Boot-pool degraded, SMART looks fine?

[GrimmReaperNL]

Should I look for ssd's with cache/dram? or is that not required for the boot-pool?

I was looking at a PNY CS900 120GB (€13) without cache or a Crucial MX500 250GB (€31) with cache.
Everything in between is brands I haven't heard of.

 

[joeschmuck]

Should I look for ssd's with cache/dram? or is that not required for the boot-pool?

Cache/DRAM is not required for the boot-pool, it seems like manufacturers are getting away from using those. Cutting corners all the time.

I like Crucial, Samsung, Adata, not in that order, Samsung is my preferred. Okay, if I could afford Intel, I'd buy the good Intel SSD's but the cost is way to high for a home NAS. Maybe you could find a 32GB Intel?

 

[GrimmReaperNL]

Cheapest intel is €80 for a Intel D3-S4520 240GB.

Cheapest 32GB is a Transcend SSD370 (Premium) 32GB for €40.

There's a Netac N535S 60GB for €12, but that's not a brand I recognize.
I'd rather got for the Crucial's if cache was important. As you said it's not that important, I'll probably get the PNY's.

There are also Adata Ultimate SU650 120GB for €12. Or Samsung 870 Evo (MZ-77E250B/EU) 250GB for €36.

But all of these drives (with exception of the 32GB) have some extreme over provisioning.

 

[joeschmuck]

I would only purchase a brand I've heard of before. And you could still get the Crucial if you want. Also you could do a search on the drives you are on the fence about, see what other people have said. Hopefully all good words, but sometimes you find a few bad reviews with merit.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

From what i understand from other members (if I understand correctly) ZFS itself caches information and as such there's a potential to not work well with secondary caches. I would think a small cache on a SSD wouldn't hurt matters, but given it is being used as a boot drive I also don't think it would help. Given there's probably little to no upside and a potentially hazardous downside I'd not get a cached drive. On modern hardware there shouldn't be the overhead of waiting on a SATA write, so all should be good. (If you're running an old Pentium system that's different)

I don't know why some consumer grade SSDs give out early. Looking at their rewrite numbers they're obviously not geared for 24/7 OS usage, but if they have good wear-leveling algorithms they should be lasting far, far longer. And maybe that's the thing, perhaps their write algorithm keeps tiny files in one zone and large files in another zone so a large rewrite is fast and wear-levels well, so for 24/7 log file update use one zone is getting hammered until it's dead. Consumers would in theory write files of varying sizes and not experience this issue, if it is the issue.