Basically want something with decent performance and durability. Cost matters, but I’m not trying to hit rock bottom. I’m particularly wondering, is an HMB-type PCIe SSD ok combined with a SATA adapter? I think HMB is supported if your machine can use a PCIe or NVMe disk directly, but I’d be using an older Thinkpad with a 2.5" SATA slot at least for now. So I’m wondering if I’d lose a lot of performance if the SSD combo doesn’t have its own RAM buffer.
I see good deals by today’s standards for PCIe SSD’s at of all places, Office Depot.
Thanks.
@solrize Well it could be worse, I still have an old Dell Inspiron with it’s original 2.5" 3600 RPM ultra-slow hard drive. Now that the battery has finally given up the ghost, I am going to replace it with an SSD while I have it open to change out the battery, but because the nvme slot on this machine only supports a max of 500GB, I am going with SATA.
those things were designed to run off mechanical drives. so whatever you fit it with will be screaming fast. the bottlenecks you’re concerned with arise with workstation-class machines with fully implemented PCI lanes and such, which are pretty rare in laptops. HMBs also require a beefier CPU as all that buffering introduces overhead; not noticeable on a 6-core Ryzen, noticeable on a dual-core decade-old i5.
summarum: whatever SATA SSD you fit it with is more than adequate. obviously, don’t go with no-name “brands”. also, save yourself the bother and don’t dick around with adapters, just fit a regular SATA 2.5" SSD in there.
Thanks, I think you have it right and that it’s not worth messing with adapters. The adapter was never about performance from my perspective though. It was about being able to keep using the drive if I eventually moved to a laptop with an M.2 slot.
@solrize You want to use nvme rather than sata if possible, particularly if a high end ssd as the absolute max speed you can get with sata is 6gb/s and also using a sata ssd will often make one or two sata ports not function.
I don’t think I can use NVMe in my old laptop but yes, otherwise I’d do so. ;)
I am not aware of any SATA SSDs which use HMB, so I am not sure if it would work correctly through an adapter. I think the choice for 2.5" SSDs is generally between DRAM cache SSDs and ones with SLC caching, which are typically much cheaper. I think both are pretty much able to saturate the ~500MB/s bandwidth of a SATA III connection, but may run into issues with prolonged writes or when getting very close to full.
Looking on Newegg, for DRAM cache units, things like the Samsung 870 evo and Crucial MX500 cost ~$90 or so for the 1TB model.
SLC cache units like the Crucial BX500 or Team Group CX2 are much less, more like $50-60 USD. The Team Group one claims 800TBW endurance for the 1TB model. I do not know if I believe that, but generally speaking I have used their nvme drives before and have not had any fail on me, for what that small data point is worth.
Newegg doesn’t seem to sell the Crucial MX500 any more*, only the BX500. But if the 870 evo is comparable, I might get that, since I have a couple of MX500s now and am happy with them. I hadn’t realized that Team Group was legit at all! I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks!
*Note: The MX500 appears on Newegg’s web site, but the actual sellers are “Newegg Marketplace” randos rather than Newegg itself, and I prefer to buy directly from Newegg when possible.
Whatever is a reliable brand that fits in your budget. Since you only have a SATA connection, you’re maxed out at 600MB/s on your transfer rate. Buying a drive with faster benchmarked transfer rates won’t give you any benefits.
Thanks, I wasn’t really thinking about transfer speeds, it’s just the PCIe drives are cheaper (depending) and more re-usable if I get a newer laptop later. I think you are right though that it’s not worth messing with adapters.
I dunno if there’s such a thing as a reliable brand. The brands have reliable and unreliable models. Particularly I have the idea that I should be avoiding QLC drives, but that TLC these days is ok.
Samsung, WD, Seagate, Corsair…etc. Just not a random no-name brand. Poke around the Backblaze stats to get a good idea.
