch game

When this product first arrived on the scene and benchmarked, it did very well, and was advertised as having a toshiba 3d based chipset.. well.. no longer

as is becoming all too common practice in tech... the company released a product and once enough good reviews and press, and sales .. have changed the product specs completely..

no longer using a toshiba/phision chipset, the chip that is visible now is a kingston ..

it benches slower... and now comes as 512e out of the box and when using sabrents software, it no longer functions properly with the new design.. in windows 10, flashed it multiple times with hard reboots each time and the drive only kept reporting 512e mode... put it back in the hack, and it had indeed switched to 4k native, but highly suspect that their own software does not appear to work with the new design

further, the product is spec to have smart but drive utility shows as not supported

I had instability, panics, and was unable to get this working as a boot drive

I contacted Sabrent tech support, sent pictures of the hardware and details of what I was seeing, they informed me it appeared counterfeit so sent it back to Amazon... a couple days later, tech support called me back, and indeed confirmed that manufacturing had changed the design and did not inform anyone...

I can't recommend a company with business ethics like this ...

 

[carljharris3141]

just to update everyone on this company, its shady practices, and this drive in particular

Sabrent like so many other tech companies are doing the design bait and switch game

When this product first arrived on the scene and benchmarked, it did very well, and was advertised as having a toshiba 3d based chipset.. well.. no longer

as is becoming all too common practice in tech... the company released a product and once enough good reviews and press, and sales .. have changed the product specs completely..

no longer using a toshiba/phision chipset, the chip that is visible now is a kingston ..

it benches slower... and now comes as 512e out of the box and when using sabrents software, it no longer functions properly with the new design.. in windows 10, flashed it multiple times with hard reboots each time and the drive only kept reporting 512e mode... put it back in the hack, and it had indeed switched to 4k native, but highly suspect that their own software does not appear to work with the new design

further, the product is spec to have smart but drive utility shows as not supported

I had instability, panics, and was unable to get this working as a boot drive

I contacted Sabrent tech support, sent pictures of the hardware and details of what I was seeing, they informed me it appeared counterfeit so sent it back to Amazon... a couple days later, tech support called me back, and indeed confirmed that manufacturing had changed the design and did not inform anyone...

I can't recommend a company with business ethics like this ...

Wow. Thank you for this review & comment. I was just looking to add an extra NVME drive to my system (the existing one is a Samsung EVO) and this comment has convinced me not to go with the Sabrent (which is on sale and looking quite inexpensive on Amazon right now..)