- Virtual CIO
How to Evaluate Cloud vs On-Premise for Each Workload
3 Feb, 2026

£1776.41 inc. VAT
AI-generated summary
If you’re looking at the **Dell 345-BDQM 960GB 2.5" SATA SSD** at **£1,480 ex-VAT**, my honest take is: it’s hard to justify unless you specifically *need* this exact Dell-branded, enterprise-friendly SATA setup for a known compatibility reason (certain server backplanes, vendor support requirements, or a managed fleet standard). In the real world, 2.5" SATA SSDs are solid workhorses, but they’re not the kind of upgrade that delivers “wow” performance versus cheaper mainstream SSDs—especially once you compare value against NVMe drives. So unless your environment is constrained to SATA, you may be paying a premium mostly for form factor and paperwork.
Who this makes sense for: teams standardising on Dell ecosystem parts, IT departments replacing drives in older SATA-only servers/storage where you want reliability and predictable behaviour, and businesses that care more about supportability than raw speed-per-pound. Who should probably avoid it: anyone with flexibility to go NVMe, or anyone shopping purely on cost and performance—at this price, you’ll likely get better throughput and lower cost by moving to a more current drive class. If you tell me what server/model it’s going into and what you’re trying to improve (VMs, file storage, database workloads, boot volumes), I can help you sanity-check whether this is a sensible fit or an expensive compromise.

HP
HP - SSD - Value - 512 GB - internal - M.2 2280 - PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe) - for Workstation Z2 G9 (SFF, tower)

Dell
Dell - Customer Kit - SSD - Read Intensive - 1.92 TB - 2.5" (in 3.5" carrier) - SAS 24Gb/s - for PowerEdge R640, R650, R6525, R660, R6625, R740, R750, R7515, R7525, R760, R840, T550

Lenovo
ThinkSystem M.2 5400 PRO 480GB Read Intensive SATA 6Gb NHS SSD

Lenovo
Lenovo ThinkSystem S4520 - SSD - Read Intensive - 240 GB - hot-swap - 2.5" - SATA 6Gb/s - for ThinkStation P920 Rack, ThinkSystem SR645, SR650 V2, SR665, SR850, SR850 V2, SR860 V2