Question Best "cheap" small SSD's?

[ember1205]

I need to buy some smaller SSD's and am wondering who makes a decent one at a low price point.

I have Kingston drives that have outright died on me quickly and without warning, so I'm hesitant to go that route. On the flip side, my Crucial and Samsung EVO drives have been extremely reliable but are more than I'd like to spend per drive.

For some context... I am building out a handful of Intel NUC's to replace RPi devices throughout the home. Some will be on 24x7, some will be on per a specific schedule, and some are used "when needed." I may end up building additional devices to spread the workload around and off of my heavier virtualization environment simply because these would use small amounts of power and have a tiny footprint.

I really don't need anything more than about a 128GB drive as the rest would largely be wasted space. If I can't find anything that's fairly low cost for what I need, I may just embark on a path of setting them up to PXE boot since I'm going to be running linux on all of them anyhow.

 

[USAFRet]

Define "small"
Define "cheap"

Among the major (reliable) manufacturers, they don't make 120-128GB drives any more.

 

[ember1205]

Define "small"
Define "cheap"

Among the major (reliable) manufacturers, they don't make 120-128GB drives any more.

As mentioned, I really would not benefit from having a drive larger than about 128GB. So, however close to that I can get is what I'd be looking for.

Cheap is harder to put a pure number on, but I will say that $45 to $50 per drive is more than I want to spend (by a fair amount) because I could need as many as ten of these. There's absolutely no point in spending that much on storage for a bunch of slower machines when I could spend less money overall for a far more powerful NUC and virtualize a number of guests on it to do this work.

I need to strike a reasonable balance here with the expense against reliability. There's no point spending $20 on a drive that will fail in three months if I can spend $25 on one that will last a few years. If I can't get the per-drive cost down far enough to make it palatable, then I'll put the effort into setting up PXE boot and using NFS-based storage for what little bit of data I'll need access to.

On a totally different wavelength, I could also consider using USB-based media ("thumb drives") if they can hold up to the constant on time. I ran a XenServer installation for a few years off of a 64GB SanDisk drive without issue (although a second one did fail on me after about a year).

 

[SkyNetRising]

Cheap is harder to put a pure number on, but I will say that $45 to $50 per drive is more than I want to spend

Crucial MX500 250GB 2.5" is ~35€-40€

 

[USAFRet]

Regarding size, the problem is that under 250GB, you only find cheesy drives.

As above, a 250GB Crucial MX500 isn't that expensive.

 

[ember1205]

Crucial drives are great, but the 250GB size is $45. Buying ten of those will make the whole project cost-prohibitive.

 

[USAFRet]

Crucial drives are great, but the 250GB size is $45. Buying ten of those will make the whole project cost-prohibitive.

Then buy a stack of 64GB flash drives, and relegate yourself to swapping out when they die.

As said, for actual SSD....below 250GB, you get junk. Whatever the price.

 

[Pextaxmx]

if you are in the US and live near a Micro Center, they are selling house brand (Inland) SATA 512 GB drives for 19.99 right now.
Phison PS3113-S13T reference (DRAMless) with BiCS 3D TLC NAND chips - entry level quality drives.

At this price, you can just use the space you need and leave the rest of the unpartitioned space as big OP.

 

[USAFRet]

if you are in the US and live near a Micro Center, they are selling house brand (Inland) SATA 512 GB drives for 19.99 right now.
Phison PS3113-S13T reference (DRAMless) with BiCS 3D TLC NAND chips - entry level quality drives.

At this price, you can just use the space you need and leave the rest of the unpartitioned space as big OP.

And at $20 ea, I'd have NO problem using those, no matter how much space was "wasted".

 

[logainofhades]

Are you limited to just 2.5" drives, or are you able to deploy M.2 NVME? I second the Inland drives suggestions. I have some myself. A gen 4 drive in my desktop, and a 512gb 2.5", in an old laptop, that I use for trail cam photos.

 

[Pextaxmx]

And at $20 ea, I'd have NO problem using those, no matter how much space was "wasted".

big OP space is not entirely wasted. The controller+firmware will use that space for longevity and speed.

 

[USAFRet]

big OP space is not entirely wasted. The controller+firmware will use that space for longevity and speed.

Well, if your space requirement is only 15GB of a 512GB drive....

Beyond a certain point, empty space is simply....empty.

 

[BFG-9000]

Until a couple weeks ago, the only remaining small and cheap SSD with DRAM cache for sure was $24.99 for 128GB, the same price it had been since 2019. Now while the ADATA SU800 isn't as reliable as a high-end Samsung or Crucial, performance is way closer to those than any DRAMless SSD. It uses the Silicon Motion SM2258 controller just like the Crucial BX300 and MX500

From a performance standpoint, the absolute minimum would be a SSD that uses some of its flash in SLC mode as cache, and 128GB models with that are easily found for ~$14.

DRAMless SSDs that write directly to TLC or QLC can have hiccups and pauses much longer than spinning hard disks, how often depending on how well the firmware is programmed. Worse, some of them like the Kingston A400 or Patriot Spark still use the notoriously unreliable Phison S11 controller (the old Inland Pro used to use this too). At this level used SSD or even HDD should seriously be considered instead. I don't have any problem buying used SSD but then I have local stores that put the TBW or % remaining right on the price sticker.

 

[USAFRet]

Until a couple weeks ago, the only remaining small and cheap SSD with DRAM cache for sure was $24.99 for 128GB, the same price it had been since 2019. Now while the ADATA SU800 isn't as reliable as a high-end Samsung or Crucial, performance is way closer to those than any DRAMless SSD. It uses the Silicon Motion SM2258 controller just like the Crucial BX300 and MX500

From a performance standpoint, the absolute minimum would be a SSD that uses some of its flash in SLC mode as cache, and 128GB models with that are easily found for ~$14.

DRAMless SSDs that write directly to TLC or QLC can have hiccups and pauses much longer than spinning hard disks, how often depending on how well the firmware is programmed. Worse, some of them like the Kingston A400 or Patriot Spark still use the notoriously unreliable Phison S11 controller (the old Inland Pro used to use this too). At this level used SSD or even HDD should seriously be considered instead. I don't have any problem buying used SSD but then I have local stores that put the TBW or % remaining right on the price sticker.

And for the stated use of "I am building out a handful of Intel NUC's to replace RPi devices throughout the home. "

...Reliability and stability is what counts.

 

[BFG-9000]

Which is exactly why I bought a bunch of used Intel X25-E for $8 or less each and the lowest had 99% life remaining.

They aren't fast but with 100% SLC flash at 50nm and 100,000 P/E cycles, they will last about forever.

For reference, a Samsung 850 Pro drive has only 6,000 P/E cycles for the flash, and that's with 1st gen 3D which was equivalent to 40nm and MLC. That's the drive that won the c't torture test with 9.1 petabytes written (9,100TB) despite a nominal rating of only 150TBW

 

[ember1205]

From a performance standpoint, the absolute minimum would be a SSD that uses some of its flash in SLC mode as cache, and 128GB models with that are easily found for ~$14.

Any examples of where to find said unicorn?

Unfortunately, no Micro Centers in the area here. I could possible check with a couple of co-workers in different areas of the country to see if anyone has one near them.

 

[ember1205]

if you are in the US and live near a Micro Center, they are selling house brand (Inland) SATA 512 GB drives for 19.99 right now.
Phison PS3113-S13T reference (DRAMless) with BiCS 3D TLC NAND chips - entry level quality drives.

At this price, you can just use the space you need and leave the rest of the unpartitioned space as big OP.

Forgive me... OP?

 

[ember1205]

Are you limited to just 2.5" drives, or are you able to deploy M.2 NVME? I second the Inland drives suggestions. I have some myself. A gen 4 drive in my desktop, and a 512gb 2.5", in an old laptop, that I use for trail cam photos.

This is the spec sheet on the devices: https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...54/intel-nuc-kit-nuc5cpyh/specifications.html

I -believe- the WiFi adapter is in that slot and would need to be removed. This may be acceptable for at least some of the devices.

If NVME is an option, do you have any suggestions to look at there?

 

[USAFRet]

Which is exactly why I bought a bunch of used Intel X25-E for $8 or less each and the lowest had 99% life remaining.

They aren't fast but with 100% SLC flash at 50nm and 100,000 P/E cycles, they will last about forever.

For reference, a Samsung 850 Pro drive has only 6,000 P/E cycles for the flash, and that's with 1st gen 3D which was equivalent to 40nm and MLC. That's the drive that won the c't torture test with 9.1 petabytes written (9,100TB) despite a nominal rating of only 150TBW

And in normal consumer use, "6,000 P/E cycles" is also "forever".

I've asked in here multiple times...
"Has anyone run up to the warranty TBW, on any consumer grade SSD, in normal consumer use?"

So far, none.

 

[USAFRet]

Forgive me... OP?

Over Provisioning

Leaving free space for the TRIM function to do its thing.

 

[ember1205]

Over Provisioning

Leaving free space for the TRIM function to do its thing.

Cool. Thanks. I figured it had to do with the drive keeping itself healthy but was drawing a complete blank on the actual term.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I suggest the microcenter option as well. My wife’s pc has had a 480gb drive from inland in it for a year or two and it’s been fine so far. For the money get a few of those. Maybe spring for their warranty so they will replace it if one fails.

 

[BFG-9000]

While the ADATA SU800 is about the closest thing to the old 120GB BX300 you can still get new, it is Micron TLC instead of MLC so a bit slower. Given the same controller too, the major difference is Nanya RAM instead of Micron which should not affect reliability--only any differences in build quality will, as well as the mentioned overprovisioning. Better brands will use more of the flash for this--for example Samsung tends to use ~7.9%. Unlike a HDD where spare area is set aside/reserved to remap bad blocks to, overprovisioned space is actually in use to reduce the number of writes to any one spot. That is, the empty/unused space moves but is distributed throughout the disk at any time to help level wear.

"Reliability" is more about the firmware not suddenly bricking or corrupting things than the flash wearing out. You'd expect controllers would be rather mature tech by now so even the cheap drives would be reliable, but they keep coming out with ever cheaper ones with more corners cut and not enough testing. Even Samsung have had to release emergency firmware updates for their 840 Evo and 870 Evo, and they make their own controllers.

I should point out that TBW is not the rating at which the drive will suddenly die (except Intel, which bricks itself into read-only mode there), but the point at which the manufacturer suggests data should still be retained for an entire year when unpowered at elevated temperatures. If the drive is always powered on, then it will continue to work for well after the rated TBW (I provided an example of >60x more) with the caveat that you should expect to lose the data in the event of a very extended power failure.

I do agree that 6,000 P/E cycles is close enough to forever for most normal purposes not involving Chia mining, which is why I'll buy used 850 Pros whenever I can find them for cheap. However most QLC SSDs use flash rated for at most 1,000 write cycles (which is a considerable improvement over the 100 cycles this technology originally allowed when it first appeared in USB flash drives. Yes, USB drives still hover around 100 cycles which is why you can so easily use them up) so I'd really try to avoid QLC if possible. How many times can you divide "forever" until it's no longer? Also, think about why would you prefer new 1,000 over used 100,000?

For a very well built DRAMless SATA drive with SLC caching, I'll suggest the TLC Silicon Power Ace A55. Heck, around 6-8 years ago the Inland was based on the very reliable Phison S10 with DRAM too. That's the problem with Microcenter's house brand Inland--they are constantly changing suppliers so you never quite know what you are going to get.

 

[USAFRet]

Also, think about why would you prefer new 1,000 over used 100,000?

Because I'd never reach either.
But with new, I'd get a warranty replacement if it died for some other reason. (within the applicable timespan)

 

[ember1205]

For a very well built DRAMless SATA drive with SLC caching, I'll suggest the TLC Silicon Power Ace A55. Heck, around 6-8 years ago the Inland was based on the very reliable Phison S10 with DRAM too. That's the problem with Microcenter's house brand Inland--they are constantly changing suppliers so you never quite know what you are going to get.

Thanks for the additional notes and comments. The drive you called out here is a big part of why I started this thread overall... Seeing these very inexpensive drives made immediately think "how reliable can these things be?" and off we went... If your comment is that these drives would potentially suit my use case and requirements (lower cost, reasonably reliable, appropriate amount of storage space - I could provision them at 64GB and just let them run...), then I could pick some of these up for use.