Question Used Intel Optane memory

[Judge123]

I would like to say I am not sure if this should be in memory or storage.

I was considering upgrading a laptop I plan to buy with Intel Optane. I was thinking of buying them used on a classifieds ad. I saw some that appeared to be open box. I was wondering is it a bad idea to do this? I know it is a bad idea to buy an SSD used because you don't know how many cycles it has gone through and it may have been used in a server.

Should I also avoid buying Intel Optane memory from classifieds? How about renewed on Amazon?

And to be clear I am talking about the Intel Optane that is paired with an HDD.

 

[Eximo]

Same risks as buying anything used. I didn't think optane cache was all that expensive, but I don't see much benefit to it, too little too late. Better to just get an SSD in its place.

You could also ask sellers for a Crystal Disk screenshot and avoid people who aren't willing to provide one. (You can also do a reverse google image search to see if they just pulled it off the internet)

 

[Judge123]

Same risks as buying anything used. I didn't think optane cache was all that expensive, but I don't see much benefit to it, too little too late. Better to just get an SSD in its place.

You could also ask sellers for a Crystal Disk screenshot and avoid people who aren't willing to provide one. (You can also do a reverse google image search to see if they just pulled it off the internet)

I'll try the reverse image search. That was a good idea. I was considering getting a cheap primary SSD. I saw a 240GB Kingston on Amazon for $30. And the price was comparable to a 16GB optane sold as renewed for $18. However, I read that optane is faster than lower end SSDs.

What is Crystal disk screenshot. I've never heard of that. I tried looking it up but that didn't help me understand.

 

[Eximo]

Optane has the best latency of all the memory standards out there. But it is still quite expensive. 32GB cache drive, as you have noted, is nearly the price of a SATA SSD 8 times the size. Don't worry too much about speed, for the average user even a low end SATA SSD is still several times faster than a hard drive. NVMe drives, if applicable to your system, are getting fairly cheap as well, they are about 2-6 times faster than a typical SATA SSD.

Download

[2024/04/02] CrystalMark Retro 1.0.1 – Manual / History Standard Edition 2 themes / 27MB ZIP (XP-) INSTALLER (Vista-) Source Code Aoi Edition 2 themes / 27MB ZIP (XP-) INSTALLER (Vista-) [2024/02/16] CrystalDiskInfo 9.2.3 – Manual / History Aoi Edition 2 themes / 27MB ZIP (XP-) INSTALLER...

crystalmark.info

It is a utility to benchmark and show the SMART logs on any drive. The benchmark part is optional, but reading out the SMART info is what you are after. It will give you hours on, total read/writes, bad sectors, etc. It should give a general drive health status as well.

Here is an example of what you are looking for:
https://dl1.cbsistatic.com/i/2018/0...39d5f309b262ccf9a/foreman126768016633main.png