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.
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.