Opinions about Intel Pro 1500 and 2500 series SSDs

GotNoRice

GotNoRice

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I'm looking for opinions on using these drives for cheap SSD upgrades for older computers. I still do a lot of upgrades on older computers (many in the 10-15 year old range), often with CPUs like a Q6600. Despite the age of the CPU, they are generally still enough for basic office and web tasks and these systems still seem to get a huge boost from moving to an SSD instead of a mechanical drive. I always like to keep a few spare cheap SSDs handy for when I can perform these upgrades for people.

These drives have caught my eye because they seem to have a great cost per gigabyte ratio. When talking about something like a Samsung SSD, you can often find used ~128GB drives in the ~$20 range, but ~256GB drives tend to be closer to the $40 range most of the time. These Intel drives are notable because I can usually find 180GB models in the $20-$25 range. IMO 180GB is a much more usable capacity compared to 128GB, and yet still for half the price of a 256GB Samsung drive.

Is there anything about these drives that I should be wary of? Anything what would negate the extra storage space advantage they have over something like a 128GB Samsung SSD?
 
Just get WD Greens or the Kingstons, They will most likely only push around 260MBps on SATAII whatever you get so....

Performance does not matter one jot.
 
No issues. You'll be fine with those Intel drives. Not worth spending more on anything else.
 
Nothing wrong with them. Older, MLC-based drives, so no SLC caching, but for old machines it's not a big deal.
 
if it's the OEM intel PRO 2500 drives

DO NOT BUY THEM

there's a problem with the firmware that makes them randomly stop working, I bought a whole bunch of them for my servers and learned that the hard way
 
FLECOM said:
if it's the OEM intel PRO 2500 drives

DO NOT BUY THEM

there's a problem with the firmware that makes them randomly stop working, I bought a whole bunch of them for my servers and learned that the hard way
Click to expand...

Do you know if this is a problem with the 1500 series drives also or just the 2500 series?
 
not sure, like I said I had the HP branded intel pro 2500s and they had a problem that would cause them to fail... annoyingly HP released an update for this here: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05905184 but I can't for the life of me get the patch to work... even bought one of the hp machines in the list of devices affected and nothing so I just ended up giving up
 
GotNoRice said:
I'm talking about SSDs that are >128GB that can be bought for <$25. I don't see any WD Green or Kingston drives that fit that category, at least not on eBay. These are for older systems where it's not really even worth it to upgrade unless it's cheap.
Click to expand...


I'd still rather stump up an extra $10 for a new drive than ones that been hammered for 5+ years in a server. I looked into these drives and similar ones a couple o years ago and came to the conclusion it just wasnt worth the effort.
 
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daglesj said:
I'd still rather stump up an extra $10 for a new drive than ones that been hammered for 5+ years in a server. I looked into these drives and similar ones a couple o years ago and came to the conclusion it just wasnt worth the effort.
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In most cases these drives are going into computers where their users mostly browse the web and check their email. Whatever their previous usage, their usage going forward is unlikely to be "the straw that broke the camel's back". All the drives that I've bought and tried so far show 100% life remaining via CrystalDiskInfo. The older computers still benefit because you don't have 30 processes all trying to access a mechanical disk simultaneously every time the system boots, and windows updates as well as background malware scans, etc, don't slow the system to a crawl either.

But I'm always open to recommendations. $10 more? Which new drives are you looking at that are >128GB for <$35?
 
Why would you buy a 180/240GB SSD for just web browsing and email?

64GB would do for that. If it's an old machine then SATA II will nullify any performance benefit of a larger drive.
 
daglesj said:
Why would you buy a 180/240GB SSD for just web browsing and email?

64GB would do for that. If it's an old machine then SATA II will nullify any performance benefit of a larger drive.
Click to expand...

Because I've done these upgrades probably 100 times or more over the years and I know how it goes. Web browsing and email - have you seen how much junk people save? Hundreds of stupid cat videos and endless downloaded email attachments. Not to mention porn. Also many download pictures/videos from their phones to their computers - and many phones have 64GB or more storage these days. In no way could you simply say that "64GB would do that". I already tried that years ago using earlier generation 64GB/80GB drives just to end up having to upgrade their drives again in many cases a year or two later once it filled up with pictures and videos. That is why I'm apprehensive about the 128GB drives. It is a useful capacity, but if I can get a 180GB drive instead for basically the same price, then that is a nice cushion.

My question in the OP is pretty simple. If you don't have a suggestion that fits within the context of what I actually asked, that's fine, but suggesting drives way beyond the price-range I'm looking at, and then trying to debate about the size that I said I wanted, is not particularly helpful.
 
Hmm well 180GB Intel 1500's are going for on average $45 this side of the pond which is new 250GB territory here. So wouldn't make sense over here. YMMV I guess.

Maybe its the pandemic affecting prices.

Plus those newer larger drives will be worth carrying over to a newer build when that Q6600 rig finally dies 2-3 years from now.
 
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