SSDs - How low can they go?

[oshunluvr]

I've had an 8TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD in the "Saved for later" part of my Amazon cart for at least a year now - probably longer. My server storage is 16TB platter drive with older 10 and 6TB drives as backup devices. I fantasize about having SSDs instead with the 16TB drive the backup, but I typically wait for something to fail before moving to the next level.

Commonly and almost exactly, I end up paying about $250 for the next drive. When the 16TB drive was new it was about $250, when the 10TB drive was new it was about $250...6TB, 4TB, 2TB...ad infinitium into the past.

Initially these 8TB SSDs were around $800 a piece and let's be real - $1600 for server storage is just stupid. Today I noticed the price has dropped rather sharply from 600ish to $425. Still $850 for 16TB worth - still too much - but getting closer!

I assume the advent of PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 NVME drives (I have several) that are exponentially faster than SATA drives has driven the 2.5" market down. However, there aren't that many of this capacity out there.

My fingers are crossed for a BOGO or maybe a small lotto win, lol

[claydoh]

Even NVME drives are dropping.
I very recently bought a small Silicon Power 500Gb one with Dram for my Chromebook, and it was just shy of 40 dollars.
yesterday, I see it going for 27, and the 1Tb is 41.

I'd like to replace my 4 3Tb spinners for SATA drives in my NAS box, but can't justify the cost at all.

if I get a $$$ windfall, I will build a new NAS using a mini ITX sff case, though with ssds, I think I could go smaller

[oshunluvr]

That's an awesome case!

I have a rather large a setup here so I ended up getting a 15U Rack and put my server in a 2U ITX rack case. It had 2 5.25" bays so I changed that to a 3 bay 3.5 hot swap drive rack. The mobo has 6 SATA ports so the storage is all on the 3 platters and I have one internal SSD for the OS. If I switched to SSDs I could dump 2 of the platter drives for 2 SSDs and have room for a couple more if needed. I'm not really close to capacity so I doubt I need to add more space. I have almost 5TB available. The bummer is 2x4TB SSDs costs the same or more than 1x8TB. So I'm still a ways off from an all SSD setup. Maybe next year or two tho?

The rack also holds a UPS, a photo scanner on a slide out, 24 port network switch, and printing supplies and fits nicely in a cubby with the All-in-one printer and wifi router above it.

[claydoh]

My setup is 4 3tb HDDs from 2103 apparently, in a cheap but seemingly quality open box mini tower that is designed for 3 drives max, with an SFX PSU. The i7-3770 from my old PC is in a new (!!) m-atx Chinese motherboard that has an M.2 NVME slot (??), and 4 SATA ports.
The board, PSU, and case were ~150 USD in toto, with the PSU being the most expensive part, lol.
A 20 dollar NVME for the OS, and two of the HDDs cost me 19.99/ea. The rest were parts pile or freebies from family (added to the parts pile)
Surprisingly, 3 of the 4 drives are completely identical, and the 4th is a slight variation, with a slightly different part number.

I think a decent ITX motherboard for my dream case would cost more than my entire NAS build, lol.

[oshunluvr]

I think a decent ITX motherboard for my dream case would cost more than my entire NAS build, lol.

Sounds like it! But hey - cheap is good if it's getting the job done. My older ITX mobo (Pre- I series intel) was donated to a friend with lower income than mine when I upgraded to the i3-4160 (3,1 GHz) I have now. Gigabyte H97N-Wifi. It added more SATA ports, USB 3, dual LAN, Wifi and bluetooth, and a HDMI port, all that the other one didn't have.

[claydoh]

Sounds like it! But hey - cheap is good if it's getting the job done. My older ITX mobo (Pre- I series intel) was donated to a friend with lower income than mine when I upgraded to the i3-4160 (3,1 GHz) I have now. Gigabyte H97N-Wifi. It added more SATA ports, USB 3, dual LAN, Wifi and bluetooth, and a HDMI port, all that the other one didn't have.

That is sort of what I want to do - I have the i7-9700, mobo, ram and cooler that I recently upgraded to i5-13400. It would all fit nicely into my NAS case, and be useful to someone for cheap, or free, or something.

There aren't any tiny m-atx cases all that similar in size and HDD capacity, they seem to jump up to something huge, relatively speaking.

This case is close, and a bit fugly. I don't have a handy closet or cabinet to hide it in . The SG12 is more attractive, but costs a bit more for the same exact chassis.

[claydoh]

I went with the Node 304, and an ASRock H370M-ITX/ac


The "Gaming" is, well, funny. It does have 6 sata ports, and one NVME. Plus 2 gigabit Ethernet cards, plus wifi
I *really* wanted Asrock's lower powered celeron ITX board with an integrated CPU, but they are quite a lot more and have fewer SATA ports (needing a PCI card down the road) , plus I happen to have an i3-8300 sitting around that I don't recall how I got hold of.
I could put that i7 9700 in it if needed. lol, but that cpu has no graphics onboard.

I slapped in a smaller SATA SSD just for Docker stuff alongside the 4 HDDs, Still have one sata port open.......

Now, after realizing that Openmediavualt has a KVM plugin, I can run qemu via Virt-manager from my NAS.

The next rabbit hole is seeing if it is remotely possible to pass through USB thumb drives etc from my PC to the remote OS. That rabbit hole is big, and deep now.
I ain't finding anything on how to do this so far.

[Beerislife]

I'm looking at replacing the 250Gb NVMe SSD in the boss's Chromebook with a 500Gb one so she doesn't need to have one hanging off one of her USB ports!

Right now Amazon have some good pre Prime Day deals on Transcend models! 3,180 yen is darn cheap! I can get it down further by using my 609 points!

That will free up the 500Gb Sata SSD hanging off her machine which I can put in my new mini PC!

[claydoh]

Something to watch for will be how thick the larger stick is. My CB had a half-length 256Gb drive, but has the space for a full length one. However, the new 500Gb one has chips on both sides, which makes the PCB want to bend when the screw is tightened. I had a kit of nvme screws on hand, because I am a clutz, and luckily they included some tiny o-rings, so I used one of them to prop that end to be more level.

Another thing to consider is making sure the drive has Dram cache, which is supposed tom be better for OS drives. The less expensive ones don't usually have that. I don't know if this is 100% necessary, or if Chrome OS likes having this cache.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Four of the best 500GB NVMe M2 SSDs at the moment are - considering price (in Europe), longevity/reliability and overall speed:

• Crucial P5 Plus 500GB
• Kingston KC3000 512GB
• Samsung 980 PRO 500GB
• Seagate FireCuda 530 500GB

If you buy the cheapest one of these in your country you can't go wrong.

[Beerislife]

I've since reconsidered buying a 500Gb NVMe SSD for the boss and let her continue using the SATA SSD hanging out of a USB port. If I ever need to Powerwash the device, everything will be lost so having her photos and files on an external device is easier!

[GreyGeek]

This reminds me of "The Elephant Walk"

[Avidan2006]

I bought a 250GB SSD as a boot drive (for boot repair, backups, and such) for $18. I remember a few years ago a 1 TB SSD costing me $115. It's incredible how fast the prices are dropping.

[jglen490]

I've been gradually buying NVMEs to replace the spinner drives that I use for my external backup solution. Since I have multiples (usually 3 - 4) drives used a s backup targets none of them are especially stressed or hit hard with multiple daily writes/deletes. My spinners are still good, so effectively with 6 - 8 total drives available for use, even if an older one takes a dive into the Great Bit-Bucket, my risk for file loss is very low. I have also been buying enclosures with USB3 capability for the NVMEs, and since my HP laptop has a USB3 port, the backup writes are quite fast. The older spinners are, well, spinners and slow by definition. The spinners have USB2 enclosures, and even if they had USB3 enclosures, would still be quite slow by comparison. Not putting in a waste of $$ for the spinners.

My OS and data storage have both been SSDs and/or NVMEs for a few years now. I was amazed at how the first SSD I bought managed to bring so much more life to my older then desktop platform, and an NVME even moreso. I don't run a server stack, so I can't relate to oshunluvr's computing situation, but even a gradual introduction of faster solid state drives of any kind will bring a smile to the face

[Beerislife]

My one year old Crucial 1Tb NVMe died so I replaced it with a WD Blue 1Tb and also got a 500Gb Transcend SATA SSD for my Mini PC.

I paid ￥7,867 for the WD and ￥7,867 for the Transcend!

I must see if I can get a replacement from Crucial!