I am interested to buy an HHHL PCIe SSD drive for my 1U server and I saw deals at around $200 for 1.6TB on auctions websites. I am tempted to buy one of these but I do not know how reliable they are especially if they were used in a datacenter 24/7. Is it safe to buy these type of SSD's? Can they be counterfeit considering the low price?
Advice on buying refurbished/used HHHL PCIe SSD drive
- Thread starter konkhra
- Start date
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What brand? My general observation has been that the only HHHL SSD out there for that price are FusionIO, old Intel NVMe P-Series, and some Micron. The Samsungs are usually pretty outrageous, even for being heavily used in many cases, the P3608s from Intel, still one of their best NVMe, are typically heavily used at that price as well. One that I've seen that was going for way lower than I would've expected were some Micron 9100 awhile back. He was asking just north of $200...and they were hardly used. I considered it one hell of a bargain.
While I'm sure there are other decent performers out there with low use for that price, the ones I'd put the money on are still north of $400. Brand new/open box and discontinued...a few hundred more.
I was thinking about Micron too but looking for more options I came up to this website https://centralvalleycomputerparts.com/hgst-ultrastar-sn150-1-6tb-pci-express-3-0-x4-full-profile/ . My assumption would be that the drive is used at $199. Probably is that cheap also because these old HHHL are using MLC chips which tend to wear fast compared to SLC NAND. What do you think?
Yeah, I've seen those. The same seller has them on eBay for 189, or at least it was awhile back...and they're used. I mean...I'm somewhat jaded because I've been burned pretty badly by used drives as of late so I tend to try to find the "open box" deals. They're out there! That being said, if your budget is $200, SN150 are good drives and the fact that they're 3 DWPD and knowing that most workloads don't come close to approaching their SSD's endurance, I think it's probably safer than some used choices out there. Either way, whatever you get, the first thing you should do is check the SMART stats and if it looks spent, return it. There are a lot of used drives out there that are close to their rated endurance or had SMART counters that haven't thrown errors yet going for way too much money.
I take that back...they're claiming 0 hours on their listing on eBay. If that's the case, they're a damn good deal.
Thank you so much for your advice. I just checked on eBay. The description says 0 hours but to be honest you do not know whom to trust nowadays. I can hardly believe that HGST HHHL could have 0 hours on it at that price. It should be listed for at least $400. I saw a seller "netcna" selling the exact same drive at a price of $2,388.00. It's a huge discrepancy here. Hard decision to take
Prices on this stuff are always all over the place though. I bought my brand new P3608 for just north of $400. When you look elsewhere, some are still selling them for $3000 or more. The devices I received were in box, had 3 years of warranty left (although Intel won't honor the warranty unless I prove they were purchased from an Intel-authorized reseller), and had never been powered on. I thought what I paid for those devices was a fantastic deal...if these HGST are going for $200 and they are what they say they are, they're almost a steal.
If they don't have zero hours, you can always file a claim with eBay.
I asked the seller for the S.M.A.R.T test for that specific NVMe drive and bellow is the log he sent to me:
Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : NVMe
Disk Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Standard NVM Express Controller (PCI\CC_010802&DT_0) [VEN: 1C58, DEV: 0003] Version: 10.0.18362.1110, 6-21-2006
Disk Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Bus Number 0, Target Id 0, LUN 0, Device: 2
Hard Disk Model ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : PCIe3 1.6TB NVMe Flash Ad
Firmware Revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : KMIPP113
Hard Disk Serial Number . . . . . . . . . . . . : CJH001015679
Total Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 1526175 MB
Power State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Active
Current Temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 31 °C
Maximum Temperature (Ever Measured) . . . . . . : 31 °C, 1/1/2085 1:07:04 PM
Minimum Temperature (Ever Measured) . . . . . . : 31 °C, 1/1/2085 1:07:04 PM
Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : #################### 100 % (Excellent)
Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : #################### 100 % (Excellent)
What's really odd here is the Maximum and Minimum temperature date displayed as 1/1/2085. I assume that should be the date with the maximum and minimum temperature the drive had over time compared against the drive temperature when the test ran.
I've heard of some apps out there that can reset the SMART values although I do not know if it is the case here.
Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : NVMe
Disk Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Standard NVM Express Controller (PCI\CC_010802&DT_0) [VEN: 1C58, DEV: 0003] Version: 10.0.18362.1110, 6-21-2006
Disk Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Bus Number 0, Target Id 0, LUN 0, Device: 2
Hard Disk Model ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : PCIe3 1.6TB NVMe Flash Ad
Firmware Revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : KMIPP113
Hard Disk Serial Number . . . . . . . . . . . . : CJH001015679
Total Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 1526175 MB
Power State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Active
Current Temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 31 °C
Maximum Temperature (Ever Measured) . . . . . . : 31 °C, 1/1/2085 1:07:04 PM
Minimum Temperature (Ever Measured) . . . . . . : 31 °C, 1/1/2085 1:07:04 PM
Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : #################### 100 % (Excellent)
Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : #################### 100 % (Excellent)
What's really odd here is the Maximum and Minimum temperature date displayed as 1/1/2085. I assume that should be the date with the maximum and minimum temperature the drive had over time compared against the drive temperature when the test ran.
I've heard of some apps out there that can reset the SMART values although I do not know if it is the case here.
My guess is that the ssd was tested in a basic system were nobody bothered to set the correct date/time in the bios or os settings.
Intel P3605 1.6tb addincard nvme has been great for me. Have bought hundreds of them, only a handful of failures. Should be $200 or less. Works great.
Are you the one person selling these on eBay right now for $199? The rest are quite a bit more....
We buy them to put into the dedicated servers we rent to people. They're great for web hosting.
I haven't been able to buy the SSD from that seller because they ran out of stock. What I've noticed is that his sales started to grow up pretty fast for that specific SSD while we were talking about it here . Probably you bought all of them
))). When I started the thread (11th of February) he had more than 20 available. On 13th of February he ran out of stock. What's you opinion on the drive's performance?
This model drive is pretty regularly available in large quantities. Might have to wait a little bit for someone to stock more but shouldn't take too long.I haven't been able to buy the SSD from that seller because they ran out of stock. What I've noticed is that his sales started to grow up pretty fast for that specific SSD while we were talking about it here . Probably you bought all of them
What's you opinion on the drive's performance?
Performance is consistently above 1GB/s for small block size random writes, as well as being solidly above 1GB/s for mixed workloads. Generally, the specs Intel lists are what the drives can do all day long. Because Intel firmwares have aggressive garbage collection, you'll see consistent performance. Samsung and others optimize for peak performance they can list on their specs or wow on benchmarks, but under consistent loads they slow down a lot.
HGST is a defunct company. HGST drives are no longer produced. If you take a look at the PCIe you bought from that seller you'll see DOM like 2015, 2016, 2017. I don't know how they ended up with that stock in 2020-2021. I asked him where they got but he didn't told me. It can be chances those ssd's to be refurbished considering the low price. As for endurance on Samsung's SSDs you can take a look here
Yeah, the SN150 is an older drive...but a steal at $200. HGST was bought out by Western Digital. It doesn't mean anything about that particular product. Are there better NVMe out there? Sure. But essentially brand new with zero hours and performance, good luck finding a comparable one from Intel, Samsung, Huawei, Micron etc for that price. My guess, someone didn't know what they had and recycled. That's where most of these drives come from. Most enterprise data centers pay to recycle their equipment, even the spares that were never used once they hit their EOL. I've watched brand new $50,000 spare servers get recycled and the company that recycled it, paid to have it removed. Sad, but unfortunately very true and more common that some would think.
As for your comments on Samsung, there are a lot of naysayers on this site. Personally, I think many of them are running their own eBay stores, the ones selling Intel devices in large quantities. The experience I've had with them though is that they've always been stellar...their software aside (but that applies to pretty much every mfr.). Running their consumer products in a server with write-heavy workloads will shorten their lifespan, but they're about as close as you can get to enterprise SSD for the price. I'd put Samsung enterprise SSD up against Intel any day though, including their NVMe. I'm not alone in that respect either.
As for your comments on Samsung, there are a lot of naysayers on this site. Personally, I think many of them are running their own eBay stores, the ones selling Intel devices in large quantities. The experience I've had with them though is that they've always been stellar...their software aside (but that applies to pretty much every mfr.). Running their consumer products in a server with write-heavy workloads will shorten their lifespan, but they're about as close as you can get to enterprise SSD for the price. I'd put Samsung enterprise SSD up against Intel any day though, including their NVMe. I'm not alone in that respect either.