Need help selecting SATA/SAS SSD, maybe SAS HBA Controller and cable

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zir_blazer

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Dec 5, 2016
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Story goes like this: In my house, there are a few very old 250-320 GB HDs still in service in my family computers. One is throwing SMART errors, the other died today with some data in it that had no backups. I will have to figure out if I can somehow revive it to copy the data elsewhere (The HD is recognized and somewhat boots, but Windows XP throws a ntfs.sys BSOD 2 or 3 minutes in. Maybe it has enough life left to manage to use Linux to do a raw copy to another disk... But I don't have one to spare), or if I will have to sell my butt to pay for a data recovery service.
Regardless these details, somehow this served as the perfect excuse to explode the wallet to replace the remaining mechanical HDs with more reliable SSDs. As here the price of consumer stuff is so ridiculous inflated, at times the decomissioned server stuff that is usually posted in the Great Deals subforum makes far more sense as it gives me the chance to go for enterprise grade gear for around the same cost than purchasing consumer here. However, I live in Argentina, so I also have to find a seller that does international shipping, and also keep in mind that international shipping also adds a significant cost and risk.

While I have some idea about what I want, I know absolutely nothing about particular models, issues, quirks, or whatever else would make one specific model better than another one if around the same price. Basically, what I should aim to buy, and what is to be avoided. There is also the problem about availability, or how often they appear used/decomissioned at decent prices.
Since the rest of my family are not big data hoarders there is no reason to even consider the ultra dense helium HDs, I think that they can go full SSD, given that good priced ones are already bigger than their current HDs. I'm currently aiming at SSDs since two 500 GB-1 TiB parts should be able to hold all their data. I'm still unsure whenever deploying them individually per machine, or if it would be worth to make a dedicated File Server and use them in RAID 1, or treat them as JBODs.
Regarding money, the whole operation (Including shipping costs and customs. Customs I think that are 50% for new stuff, but used stuff shouldn't pay it) should be around 300 U$D. Reputable sellers are a must considering the risk.


Current options:

1) Locally purchase consumer SATA SSDs
This is not my intended goal, but would do so in an act out of desesperation. Everything else requires international shipping and patiently wait at least two weeks. My go-to option would be the classical Samsungs EVO series, but they carry an absurd price premium.

2) Purchase enterprise SATA SSDs
Options seems to be the Intel SSD S3500 series or something like that. They're already rather old. I know that Samsung also have some enterprise SATA SSDs. My current idea would be to purchase two 500 GB-1 TB sized ones, one for each machine, and call it problem solved.

3) Purchase enterprise SAS SSDs
This is what I'm hoping to. However, they seem very expensive. Besides that I don't know if the price premium between SAS and SATA is worth it in quality and features, it also reduces the price gap with NVMe (Which is ridiculous, as I don't have that much money to spend, nor these computers can fit them without PCIe adapters). However, I'm aware that it will boil down to what SSDs models are available in the market at a given moment and at what price, since maybe used SAS is not priced much above SATA. For reference, I have been looking in the FS/FT/WTB subforum and saw a guy selling a 1.92 TiB SAS SSD, the HGST Ultrastar SSD1600MR HUSMR1619ASS231 for 230 U$D, which I would have to stretch the budget for but seems around what I want.

Moreover, going SAS means that I need a SAS Controller and at least a single breakout cable. I suppose that a cheap SAS2 HBA in IT mode should suffice. I would have to read older posts about what OEMs provides close to reference cards that can be flashed with LSI Firmwares and so on to know which card to aim for, but I also need to check if those cards are somewhere available.

I suppose that going for this option forces me to repurpose a computer (Probably mine) as a 24/7 File Server unless I can somehow fit in my budget 2 controllers, 2 cables and 2 SAS SSDs so that each computer may have its own local SSD.



Any particular go-to models that I should be looking for?
 

zir_blazer

Active Member
Dec 5, 2016
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*BUMP*

No one? I need some pointers about what SSD brands and models that are currently available to look for...
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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I think it's difficult for most people to understand your situation, myself included, but most SSDs are much of a muchness reliability-wise assuming you go with known good designs (and personally I'd avoid anything QLC-based for at least a year or two).

SATA basically isn't moving any more, so there's no reason to avoid excellent drives like the S3500 just because they're old; I have two S3500s in service. Hell, I've even got some X25-M's in service. Bear in mind that drives like the S3500 and D3-4500s are enterprise-lite in that they don't usually have full PLP or SAS support, but from the sounds of things you don't need that anyway. Many of the more enterprisey SAS SSDs tend to use a fair amount of power and you'll often need some hackery to get them working (lots of those "cheap" SAS SSDs are often pulls from storage systems using 520b sectors and require a reformat before they'll work in regular systems).

Otherwise I've been perfectly happy using Crucial/Micron consumer drives as workstation workhorses. They're usually markedly cheaper than the Samsung drives here and offer little to no difference in performance or reliability as far as I'm aware. For servers I use either the aforementioned Intel drives or the Micron 5100/5200 series (basically whatever provides the cheapest price per GB).

But all of this is basically going to depend on what you have available locally at any given time.

For "saving" the drives you have, your best (cheap) bet would be to salvage what you can of the data on the existing drives before they die completely and then restore it to a new build on some SSDs. Just bear in mind that a good backup and maintenance strategy is almost always more economical than a recovery service after your data is already hosed.
 
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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Intel S3500 or S3510 or S4500 S4510 are good Intel Enterprise choices for non-heavy write work loads, and sound like they'd be great for each PC and\or your file\storage dedicated box. They're also the most affordable intel SSD. You should be able to get 600GB variants for $50-70\ea on ebay.

I would budget to upgrade from XP to 10 too though.
The difference in performance on xp and 7 with the various available drivers for modern chipsets, and drives will be much greater than XP.
 
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zir_blazer

Active Member
Dec 5, 2016
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I think it's difficult for most people to understand your situation, myself included, but most SSDs are much of a muchness reliability-wise assuming you go with known good designs (and personally I'd avoid anything QLC-based for at least a year or two).
I think that the prelude of why I want to purchase SSDs clogged everything else...


My question is pretty much which SSD models should I look for because they are overally better than other ones, as simple as that. The rest is just detailing some info about my usage models and how much international shipping complicates things.
Basically, given price, international shipping availability and the individual merits of the SSD model (If one is significantly better, more reliable, or whatever else than another one, and thus a better option), I can adjust to the best available Hardware choice by changing my usage model. I don't mind if I have to purchase two SATA SSDs like the Intel S3500 you mentioned, one for each computer, or if there is a better SAS option than is around the same price per GB, even if I have to consolidate the SSDs in a single computer to work as a File Server just to avoid spending more money onindividual SAS HBA controllers for each computer. If the Hardware is worth it, I can afford it, and the seller can ship it, either option is viable. That is what I wanted to say.


For "saving" the drives you have, your best (cheap) bet would be to salvage what you can of the data on the existing drives before they die completely and then restore it to a new build on some SSDs. Just bear in mind that a good backup and maintenance strategy is almost always more economical than a recovery service after your data is already hosed.
That is why I want to solve this ASAP. I need to buy something so that I can begin to migrate things before they completely fail.

Having backups is hard when you don't have enough money to buy redundant capacity. You can have copies of critical and personal data (Mostly which is small in size to boot), but you can't backup everything because that means spending on another disk. Money being no issue, I suppose that I would force everyone to be running either a simple RAID 1 or consolidate all my home storage in one of those fancy multidisk ZFS arrays.



Intel S3500 or S3510 or S4500 S4510 are good Intel Enterprise choices for non-heavy write work loads, and sound like they'd be great for each PC and\or your file\storage dedicated box. They're also the most affordable intel SSD. You should be able to get 600GB variants for $50-70\ea on ebay.
The S4500/S4510 series specs seems nice, but they are way too expensive in price per GB, around twice than of the S3500/S3510. The S3500/S3510 price is affordable enough, it was the one that I was looking at around a year ago. For reference, Intel Ark specs and comparison between the S3500/S3510/S4500/S4510/S4600/S4610 series here.

So far, I found this one (Refurbished Intel S3500 600 GB SSDSC2BB600G4) for 75 U$D + 25 U$D shipping, should purchase at least two or three to dilute the shipping cost. Another viable one is this one (New Intel S3510 1.6 TB SSDSC2BB016T601) for 180 U$D, but it has no international shipping. Based on the Great Deals forum they also seem to go cheaper than that, but they don't last long enough...


There is another recent Thread about someone asking my same question and besides the Intel S4600, he includes the Micron 5100 MAX (There are also the ECO and PRO lines), but it seems to suck in latency.
There are also the Samsung SM863A and SM863 lines, but I didn't looked into the difference between them. I supposed that they are generationally analogous to the Samsung 850 PRO and Samsung 860 PRO but for data center/enterprise. Are they comparable to the Intel S3500 series or one of the higher ones? Need to check price on them.


The one that actually caught my eye, is the HGST UltraStar SSD1600MR 1.92 TB that is getting sold in this forum for 230 U$D. Specs seems to compete well with the Intel S4600 series, but price per GB is around the S3500 level. Problem is that being SAS I need a controller (Another long question...), and at 230 U$D per unit I can't get two anyways. I failed to find benchmarks about that one, but the SSD800MR was supposed to be impressive back in 2014. Most significant con is 11W power consumption vs 3 or 4W of the Intel SATA ones. Besides being SAS thus more complex to get running, is there any reason why you would pick an Intel S4600/S4610 over that one?


I need to check how much creating a shipito mailing box cost, hear wonders about that service since I can ship things in the USA to them, then internationally ship from them to me. It will be a must if there is something good enough that has no international shipping available, or to merge the SSD with the controller as to not pay 30 U$D of shipping twice.
 
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