Hi,
A seller on eBay is selling a used Toshiba mSATA SSD 256GB in Sydney for $90 delivered
Ad states it was "only used for 3 weeks". They state "drive was not bought individually (it's from a new laptop). It does not have a manufacturer warranty due to it being an OEM part."
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/111415201081
A recent buyer of the SSD in feedback says- "SSD power on count 1300 times (25.7 days power on time)."
Is this a lot?
Am I taking a huge risk buying this?
Okay thanks. My laptop (W230SS) only takes mSata. It will be my OS drive. What brand/model would you suggest?
I'd take the risk. Shouldn't be keeping anything mission-critical on an SSD anyway, regardless of brand or age.
A 1, 3 or 5 year warranty isn't going to cover your lost data. Save the money now IMO, forego the warranty, and buy another SSD down the track if this one fails.
I've had brand new SSDs die within 90 days and first-gen SSDs still keep trucking on (complete with stuttering first-gen SandForce controllers). Its still a bit of a gamble.
If you've had a SSD die within 90 days, isn't that all the more reason to buy one with a warranty?
Some people just do silly things like that..
He probably recently purchased an $800 car with 500,000km/s on it claiming that he can just buy another one in a few months ;)
Not if the price paid was low enough to warrant taking the risk (the 90 day old one was under warranty actually).
I have also had a bunch of OCZ drives fail just outside their warranty period.
I am surprised how risk-averse people are being about this. a 256gb mSATA SSD will usually run $200+, here is your chance to get one for less than half the price, the risk is that it might die and you would then be up for $200+ for a new one (or hell, another $90 for another second hand one, and you'd still be $20+ ahead of buying a new one and having it warrantied after death).
I too have in the past bought $500 cars with the exact mindset that you suggest, samfisher - and they lasted their while before dying and getting parted out, usually for what I paid for for them (if not more).
The truly silly people are those who never take a risk, even on something as banal as a PC component's warranty…
You purchased an OCZ drive?
I rest my case ;)
I've had terrible luck in the past with all non-SSD drives (pretty much every hard drive, desktop or laptop, has died on me eventually).
Thought SSD's would be more reliable- that not correct?
SSDs these days are pretty reliable. They still fail but for different reasons to hard drives. I recently had an SSD die on me for seemingly no reason. I'm not sure what the relative probabilities are though.
Modern SSDs are designed with particular workloads in mind, and if your use-case departs from the "typical" workload you'll get much shorter life.
For consumer drives the reference workload is a set of "typical" user data - MS Office docs, iTunes songs/movies and A list games. The disk controller firmware makers then optimise their compression and data placement algorithms around this reference workload.
And if your usage departs from the reference workload, your disk life could be as little as 1/10th of the stated lifetime for that part, depending on your particular usage.
Because the reference workload is defined by the industry, it doesn't include porn torrents. If you are getting very bad hard drive failure rates its almost certainly due to excessive porn downloads.
This confirmed in the field. Any PC tech will confirm that 90% of the disk space of failed drives brought in for file recovery is utilised for porn.
Never buy anything used. You have no idea who has been fondling or groping it and that SSD could have been hammered in a server for 25.7 days. AVOID. I personally bought a Plextor mSATA 128GB from MSY and its sufficient.
Especially underwear.
wouldn't trust eBay, period.
Yep I've avoided it.
Will grab a 128GB mSata- I've read Windows 8.1 is only around 16GB. That correct?
On my other drive (1TB 5400RM mech drive) I'll run Mac OSX (will use rarely, 20% the time). Any issue with that (other than that it will run slowly)?
Am I taking a huge risk buying this?
Yes.
I think the 3-5 yr warranty of store bought SSDs is worth the extra cash.