UK 15.36TB Samsung PM1733 NVMe SSDs for £389.99, plus other bits from the same seller

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erm_what

Member
Mar 2, 2019
34
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too bad they dont ship to the US. 3 of these would completely replace my Freenas box.
They probably need to be formatted from 520b to 512b, but i'm not sure if that is the case with nvme drives. I know sas drives needed to be reformatted.
The seller may ship to the US if you ask him. eBay's global shipping is zero effort for sellers, and you'd probably get to take the 20% UK VAT off the price too.
 

reasonsandreasons

Active Member
May 16, 2022
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I reached out about U.S. shipping and can report back. Too good a deal not to ask--even with the power consumption I think I'd win out on consolidation vs. four or more smaller drives.
 
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erm_what

Member
Mar 2, 2019
34
23
8
I wanted to buy 4 of these but need to do my due diligence before hand.
I agree that they should work with all modern operating systems.
I plan on using these in supermicro server with NVMe bays with windows server. The firmware is custom EMC so maybe that is the issue.
I found this GitHub issue which talks about how to flash the stock drive to fix SR-IOV on them. The same process might flash stock firmware to these?
 

ycp

Member
Jun 22, 2014
239
18
18
I looked around to see if stock firmware is available for download but i couldn't find it anywhere
 

alaricljs

Active Member
Jun 16, 2023
219
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That issue has a version of the stock firmware if you're willing to trust it. Samsung on the other hand don't seem to redistribute FW readily.
 

bryan_v

Active Member
Nov 5, 2021
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Toronto, Ontario
www.linkedin.com
Oh yea that was hidden, oh well given it's PCIe Gen3, can't really do much in 30 hours.
Sent the dude a msg about shipping to Canada, lets see. Ebay won't even let you checkout if your shipping address is not the EU or UK.
 

Damo

Active Member
Sep 7, 2022
124
35
28
Even with this great price seems no more sold today.

Tempting but I don't have use case for that much NVMe storage.
 

grenskul

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
175
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28
Oh yea that was hidden, oh well given it's PCIe Gen3, can't really do much in 30 hours.
Sent the dude a msg about shipping to Canada, lets see. Ebay won't even let you checkout if your shipping address is not the EU or UK.
In the EU (Portugal) and it won't let me check out so it's not all of the EU.
 

reasonsandreasons

Active Member
May 16, 2022
144
98
28
I think the seller is done for the day--I sent my message around 4:30 PM local time and haven't received a response.
 

NablaSquaredG

Bringing 100G switches to homelabs
Aug 17, 2020
1,591
1,051
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Same for me (Germany). Asked the seller for shipping, but no response so far.
Same, no reply so far... I could use a freight forwarder, but that'll cost me like an extra 20%, so I'd like to avoid
 

erm_what

Member
Mar 2, 2019
34
23
8
I got a message to say the managers are discussing it. I wouldn't expect an answer today/over the weekend though as they seem to work normal 9-5 hours.

The drives I bought were shipped today and should be here by Monday. I'll try to check SMART stats etc and post them up when I receive them.
 
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OP_Reinfold

New Member
Sep 8, 2023
2
17
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Lurker here, thought I'd chime in.

I've bought these exact drives from another seller just last month.

Results from experience:
  • Firmware is locked and is not upgradeable and can't be crossflashed outside of a Dell EMC Controller and the appropriate EMC signed firmware.
  • They are locked to generation 3 speed, and they also have a slow Q1 speed for a PM1733 drive irrespective of gen.
  • They do not idle down to low power, tend to idle to around the 12-15watts mark.
  • I have a retail PM1733 which runs considerably cooler, probably relative to the above. (about 10 degrees hotter than retail)
  • Their namespace functionality is rather limited/unsupported, lost a whole namespace while trying to slice the drive.
When things are really cheap, there is a reason for it. Outside of bulk online storage where energy/cooling costs are no-concern, I wouldn't recommend these drives to most. They are designed/tuned to work with Dell EMC SAN controller and as such they lack fully tested implementation of features which the standard Dell OEM or Samsung retail drives offer.

Still great drives, though I would recommend wait for the usual Dell/HPE OEM server drives to also come down in price, at least they come with firmware support, more energy efficient and run considerably cooler.
 

ycp

Member
Jun 22, 2014
239
18
18
Lurker here, thought I'd chime in.

I've bought these exact drives from another seller just last month.

Results from experience:
  • Firmware is locked and is not upgradeable and can't be crossflashed outside of a Dell EMC Controller and the appropriate EMC signed firmware.
  • They are locked to generation 3 speed, and they also have a slow Q1 speed for a PM1733 drive irrespective of gen.
  • They do not idle down to low power, tend to idle to around the 12-15watts mark.
  • I have a retail PM1733 which runs considerably cooler, probably relative to the above. (about 10 degrees hotter than retail)
  • Their namespace functionality is rather limited/unsupported, lost a whole namespace while trying to slice the drive.
When things are really cheap, there is a reason for it. Outside of bulk online storage where energy/cooling costs are no-concern, I wouldn't recommend these drives to most. They are designed/tuned to work with Dell EMC SAN controller and as such they lack fully tested implementation of features which the standard Dell OEM or Samsung retail drives offer.

Still great drives, though I would recommend wait for the usual Dell/HPE OEM server drives to also come down in price, at least they come with firmware support, more energy efficient and run considerably cooler.

Will these drive work with windows server?
Also do the drives have to be reformatted to 512 or 4k?