HP 120GB SSD (SLC) $29 free ship, 11 left

[RobstarUSA]

Link

 

[Indecided]

At that price and given the age (9 years old) it might just be better to settle for a Kingston/Sandisk/WD/pretty much any entry level TLC instead for even less ($25~)?

 

[RobstarUSA]

At that price and given the age (9 years old) it might just be better to settle for a Kingston/Sandisk/WD/pretty much any entry level TLC instead for even less ($25~)?

I think if you need endurance, SLC is probably rated higher....?

 

[WANg]

I think if you need endurance, SLC is probably rated higher....?

I wouldn't touch them with a 6 foot pole.
These things are built in 2009, so it's most likely a variant of the SS805, one of the first "enterprise value" drives sold during the Proliant Gen4/5 eras. Samsung pulled the spec sheets for anything over 5 years old from its site, but a version was cached. They are not fast by modern standards (230MB/sec read/180MB/sec write if going by contemporary reviews), and given a rough estimate of TBW values (the specsheet quoted 2 million hours MTBF, which is meaningless in a product with no moving parts, but contemporary reports from storage guys estimate about 50 TBW) - they are probably around the same or slightly worse than modern mainstream MLC SSDs. That being said, these are pulled from retired servers, the warranty have long elapsed and they probably had a tough life. You are probably not going to get more than another 2 years heavy usage out of them.

 

[RobstarUSA]

I wouldn't touch them with a 6 foot pole.
These things are built in 2009, so it's most likely a variant of the SS805, one of the first "enterprise value" drives sold during the Proliant Gen4/5 eras. Samsung pulled the spec sheets for anything over 5 years old from its site, but a version was cached. They are not fast by modern standards (230MB/sec read/180MB/sec write if going by contemporary reviews), and given a rough estimate of TBW values (the specsheet quoted 2 million hours MTBF, which is meaningless in a product with no moving parts, but contemporary reports from storage guys estimate about 5000 TBW) - they are probably around the same or slightly worse than modern mainstream MLC SSDs. That being said, these are pulled from retired servers, the warranty have long elapsed and they probably had a tough life. You are probably not going to get more than another 2 years heavy usage out of them.

I think it really depends how they were used. I've received "enterprise" ssds that were spares sitting on a shelf that were retired, before. My applications would be more like cache drivers for spinners. I can't imagine they'd take many writes in my home setup, and they are cheap enough to raid 1/5/10 them if they wear out. For $29 might be worth a shot.

Edit: Are you sure that is the correct spec sheet? That lists 50/100G sizes, not 120G...

 

[WANg]

I think it really depends how they were used. I've received "enterprise" ssds that were spares sitting on a shelf that were retired, before. My applications would be more like cache drivers for spinners. I can't imagine they'd take many writes in my home setup, and they are cheap enough to raid 1/5/10 them if they wear out. For $29 might be worth a shot.

Edit: Are you sure that is the correct spec sheet? That lists 50/100G sizes, not 120G...

Yes, I am sure that's the correct spec sheet - it's within the same SS805 family. HP might have worked with Samsung on a one-off/custom design, but it's still pretty much the same. I don't expect this one to be significantly better than what was considered state-of-the-art 9 years ago.

In regards to price? Eeeh, you can buy a 120GB HP S600 on eBay for roughly the same price, and it'll be much newer and perform significantly better (The S600 is a SATA3 drive and is estimated at 70TBW, unlike the SATAII on that SS805). The same goes for Samsung PM871s (75 TBW) and Crucial M500s (75TBW) on eBay.

Unlike hard drives where you can in theory use a unit that sat in storage for years and will probably be okay (depends on whether the drive bearings will seize up during the long term storage), aging is a bigger concern for SSDs, even if it's something that sat in storage unused for years. Whether it is MLC or SLC doesn't matter too much - this is the conclusion reached by Google and the University of Toronto in a paper released in 2016.

If it's my money on the line I would rather invest in a smaller amount of newer, pricier, higher capacity drives. It'll be faster and more scalable in the long run, even for a homelab setup.

 

[Samir]

Unlike hard drives where you can in theory use a unit that sat in storage for years and will probably be okay (depends on whether the drive bearings will seize up during the long term storage), aging is a bigger concern for SSDs, even if it's something that sat in storage unused for years. Whether it is MLC or SLC doesn't matter too much - this is the conclusion reached by Google and the University of Toronto in a paper released in 2016.

This is interesting as my personal experience is just the opposite--hard drives that have not been powered on in years will fail within a few days, usually something electrical vs mechanical.