Are used smaller capacity SSDs a viable option? (i'm a decade out the loop)

LeperousDust · 3 Jan 2021 at 00:01

So i'm looking for a drive (or few if the price is right) that I want to run as scratch/cache disk(s) for another project (server stuff). It's the first use i've probably had that might truly benefit from an ssd properly if i'm honest (other than obvious silence, longevity and power draw on my laptops).

Now my laptops and PC have SSDs but I haven't really kept up with this at all, and a lot has happened i'm sure.

I'm wondering:

Is there a market for smaller (128-256) SSDs that are too small for general needs but still amazing quality I should look for?
Are SSDs one of those things that have come along so much, it's not really worth that hassle if you want fast, buy new tech?
Are used SSDs a total minefield, especially some certain models, or is this also a good chance to see realworld failure rates, and know what to avoid (like seagate in the server world).

Ideally i'd want to pick up stuff from the members market and keep it cheap, so I need to understand what is good and what is bad, what to look out for or what questions to ask, I feel like I know very little and i'd just buy lemons!

Alex h · 3 Jan 2021 at 00:40

I either buy western digital blue ssd or crucial ssd Samsung are good but more expensive

Cyber-Mav · 3 Jan 2021 at 01:07

Can get 250gig nvme for 30 quid these days. Gigabyte Brand too so have decent endurance ratings. Ideal as a cheap scratch disk

LeperousDust · 3 Jan 2021 at 01:18

Cyber-Mav said:
Can get 250gig nvme for 30 quid these days. Gigabyte Brand too so have decent endurance ratings. Ideal as a cheap scratch disk

This is in a server with a sas backplane, so sata/sas connection is all I can use.

BongoHunter · 3 Jan 2021 at 01:30

When buying a second hand drive you should always have a look at the usage stats from the drive (e.g from Samsung magician) - this will tell you how far the drive is through its life.

In terms of what drives to get, SLC is fastest, followed by MLC, then TLC and then the new QLC.

Samsung Pro SATA drives tend to be MLC (which is why they cost more that the TLC Evo drives or the new QVO drives) and you'll often find these relabled and in many a HP/Dell server. Intel enterprise drives are also very common to be rebranded and/or shipped in the major vendors servers. Micron also make many high quality SATA SSDs in their Pro and Max series - and Kingston now have there DC series.

Some drives will be optimised for write endurance, some will be targeted at mainly readonly (low write workloads) and many are also available for mixed workloads or extreme writes (these tend to be NVME now).

Consumer drives - like the Crucial/Micron MX500 are good performers for there cost, but perf depends on used capacity and many consumer drives lack PLP which can make them unsuitable for enterprise use - some consumer drives also have firmware that can make them perform worse than expected in RAID scenarios as well (only drives I've had issues with in raid are the super cheap Gigabyte SSDs and the Crucial BX series)

In short this question is a huge can of worms - and the answer depends a lot on what your use case is

LeperousDust · 3 Jan 2021 at 02:11

Amazing reply, thanks! Food for thought. I definitely assumed there are more opportunities to make mistakes than grab a bargain... I guess I'll want something more on the enterprise side of things. It will be powered on 24/7, write bursts of GB's at a time and then dump it all to rusty metal when it can. So its the write performance that probably matters, but ultimately over its life I expect it to make pretty much 50/50 read writes i think given the nature of its application.

Cyber-Mav · 3 Jan 2021 at 09:16

LeperousDust said:
This is in a server with a sas backplane, so sata/sas connection is all I can use.

In that case do what i did and get enterprise sata or sas drives. My micron 5100max 960gb with 13 hours on time was under 100 quid. And same with my kingston dc500m 960gb under 100 quid with 1 weeks use time.

Used enterprise drives can be had on very good deals.
The kingston dc500m is the cheapest even brand new if you shop about

BongoHunter · 3 Jan 2021 at 11:24

I know you've said you want to stick with SATA as well - but there are some real NVME bargains out there (you'd need to stripe 6ish drives to match the perf).

I found buying a used 2TB Intel DC 4600 add in card to be cheaper than building a SATA SSD array by quite a margin (had a couple of years warrenty and less than a few GB written for around £300!) - and the endurance on these drives is epic (as well as random read which was important to the app I use): https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...ies-2-0tb-1-2-height-pcie-3-1-x4-3d1-tlc.html

Akagi · 3 Jan 2021 at 11:31

256gb is too small of an SSD for general needs?

I've barely used half of mine and it has the OS and every single program on it, and a few of my games too.

Cyber-Mav · 3 Jan 2021 at 11:46

Acme said:
256gb is too small of an SSD for general needs?

I've barely used half of mine and it has the OS and every single program on it, and a few of my games too.

same here 256gb got os and all apps and 188gb free

LeperousDust · 3 Jan 2021 at 13:08

Haha, I guess it's relative, I agree with you my laptop is the same, i just presumed SSDs use had grown across most of the board. These will be on the ingest of a server that is not short on TB's thats sure. So I guess my idea of small has changed with the files I use.

@Cyber-Mav the two you mentioned look genuinely perfect, a few smaller capacity of those would be perfect i think, ingest is certainly never more than 100Gb in one go.

Thanks guys, this is exactly the advice i needed!