ranasrule Posted August 3, 2018 Share Posted August 3, 2018 I'm thinking of buying a used SSD HDD. The guy I'm buying it from claims its 2 years old (Samsung EVO 850 256gb) and sparingly used and I have checked the health of the drive and its at 100%. My question is that wouldn't a drive lose at least some of its health over two years even if used sparingly? Is it possible for someone to reset the health of an old drive to show 100% health ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Matthew S. Subscriber² Posted August 3, 2018 Subscriber² Share Posted August 3, 2018 Best way to check the health is how many writes it has, if it's anything over 5TB I wouldn't bother. ranasrule 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon H Supervisor Posted August 3, 2018 Supervisor Share Posted August 3, 2018 the EVO series has been top tier, you could probably get another 5 years at the very least out of that drive. I have a OCZ Vertex 4 from back before they were bought out that's been running my OS since ~2013 or so; Started on Windows 8 and has been upgraded over time to the current 10 build and still performing great. This was from a brand that had a lot of flack due to some quality issues; now compare that to a top tier EVO drive and you'll realize 2 years of relative use is no biggy to a drive like the 850 EVO it's still got plenty of lifespan ranasrule 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ranasrule Posted August 3, 2018 Author Share Posted August 3, 2018 1 hour ago, Matthew S. said: Best way to check the health is how many writes it has, if it's anything over 5TB I wouldn't bother. it has 1.80 TB written to it...but its the 100% health I dont get. Can that be messed with somehow? Is it calculated from SMART data? If so then can that be messed with? Please see screenshot below of SMART stats Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon H Supervisor Posted August 3, 2018 Supervisor Share Posted August 3, 2018 SMART data is more for HDD with a physical platter isn't it? I think SSDs go by different stats for health. I could be completely wrong on this though as i don't usually track drive health. ranasrule 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farmeunit Posted August 3, 2018 Share Posted August 3, 2018 75TBW is the life listed for that model so it's just over 2%. Honestly, I wouldn't worry if you got a good deal on it anyway. You can get other comparable drive for $60 or less in that size, FYI. ranasrule 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Matthew S. Subscriber² Posted August 3, 2018 Subscriber² Share Posted August 3, 2018 2 hours ago, ranasrule said: it has 1.80 TB written to it...but its the 100% health I dont get. Can that be messed with somehow? Is it calculated from SMART data? If so then can that be messed with? Please see screenshot below of SMART stats Something does seem off with that... ranasrule 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ranasrule Posted August 4, 2018 Author Share Posted August 4, 2018 8 hours ago, Matthew S. said: Something does seem off with that... Could you be more specific please? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrynalyne Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 (edited) 13 hours ago, Matthew S. said: Best way to check the health is how many writes it has, if it's anything over 5TB I wouldn't bother. For a two year old drive? That’s light useage. 10 hours ago, Matthew S. said: Something does seem off with that... I’ve had 850 Pros with 40TB written with 100% health. A 250GB 850 Evo has a max write endurance of 500TiB. Dysphoria and ranasrule 2 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrynalyne Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 I should mention the above is an estimate: https://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review/4 The warranty limits are way underrated for what these drives can do. ranasrule 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThaCrip Posted August 11, 2018 Share Posted August 11, 2018 (edited) I got a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD and I have had it since May 2015 and here it is nearly 3 years and 3 months later and Samsung Magician says I have written 12TB to the drive which means I am averaging less than 4TB year year (which I suspect will decline a bit with time since a large portion of my larger data file writing I use a regular hard drive). so lets just say 4TB per year, that drive will likely last me 20+ years assuming it only fails from writing data to the drive and nothing else. as others have mentioned, the drive is rated for 75TB and that figure is conservative to as it will likely go well beyond that before actual drive failure occurs from writing data to it. but even if someone were to get only 80TB out of it, it would take me more than 20 years at my current use rate and I would imagine it's unlikely ill still be using this SSD in 20+ years given the rate at which technology advances. but odds are ill still be still using it in 5-10 years though as it's still easily 'fast enough' to where I can't see newer technology blowing this thing away, for general use speed wise, for quite some time. or look at it this way... you could write 40GB PER DAY EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR 5 YEARS STRAIGHT and still only be at 73TB and there is a good chance it will do at least double that figure before the drive acts up which means even at 40GB per day (which is a lot) there is still a reasonable chance you will see 10+ years out of it. in other words... just use the drive and don't worry about it especially given the prices of 250GB SSD's are only around $60-70 or so for a quality name brand SSD where as back when I bought mind in May 2015 they were nearly double that cost at $119.99 (that's exactly what I paid at the time). which now for around $100-120 you can get the 500GB range of SSD's. I most likely won't be upgrading my SSD til you see at least 1TB range for around $100 and even then I might still hold off depending on whether I really need the space or not which chances are even 500GB is sufficient for quite a few who play games as that will still allow you AT LEAST a 3-4 large games (say those around 100GB). so basically if the 500GB range drives become cheap enough, say $30 (maybe $50 tops), I may eventually upgrade to one of those etc. but buying a used SSD mostly boils down to what kind of deal your getting as if your paying anything close to what a new SSD is in that 250GB range, it's not worth buying. like a quick look online here in the USA shows those 250GB range Samsung 860 EVO's (which are a little better than the 850 EVO) for about $60-70. so given that info, if I were to buy a USED 850 EVO 250GB I would probably not want to pay more than around $40 TOPS otherwise I would rather just get the new drive with a 5 year warranty. but if you can get it for about $30, it would be difficult to complain and would be clearly a good deal especially since you said it only has 1.8TB of data written to it which is almost nothing as it's damn near new at that rate. Edited August 11, 2018 by ThaCrip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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