Question SSD that is used primary for writes

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,754
599
126
I'm trying to find a small, cheap SSD option that is used primary for writing to as a scratch space or a temporary cache that is often emptied and refilled. I guess it only really need to keep up with the reads of a fast hard drive. I know SSDs have limited writes but I don't really need much space (32GB-64GB would get the job done even).

What is giving me a headache is how a lot of smaller SSDs actually have unimpressive write speeds because of their limited channels. Also, the lack of dram means many low end models will suffer slow downs on a sustained write. What I don't want is for the thing to choke out while I'm pushing 20GB to it.

I sort of looked at those optane drives for this but their writes aren't anything special. But they are in the 200MB/s range, actually like half that for 16GB. Is it reasonable to assume that is enough to not bottleneck reads from a fast hard disk?
 

MalVeauX

Senior member
Dec 19, 2008
653
176
116
Hi,

I do precisely this, I write a few hundred of gigabytes of data (RAW video from my mono cameras doing imaging) in a few minutes. I then move that data, process it and cull the data off the SSD. I'm doing it on a basic cheap B450 chipset and Athlon 3000G APU and the SSD is a typical Samsung EVO series. I've done this daily to weekly for over a year on this SSD and it shows no signs of degradation. And they're not expensive SSDs.

Very best,
 

thecoolnessrune

Diamond Member
Jun 8, 2005
9,673
583
126
How much do you actually write per day? Even small drives often offer 0.3 DWPD or so. If you have a 256GB SSD, and are only doing this once per day, even basic consumer drives can handle this. If these writes are sequential, you could even probably just use a cheap hard drive if budget is the primary concern.
 
Jul 27, 2020
24,192
16,871
146
I'm trying to find a small, cheap SSD option that is used primary for writing to as a scratch space or a temporary cache that is often emptied and refilled. I guess it only really need to keep up with the reads of a fast hard drive. I know SSDs have limited writes but I don't really need much space (32GB-64GB would get the job done even).

What is giving me a headache is how a lot of smaller SSDs actually have unimpressive write speeds because of their limited channels. Also, the lack of dram means many low end models will suffer slow downs on a sustained write. What I don't want is for the thing to choke out while I'm pushing 20GB to it.

I sort of looked at those optane drives for this but their writes aren't anything special. But they are in the 200MB/s range, actually like half that for 16GB. Is it reasonable to assume that is enough to not bottleneck reads from a fast hard disk?
What kind of writing patterns are you looking at? Sequential or Random 4KB? Sequential is around 170MB/s as you can see here:

1637505872018.png

If you want something better (and longer lasting), get the P4801X 100GB. It's a worthwhile long term investment as a heavy usage scratch disk.

If you still want something cheaper, pair these two together:
Amazon.com: Crucial P5 250GB 3D NAND NVMe Internal SSD, up to 3400MB/s - CT250P5SSD8 : Electronics
Amazon.com: UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure USB C 3.1 Gen 2 to M-Key M&B-Key NVMe PCIe 10Gbps External Enclosure Thunderbolt 3 Compatible with MacBook Pro WD Samsung Toshiba 2230 2242 2260 2280 NVMe PCIe SSD : Electronics