SSDs - State of the Product?

[jtr1962]

Same thoughts here. My last remaining mechanical drive in daily use is a 2TB Samsung which is pushing 8 years old. I'd like to eventually replace it with an SSD of at least 2TB, but I'm waiting for prices to fall to something under $200 before I do that. $150 would be even better. It's probably only a matter of time. Once 64-layer, and eventually 96-layer, NAND are in the supply pipeline 2TB SSDs will probably be less than 1TB SSDs are now. We may even see major process improvements which make NAND way cheaper to produce regardless of the number of layers.

The most interesting part of all this is in the third article I linked to. It basically mentions that once prices per GB for enterprise SSDs are 5x or less that of HDDs then SSDs will take over. The enterprise market seems to be the last remaining stronghold for HDDs, or at least it's where most of the profit is for HDD manufacturers.

 

[LunarMist]

2TB 3.5" drives are not economical compared to 8TB or higher in servers. The question is when 8+ TB SSDs will be economical.

If they can develop 4D memory with QLC and more layers it may be early 2020s.

 

[Handruin]

I'm not sure how exactly you made the conclusion that an 8+TB SSD is more economical in servers but that has not been true in my experience.

QLC NAND has already been announced by several key manufacturers. I don't believe entering the 4th dimension of space/time will happen in our lifetime with regards to NAND.

 

[LunarMist]

The 8TB+ hard drives are cheaper per GB than the smaller sizes.

I believe having more dimensions will allow for more storage theoretically.
Accessing the 5th dimension isn't practical yet of course.

 

[Stereodude]

Accessing the 5th dimension isn't practical yet of course.

Do you know something we don't? :scratch:

 

[Handruin]

Speaking of prices dropping, there is a 1TB SanDisk Ultra 3D NAND SATA III on sale for $149.50 with free shipping over at Amazon. There is also the Crucial MX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD - CT1000MX500SSD1(Z) for $159.99.

Both SSDs seems like a decent price for that much space. I haven't used either of these to speak at lengths on their performance or reliability but I wouldn't have an issue giving either a try.

 

[Stereodude]

I'm looking for a good 1TB M.2 SSD option for my Dell XPS 13. The Evo 970 is a power piggy in terms of efficiency. The WD Black is a pretty good without being a power hog and the new Toshiba XG6 looks interesting also, but is apparently OEM only.

 

[LunarMist]

Do you really need NVME? I've been doing well with the 860 in the i7-8650U notebook. For practical purposes it's a CPU bound system.

 

[Stereodude]

Do you really need NVME? I've been doing well with the 860 in the i7-8650U notebook. For practical purposes it's a CPU bound system.

Well, it came from Dell with a NVME M2 SSD. I was just looking to get a larger one. It's not like I can drop in a 2.5" SSD. I don't know if it's setup to run from a SATA M2 drive.

 

[LunarMist]

I'd try an SATA if you have one or WD / Samsung NVmE if it doesn't. I'd expect Dells to support practically any drives.

 

[LunarMist]

Wow, drives are really getting cheap! The 8TB of SSDs I received 4-6 months ago are now 2/3 or 3/4 as much.
I think it is about time for a 2.5" 7mm 8TB SSD.

 

[sechs]

I was looking for some used 60GB SATA SSDs to use as boot drives in servers, but it turns out that new, low-end 120GB TLC drives are cheaper. Picked up two for less than $40.

Used drives under 250GB are heading towards zero sale value. With QLC now in the mix, high capacity (but not necessarily high-performance) drives are on the way.

Once 2TB SSDs fall below $100, I can upgrade my server

 

[LunarMist]

The problem is that QLC is slower in writes than the MLC was ten years ago.
I hope we are not left with slow, crappy and cheap vs. very expensive, high performance SSDs in a few years with no middle ground.

 

[Stereodude]

The problem is that QLC is slower in writes than the MLC was ten years ago.
I hope we are not left with slow, crappy and cheap vs. very expensive, high performance SSDs in a few years with no middle ground.

Don't buy QLC drives and manufacturers will get the message (hopefully). Regular consumers will figure it out when they spend money on one and find they're slow and they'll get a bad reputation in short order.

 

[jtr1962]

Don't buy QLC drives and manufacturers will get the message (hopefully). Regular consumers will figure it out when they spend money on one and find they're slow and they'll get a bad reputation in short order.

Not to mention I'm concerned about their ability to retain data over long periods when unpowered.

 

[Stereodude]

Not to mention I'm concerned about their ability to retain data over long periods when unpowered.

I'm not entirely sure how valid of a concern that is. The story is that QLC was originally going to be for cold storage. Apparently it's more robust than they expected so they're making consumer drives from it. Eventually they're going to push too far, but I guess we're not there yet.

 

[LunarMist]

What about heat and humidity?

 

[Handruin]

I'm sure those environmental factors are listed somewhere in their NAND specs. Do you have specific needs for temperature and humidity?

 

[LunarMist]

No but SD indicated some temperature dependence. I wonder about the storage conditions in many warehouses.

 

[Handruin]

My understanding of the phrase SD used of "cold storage" simply means: not powered on. I would expect the drive to be stored at a room-temperature value anywhere in a reasonable 50F-80F range.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm not entirely sure how valid of a concern that is. The story is that QLC was originally going to be for cold storage. Apparently it's more robust than they expected so they're making consumer drives from it. Eventually they're going to push too far, but I guess we're not there yet.

Unfortunately consumers are generally cheap and products containing the QLC flasm will be worse off. I can hardly get to the internets now so I may not care at that point.

 

[Stereodude]

I can hardly get to the internets now so I may not care at that point.

Your ISP is putting obstacles in your way? Making you solve captchas before you get online? Your cantenna isn't getting on the WiFi from the Starbucks down the block as easily?

 

[LunarMist]

Of course I don't use Wi-Fi.
I had to look up that "cantenna" deal. I think the Santilli does something like that.

 

[sechs]

Don't buy QLC drives and manufacturers will get the message (hopefully). Regular consumers will figure it out when they spend money on one and find they're slow and they'll get a bad reputation in short order.

I really doubt that QLC will be slow enough for the general consumer to notice. They'll still be whiz-bang fast compared to spinning disks.

 

[Stereodude]

I really doubt that QLC will be slow enough for the general consumer to notice. They'll still be whiz-bang fast compared to spinning disks.

If they're sold as a retail product I think they will notice. If they're mostly OEM only installed items they might not.

 

[LunarMist]

The vast majority of consumers don't create anything requiring sustained writes and can live in the buffer. They just suck off the internet and occasionally send short video clips to the f*c*b**k, etc.
The only thing they will care about is corrupted or lost data and they are already used to that with cheap USB drives, which will not become more reliable with QLC.

 

[Stereodude]

The vast majority of consumers don't create anything requiring sustained writes and can live in the buffer. They just suck off the internet and occasionally send short video clips to the f*c*b**k, etc.
The only thing they will care about is corrupted or lost data and they are already used to that with cheap USB drives, which will not become more reliable with QLC.

And those people aren't out buying retail SSDs.

 

[LunarMist]

No, but they will be buying products with the QLC inside.

 

[Stereodude]

I know it's too late to reply here but it's a really informative conversation with you guys each other

Welcome first spammer of the new forum!

 

[Handruin]

Welcome first spammer of the new forum!

He be gone now.

 

[sechs]

If they're sold as a retail product I think they will notice.

And those people aren't out buying retail SSDs.

So, yeah. They're not going to notice.

 

[LunarMist]

>maybe I'll try for something in the 3.2GB if I can find it. QLC is bunk for now.

 

[sechs]

QLC will be great for write-once, read-many data. That's good for file servers and for desktop application [read: game] disks.

Instead of getting a couple terabytes of spinning rust for their fat-ass applications, I can see people getting a QLC SSD to complement their faster OS SSD. If it's cheap enough, it'll be a no-brainer.

 

[LunarMist]

A 10TB drive is $300. Maybe they can make a 10TB SSD for 4x that eventually, but performance needs to improve beyond 80MB/sec.

 

[LunarMist]

Is it worth getting the P4610 3.2TB over the P4510 4TB? The R/W transfer rates and read IOPs are about the same, but the write IO Pops are better for the P4610 with 200K than the P4510 with 114K.

 

[LunarMist]

Now there is an IronWolf 110 SSD for the NAS. It reminds me of the SandStone technology years ago.

 

[Handruin]

Looks like the IronWolf 110 is TLC NAND and supports 1 drive write per day for 5 years across all sizes. That's pretty low so it might come down to pricing, of which I couldn't find any.

 

[sechs]

When we're talking about an enterprise storage server, how many drive writes per day is expected?

 

[Stereodude]

When we're talking about an enterprise storage server, how many drive writes per day is expected?

That would depend entirely on the use case of the server. Some are probably close to 0 and others are probably well over 1.

 

[Handruin]

When we're talking about an enterprise storage server, how many drive writes per day is expected?

Enterprise drives that are classified as mixed-use are typically 5 writes per day and write-intensive drives are 10 writes per day. I do know that these numbers are being reclassified by some of the vendors we use to a lower number of writes per day. These vendors are moving away from write-intensive drives and focusing on selling mixed-use drives with the 5 writes per day rating.

There is also a read-intensive drive and they are typically 3 writes per day. These Seagate drives fall below that typical rating so hopefully their price reflects that or they have more faith in the durability of their TLC NAND.