Used enterprise SSDs are a bargain, but only if you know what to check first

Published Sep 14, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT Dhruv Bhutani has been writing about consumer technology since 2008, offering deep insights into the personal technology landscape through features and opinion pieces. He writes for XDA-Developers, where he focuses on topics like productivity, networking, self-hosting, and more. Over the years, his work has also appeared in leading publications such as Android Police, Android Authority, CNET, PCMag, and more. Outside of his professional work, Dhruv is an avid fan of horror media spanning films and literature, enjoys fitness activities, collects vinyl records, and plays the guitar. With storage prices as high as they are right now, I've been looking harder at where I can save money in my home server and NAS setup. It's a search that has led me down a couple of avenues, including one that actually makes a lot of sense. Used enterprise SSDs are one place where you can save a significant sum of money without much of a concern about the state of usage. Look hard enough, and you can get a high-capacity SATA or NVMe drive for considerably less than new consumer models, and for the kind of workloads I run, a used drive can still have plenty of life left in it. Ironically, this isn't a new gamble for me. I already buy shucked hard drives and pick up drives from stores like ServerPartDeals. I'm already comfortable eschewing a proper retail warranty for a much lower price. So, factors like the lack of a warranty aren't a problem for me. With the right checks and balances, a used enterprise SSD is the way to save money in this economy. Choose the right enterprise SSD for your workload Make sure the interface is compatible with your hardware Look, let me be honest here. You can't just pop into a user enterprise hardware website and pick up a drive like you might off Amazon or Best Buy. You have plenty of factors to keep in mind. On that note, buying an enterprise SSD simply because the price per dollar looks good is the wrong approach. Enterprise drives are built for very different kinds of workloads, and that makes a difference when you go ahead and buy a new drive. For example, for my NAS and home server, my interest lies in drives that are optimized for low latency and fast random access. My Docker volumes are stored on SSDs, and everything from application data, databases, virtual machines, indexes, and other services where a hard disk would be a bottleneck needs to load up quickly. My media, on the other hand, stays on a spinning drive. Endurance ratings are what you need to be looking at in these situations. Specifically, drive writes per day. This tells you what a drive was designed to handle over its rated life. Then there's SMART data and health logs. If you're going the eBay route to pick up new drives, it is imperative that you ask for SMART data to see just how much the drive has been used and how much life it has left. Elsewhere, you might want to keep an eye out for features like power-loss protection. Enterprise drives are used in very different and more controlled environments than a home server. So, you'll want to make sure that the drive has appropriate protections built-in. Ironically, the biggest thing to keep in mind when picking up an enterprise drive is the interface itself. Don't just assume that an enterprise drive is going to be NVMe-based. Most enterprise equipment uses interfaces like U.2 NVMe for SSDs, or SAS, and you'll want to see exactly what you're buying or risk ending up with hardware that is incompatible with your system. Check the drive before hitting the buy button TBW and Power-on hours are a good start, but there's more to investigate The first thing I do is check the exact model and part number for the SSD I'm about to pick up. Enterprise SSDs don't have consumer-friendly names, so you'll want to Google this part to see exactly what you have. Enterprise drives can have different firmware, SMART information, or specific compatibility requirements, which you'll want to be aware of before spending your money. Once in a while, I might also run into drives that are locked to the systems they were originally sold with, making them utterly useless in my system. My basic checklist runs something like original endurance rating, interface, NAND type, power-loss protection, and then checking community forums for known compatibility issues. If available, I'll usually take a look at drive health data. If not, it's never a bad idea to ask the vendor to source it for you. After all, even if it's a refurbished component, it's still something that's going to cost you a few hundred dollars. Due diligence is essential. As for the terabytes written values and power-on hours, the numbers don't tell you much in isolation. You'll need to compare them against published specifications. Here's where things get interesting. Even if a drive has thousands of power-on hours and low TBW values, that's a good deal. Plus, it's worth keeping in mind that enterprise hard drives are built to higher standards than commercial drives and are expected to be deployed for heavy use. So, a high value isn't necessarily a bad thing. The savings make the effort worthwhile It's a fair amount of work, I'll admit it. But the cost savings make it worth the effort of sifting through enterprise SSDs. A bargain drive isn't going to come with the same peace of mind as a brand-new disk, but by doing your homework before investing in one, you can mitigate a lot of the risk. Moreover, it can make picking up used enterprise hardware a very sensible way to add new storage to your rig without paying inflated prices. Lexar NM790 SSD The Lexar NM790 2TB is a high-speed PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD that delivers responsive storage for gaming, creative work, PCs, laptops, and PS5 consoles.