If you can wait a few weeks, I can definitely recommend KingSpec's small SSDs on AliExpress for things like this, or even their mSATA ones with a mSATA to SATA adapter board, especially as they're very light weight and can just hang off the cables

mSATA SSD
mSATA adapter

SATA SSD

I cant recommend the kingspec stuff at all.

the 120 gig NVMe ones I got started out ok, but ended up horridly slow, so slow that the PC would bluescreen. Power off and on and they would boot ok and become slow after 10-15 mins. Repeat process till needed work was done. At least they never lost data or had corruption from all the powering off while in use, but they were totally useless for boot drives for a windows 10 machine that didn't need to run much. Swapped out for the smallest Samsung 970 I could get at the time and cloned it over using a PCIe to NVMe adapter board and the same install is vastly faster and stable on the Samsung.

No software updates for them, their website is never accessible behind some Chinese version of cloudflare that just throws errors all the time.

Apparently they have no dram cache on their drives and an old known to be bad controller. But thats just what I have been told by random people online so may not be 100% true.

SEEN:

I can definitely recommend KingSpec's small SSDs on AliExpress

Hi all, thanks for the replies. I won't be getting something of Aliexpress for this - due to COVID-19 there are massive delays/issues; I am waiting on a bunch of unrelated kit that is nowhere to be seen.

@neb yes I understand where you are coming from. I've actually just used a "spare" 512gb drive I had about for another project, which is a bit overkill as I only need ~64gb - but I want to test this project out a bit before putting more money, however little, into it! 

Also figured small drives might be kicking around in Geekzoners drawers, but seems not!

richms:

 

I cant recommend the kingspec stuff at all.

 

the 120 gig NVMe ones I got started out ok, but ended up horridly slow, so slow that the PC would bluescreen. Power off and on and they would boot ok and become slow after 10-15 mins. Repeat process till needed work was done. At least they never lost data or had corruption from all the powering off while in use, but they were totally useless for boot drives for a windows 10 machine that didn't need to run much. Swapped out for the smallest Samsung 970 I could get at the time and cloned it over using a PCIe to NVMe adapter board and the same install is vastly faster and stable on the Samsung.

 

No software updates for them, their website is never accessible behind some Chinese version of cloudflare that just throws errors all the time.

 

Apparently they have no dram cache on their drives and an old known to be bad controller. But thats just what I have been told by random people online so may not be 100% true.

 

Fair enough, maybe I've just been lucky or you've just been unlucky? Either way, they've worked fine for me for basic things like running Windows 10 and Plex on a later model thin-client.

cybercrawler: I know a place where used 128 GB SSD’s go for $18. PM if interested.

😝 With a username like that, I can just imagine you being the right person to talk to about finding the best deals online or more obscure / off main street stuff. 😂

I have a used 120GB (Crucial I think) that you can have for $15.. I'm in Hamilton though so it'd be $4 shipping to most places so not sure if you can find something cheaper local.

Couple of PMs sent, thanks.