The Dell 03KVC5 is a 480GB SATA solid state drive for servers. It is a mixed use drive and comes with a Dell tray. Seller listings pair it with the Samsung SM883 480GB, a drive made for data center work.

Pick it if

• Your server both reads and writes all day, such as a small database, a mail server or a virtual machine host.
• You need a small boot or cache drive that can take steady writes.
• Your bay takes 2.5-inch SATA drives on a Dell tray.
• You want a steady drive for the operating system of a busy server, set up as a mirrored pair.

Skip it if

• Your server mostly reads, such as a media library. A read intensive drive does that for less.
• Your bay is SAS only.
• You write huge amounts of data all day. A write intensive SAS drive is a better match.

Mixed use in plain words

Drive makers sort enterprise drives into three classes by how much writing they are built to take.

Daily write math

Mixed use drives like this one are rated for 3 drive writes per day. On a 480GB drive, that is about 1.44TB of new data every day. Samsung lists the SM883 line at 3 drive writes per day, with sequential writes up to 520 MB/s and up to 29,000 random writes per second.

Quick fit check

• The bay must take 2.5-inch drives on a Dell tray.
• The bay must support SATA, which runs at 6Gb/s.
• Match the part number 03KVC5 to your server's drive list. Dell also writes it as 3KVC5.
• Keep one spare of the same part number for fast swaps.

Dell 03KVC5 specifications