I live in Germany and am building an affordable PC for 1080p gaming and game development using Unity and VS Code. A new 512GB SSD costs around €85, while a new 1TB model is about €130. Used 1TB SSDs can sometimes be found for €95–€100. Is the extra capacity worth paying for, and what are the risks of buying a used SSD? If used is reasonable, what should I check before purchasing?
3 Answers
I’d avoid a used SSD unless the savings are substantial and the seller offers a reliable return period. You usually can’t know how heavily it was used or how much endurance it has left. If you do buy one, check its health and total bytes written with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo, confirm the reported capacity, test it for errors, and make sure the drive is recognized consistently. Keep backups regardless, since SSDs can fail without much warning.
512GB can work if you mainly play a few games at a time and uninstall anything you aren’t using. However, leaving some free space helps maintain performance, so a 1TB SSD gives you much more breathing room and avoids constantly moving projects or games around. Storage speed does not automatically become better just because a drive is larger, but larger models often have better sustained performance and more room before they fill up.
For gaming plus Unity projects, the 1TB drive is probably the better long-term choice if you can fit it into your budget. Games, development tools, project files, and the operating system can fill 512GB surprisingly quickly. A smaller SSD paired with a large hard drive is another option: keep active projects and frequently played games on the SSD, and store older files on the hard drive.
A return policy makes a used drive less risky, but I’d still treat it as secondary storage unless its health reports are excellent. For a new build, the extra cost of a new 1TB drive is usually worth the peace of mind.