Editorial, 22 Aug 2026. Specs from maker pages and recent street reports. We have not burned these units in. Affiliate tags are not live.
2.5-inch SATA SSD for a Proxmox boot disk
Boot is not a VM datastore. 250–500 GB SATA with a DRAM cache is enough. Do not put guests on the boot disk.
Do not pretend a consumer drive is a PLP enterprise part. This sits in the N100 / N150 box, not under a pile of VMs. Street on the 500 GB 870 EVO is messy in Aug 2026 — do not treat it as the old $30–$55 part.
The short list
| Drive | What it is | Street, 22 Aug 2026 | Buy if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung 870 EVO 500 GB | MZ-77E500B/AM, 2.5-inch SATA, 560/530 MB/s, 300 TBW, 5-year. DRAM cache. ASIN B08QBMD6P4. B&H #1606519-REG. | Trackers showed about $200–$306 on Amazon around 10–21 Aug 2026. Samsung.com US list $299.99. Recheck live. This is not a $50 drive right now. | Default boot size if the live cart is sane. Still consumer. Still not PLP. |
| Samsung 870 EVO 250 GB | Smaller boot size in the same family. | SpecPicks 2026 cited $50–$70 as a typical band. Confirm a live ASIN before publish or click. | You only need a hypervisor disk and the 500 GB cart is inflated. |
| Crucial BX500 500 GB | CT500BX500SSD1, DRAM-less QLC, 120 TBW, 3-year. India Amazon ASIN B0B9BL9T4H is live. | Do not quote INR as US street. No confirmed US Amazon / Newegg / Crucial.com cart this pass. | Only if a US cart is live at publish time. Not the default. |
Skip
Skip putting guests on the boot disk. Skip treating QLC DRAM-less as a Proxmox datastore. Skip “about $50” memory for the 500 GB 870 EVO — that era is not what the August trackers showed.
Sources
Samsung US 870 EVO 500 GB (list $299.99). Amazon ASIN B08QBMD6P4. B&H 870 EVO 500 GB. SpecPicks 2026 boot-SSD piece (250 GB band). Proxmox forum thread on 870 EVO boot + ext4 vs ZFS.