[help] Cheap SSDs for storage
from Imhotep@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 02 Apr 13:41
https://lemmy.world/post/27696493

Hi!

2 of my drives failed recently (as well as an external drive), plus my faithful HP Proliant Gen 8 is ripe for retirement (I’m small potatoes compared to you guys).

So I bought a mini-PC (with a N100). I’m considering going all SSDs.

What are the cheapest ones? They can be slow.

Is there a “storage SSD” category?

I’ve looked at OEMs but they’re not that interesting, or I didn’t know where to look.
Aliexpress is full of fakes. As is the second hand market. Or it’s legit but as expensive as new.

Thanks for reading!

#selfhosted

threaded - newest

Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu on 02 Apr 13:44 next collapse

I usually pick the cheapest of a brand I trust. Kingston atm for my ssds.

Don’t care, even the crappiest is way faster than what I need plus less energy hungry than mechanicals.

I focus on size, buy the biggest I can afford according to the raid level I need. Currently have 4 x 4Tb Kingston ssds in RAID5.

Edit: don’t buy ssds on aliexpress, don’t go that cheap… Go cheap like buy consumer level stuff not server grade stuff, but still from reputable sellers and brands.

Yeah, would be great to buy server grade stuff, but I don’t have a server grade budget.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 02 Apr 14:02 next collapse

server grade budget.

And probably not server grade requirements.

Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu on 02 Apr 15:40 collapse

I could upgrade my requirements to server grade, but not the budget, so I would say the driving factor is budget :)

Hand me a bunch of server grade ssds for the price of consumer and I would gladly install them.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 02 Apr 23:55 collapse

Oh sure, server grade stuff is cool, but rarely needed for a home lab.

harsh3466@lemmy.ml on 02 Apr 14:29 next collapse

As an additional warning probably best to avoid amazon because counterfeits are just dumped in the bin with the actual mfr stuff and you could get burned there too. Buy from B&H or some other vendor that doesn’t have this practice

Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu on 02 Apr 15:42 collapse

I had good experiences 10y ago with amazon “white labels” mechanical drives… But its aneddotical and didn’t go with amazon for my sdds anyway.

Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe on 02 Apr 14:30 collapse

SSD isn’t necessarily less energy hungry than spinning platter.

It really depends on the specific units and use patterns.

Generally SSD has better idle power, and HD has better read and write power, but that doesn’t even always hold true.

If your device sits idle long enough, SSD is better for power, but the write time to get to idle could easily consume the power differential.

edn.com/power-vs-energy-ssd-and-hdd-case-studies/

Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu on 02 Apr 15:38 next collapse

Very interesting, thanks…

At least ssds are much less hot and lot quieter than mechanical drives, and in a home, not chilled, and not isolated environment means even more than power consumption to me.

Edit: my 4 x 4tb ssds anyway are much less power hungry than the 2x6Tb spinning drives they replaced, so much that my overall server consumption dropped significantly in my home assistant readings (via ZigBee power meter).

Imhotep@lemmy.world on 02 Apr 16:30 collapse

Good to know, thanks!

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 02 Apr 13:48 next collapse

They aren’t comparable being at completely different scales. Check diskprices.com

Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe on 02 Apr 14:21 collapse

Beat me to it. I always have the page up.

Jumuta@sh.itjust.works on 02 Apr 13:48 next collapse

one thing to consider is that some cheap SSDs don’t have power management, so they’ll consume way more power than others at idle.

For a server setup that’s always running you should consider if the slightly lower cost is worth the cost of electricity

Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe on 02 Apr 14:43 next collapse

At idle, SSD is usually better (like you said if the SSD has proper power management, and that takes research to know).

Spinning platters are generally still better for power per gig/terabyte, because write time they consume less power than SSD.

I dont really look at drive power consumption, because even with ~10 drives running in my environment, a single cpu doing anything moderate blows away their power consumption numbers (I’ve tested, not that it was needed, heat dissipation alone makes it clear).

I have a ten-year old 5 drive NAS that runs 24/7, and it’s barely above room temp. Average draw is a few watts (the number was so low I put it out of my mind, maybe 5 watts - Raspberry Pi territory).

My SFF desktop is 12w at idle, with either 2 small SSDs (500GB each) or a single large drive (12TB). So much for SSD having better idle power.

Imhotep@lemmy.world on 02 Apr 16:19 collapse

Thanks. Yes power consumption is important, so I’ll keep that in mind!

Is there a specific term I should look for, or simply “power management”?

Jumuta@sh.itjust.works on 03 Apr 01:26 collapse

if this is a sata drive “SATA link power management” might work?

ik tomshardware reviews of SSDs have information on power consumption

poVoq@slrpnk.net on 02 Apr 14:21 next collapse

The base consumer models from regular brands usually have no write cache and are thus cheaper, and obviously slower, but for data storage that doesn’t matter so much.

But you can also look into 2.5" HDDs if you are looking for power savings and noise reduction over regular HDDs.

freebee@sh.itjust.works on 02 Apr 14:35 next collapse

SSD’s as far as I know mainly degrade from writing, not so much from reading or idling. If you fill an SSD, delete all files, write again, delete, etc, that is when they can wear out fast. If you’re just stacking on top slowly filling it and occassionally reading from it, it should theoretically last for many years. I don’t buy brands i’ve never heard about before and I read many customer reviews. Slightly higher price for way better reviews wins. Reviews like “it’s too slow” are not very relevant to me. Reviews like “I used it twice, got very hot and smelled like fire, broke, lost all my data”: those are the important ones. I never buy latest generation tech, I buy older generations. They’re cheaper, but more importantly they have more review information available about what you can expect from it slightly longer term.

I avoid buying anything from aliexpress, amazon, … out of principle, don’t want to support those foreign (Europe) giants. Any other webshop might get my order if they seem okay to me.

Imhotep@lemmy.world on 02 Apr 16:27 collapse

Yes older gen is fine, but I don’t see that much of a difference on the 4TB drives, they tend to all start at 190-200€. Maybe because there aren’t any older gen at that capacity yet? I haven’t followed SSDs progress closely.

I won’t buy from Amazon either. I don’t have much experience with Aliexpress, and haven’t looked up their history out of laziness. Will do.

It’s hard, if not impossible, to buy ethical tech. I prefer to buy second hand, but that doesn’t really make a difference.

jlh@lemmy.jlh.name on 02 Apr 16:43 collapse

Buy used Samsung pm983s on ebay. Super cheap, super fast, and they have power-loss protection. Only downside is that they’re M.2 22110, not m.2 2280. There’s also a bunch of cheap Samsung and hgst u.2 drives on eBay, but you’ll need an adapter.