Tried a used enterprise SSD in my home server and got a surprise

I picked up a used Intel DC S3500 800GB drive off eBay for $40 last month for my home NAS. Figured it would be good enough for a secondary cache drive. But when I checked the SMART data, it had over 2 petabytes written and still showed 100% life remaining. That thing is a tank compared to consumer drives. Has anyone else noticed enterprise gear just keeps going long after it should have died?

3 comments

3 Comments

reesemoore1mo ago

Intel rates those S3500 drives for way less than 2PBW. The fact it's still alive with that much writes and 100% health just means whatever SMART metric they use is basically a lie. Enterprise drives are built tougher with higher overprovisioning, but they aren't magic. I've had a few S3700s and a Samsung PM863 that showed 100% life for years then suddenly dropped to 90% and died within weeks. You're probably fine for a cache drive, but I wouldn't trust that number at all. Those drives were never meant to survive that much wear, something is off with how it reports.

juliag101mo ago

Wait, so you're saying those SMART health percentages are basically just made up numbers that don't mean anything? That would make sense given how inconsistent they are between different drive models (and even different firmware versions on the same model). I've heard people say the real way to tell if an SSD is dying is to watch for media errors or reallocated sectors, but even those can be misleading if the drive hides them until it's too late.

murphy.blair1mo ago

Yeah, I used to buy into the health percentage thing but this definitely changed my mind.