News Samsung quietly launches 61.44TB SSD, talks about a 122.88TB model

[bit_user]

I'd say it's more the fact that for 75% of people 1TB is plenty and for 99% of people 4TB is plenty.

No... regardless of need, there did not exist NAND chips of the requisite density to build 16 TB M.2 drives!

 

[jeremyj_83]

Years ago... 1 one drive per day of endurance... now 0.26... Now I know what is the meaning of QLC quad loss cells

Lots of drives still have 3 to 5 DWPD rating in enterprise.

 

[bit_user]

Back in 2018 I remember there being a 100TB SATA SSD for data centers.

Yeah, I forget the name, but there was at least one company building unicorn SSDs with like $40k price tags. They wouldn't have been U.2 form factor, I'm reasonably certain. As above, that would be due to lack of NAND density.

Lots of drives still have 3 to 5 DWPD rating in enterprise.

Yes, but these are QLC. The ones you're talking about are TLC.

 

[jeremyj_83]

No... regardless of need, there did not exist NAND chips of the requisite density to build 16 TB M.2 drives!

Not 16TB but you can do 8TB M.2 but that might only be in the 22110 size.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Yeah, I forget the name, but there was at least one company building unicorn SSDs with like $40k price tags. They wouldn't have been U.2 form factor, I'm reasonably certain. As above, that would be due to lack of NAND density.


Yes, but these are QLC. The ones you're talking about are TLC.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/100tb-ssd-nimbus-sata-flash,36687.html

 

[bit_user]

Not 16TB but you can do 8TB M.2 but that might only be in the 22110 size.

8 TB M.2 drives launched last year, and in the 2280 form factor. They're QLC, which should go without saying.

The 22110 form factor is effectively dead. Last year, I bought a 22110 Samsung PM9A3, but had to resort to ebay, because there were no official resellers still selling them. In hindsight, I probably should've just gone with a 990 Pro. The PM9A3 is double-sided and idles hot, which makes it annoying to cool. I really didn't need what it brings to the table (better tail latencies, maybe better endurance... I forget), and its peak performance figures are worse than I think even the 980 Pro.

 

[bit_user]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/100tb-ssd-nimbus-sata-flash,36687.html

Ah, yes. 3.5" form factor - that's how they did it!

 

[jeremyj_83]

8 TB M.2 drives launched last year, and in the 2280 form factor. They're QLC, which should go without saying.

The 22110 form factor is effectively dead. Last year, I bought a 22110 Samsung PM9A3, but had to resort to ebay, because there was no one still selling them new. In hindsight, I probably should've just gone with a 990 Pro. The PM9A3 is double-sided and idles hot, which makes it annoying to cool. I really didn't need what it brings to the table (better tail latencies, maybe better endurance... I forget), and I think its peak performance figures are worse than I think even the 980 Pro.

22110 is used for enterprise drives almost exclusively. On the consumer side it is all 2280 or 2230. Granted even on the enterprise side M.2 is primarily just a boot drive.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Ah, yes. 3.5" form factor - that's how they did it!

Ah yeah I remembered it as 2.5" not 3.5". I should have read the link...lol

 

[bit_user]

22110 is used for enterprise drives almost exclusively.

You can't even find them in enterprise drives (which the PM9A3 is, in case you didn't know). Don't believe me? Just browse on over to the product listings of leading enterprise SSD brands and look at what form factors their current model lineups are available in. You won't find any of their drives in M.2.

Samsung even went as far as removing M.2 from its PM9A3 pages! It's an older model from I think 2021 or so, that you'd expect them not to care about so much. Maybe they got annoyed by inquiries from people asking where to buy the M.2 version.

 

[thestryker]

You can't even find them in enterprise drives (which the PM9A3 is, in case you didn't know). Don't believe me? Just browse on over to the product listings of leading enterprise SSD brands and look at what form factors their current model lineups are available in. You won't find any of their drives in M.2.

I think all that's left is the ones which were built for HPE (I believe those are all Samsung PM9A3) which means they only exist due to contract. It's certainly an effectively dead format.

 

[jeremyj_83]

You can't even find them in enterprise drives (which the PM9A3 is, in case you didn't know). Don't believe me? Just browse on over to the product listings of leading enterprise SSD brands and look at what form factors their current model lineups are available in. You won't find any of their drives in M.2.

Samsung even went as far as removing M.2 from its PM9A3 pages! It's an older model from I think 2021 or so, that you'd expect them not to care about so much. Maybe they got annoyed by inquiries from people asking where to buy the M.2 version.

Micron 7450 has M.2 versions is 2280 and 22110 sizes. The 1.6TB+ of those are 22110 in size. The Micron 5400 has M.2 as well but only in 2280 size.

Edit: Optane 4801X is also 22110. I do know that Optane is dead now but still another that you can still buy.

 

[cia1413]

I am a photographer and use 8TB SSDs - not in an array, but individually. I need at least 12 TB and 16 would be great. I have several 8TB Samsung SATA SSDs (those are getting cheaper and are slow, but still 4 times faster than spinning rust) and 2 or 3 very expensive 8TB PCIE 4 M.2 SSDs.
I am shocked that there is not more demand for some higher capacity SSDs. I predicted 3 years ago that by now we would have 16 TB PCIe 4 M.2 SSDs for less than 400 bucks. Boy was I wrong. We are stuck in the mud at 8TB.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...o-nvme-m-2-u-2-edsff-e3-s-etc.2179713/page-33

I'm going to guess you use a apple computer, have fun.

 

[Rdslw]

I am a photographer and use 8TB SSDs - not in an array, but individually. I need at least 12 TB and 16 would be great. I have several 8TB Samsung SATA SSDs (those are getting cheaper and are slow, but still 4 times faster than spinning rust) and 2 or 3 very expensive 8TB PCIE 4 M.2 SSDs.
I am shocked that there is not more demand for some higher capacity SSDs. I predicted 3 years ago that by now we would have 16 TB PCIe 4 M.2 SSDs for less than 400 bucks. Boy was I wrong. We are stuck in the mud at 8TB.

going above 8TB means serious investment.
2.5 and 3.5's are obsolete, everyone tries to use m.2 as their "define" form factor, and you can cram 8TB into that finger sized form, that's a miracle already. Any other sizes are m.2 chip, with different connector, that's why we see that 8TB limit as glass ceiling, right now.
what you need is to go to server form factors, and be prepared for extra 0 at the end.
I would recommend you look at

PM1735 12.8TB HHHL PCIe 4 x8​

as I belive that would be biggest that have wide compatibility, and some speed.
if you can take u2. PM9A3 or PM1653
and good luck.

 

[bit_user]

what you need is to go to server form factors, and be prepared for extra 0 at the end.
I would recommend you look at

PM1735 12.8TB HHHL PCIe 4 x8​

as I belive that would be biggest that have wide compatibility, and some speed.
if you can take u2. PM9A3 or PM1653

Why not U.2? There are adapters you can get for connecting the cables to M.2 slots and most cases still have 2.5" drive bays with decent cooling.

The downside of the PCIe HHHL form factor is that these server cards are designed for a chassis with high airflow and are passively cooled, while often using much more power than M.2 drives. Most PCs don't have a lot of airflow naturally going over their PCIe cards, in which case the SSD might heat soak under even moderate loads.

As for cost, I got a new 4 TB Solidigm P5520 for just $311, last year, from an official reseller. Granted, that was a really good deal, since I bought at the trough of the datacenter SSD market downturn, but it wasn't much premium to pay for a datacenter-grade drive. When comparing costs, you have to keep in mind whether a datacenter SSD is TLC or QLC and compare it accordingly. If it's TLC and you're comparing against a consumer QLC drive, that's going to exaggerate the price delta even further.

 

[Li Ken-un]

I'd guess the 16K part is indicating it's computed using an average transaction size of 16 kB?

The D5-P5336 uses a 16 KiB indirection unit (IU)—the smallest piece of data the flash translation unit can write without directly incurring a read-modify-write chain. The D5-P5316 it replaced had used a 64 KiB IU.

 

[derekullo]

Years ago... 1 one drive per day of endurance... now 0.26... Now I know what is the meaning of QLC quad loss cells

4 times the space with 1/4 the write endurance for 1/4 the cost!
Checks out!

 

[PrimalNaCl]

About 4 years ago my work (a collection of libraries) transitioned all staff and patron computers using mechanical based drives to Samsung 860 EVO SSDs, about 800 computers in total running a mixture of 256 gigabyte and 512 gigabyte drives.
In the last 4 years we only had 3 SSD failures.
We called support and said these 3 drives had died under warranty and each time they sent us a new drive back through advanced replacement.

If you can't trust data storage for a year then try an online backup solution.
I use Crashplan at my house for online backup.
Unlimited storage for about $12 a month ... I currently have 16.6 terabytes backed up.
This may not be worth it if you only have like 400 gigabytes to backup, but for multi-terabyte backups that price is hard to beat!

Often times cloud backup providers have disparate cost schedules for recovery vs backup. $12/month for unlimited storage doesn't sound insane especially when the backup set is approaching 17TB. But how much does it cost to retrieve that 17TB? Or even some fraction of it? Are there speed tiers and/or bandwidth caps for either backup or restore? What are those? 17TB for $12/month maybe not be the deal it sounds like if the pipe is limited such that it takes 5 years to get a full backup.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Often times cloud backup providers have disparate cost schedules for recovery vs backup. $12/month for unlimited storage doesn't sound insane especially when the backup set is approaching 17TB. But how much does it cost to retrieve that 17TB? Or even some fraction of it? Are there speed tiers and/or bandwidth caps for either backup or restore? What are those? 17TB for $12/month maybe not be the deal it sounds like if the pipe is limited such that it takes 5 years to get a full backup.

They might also charge per GB of ingress traffic as well.

 

[derekullo]

Often times cloud backup providers have disparate cost schedules for recovery vs backup. $12/month for unlimited storage doesn't sound insane especially when the backup set is approaching 17TB. But how much does it cost to retrieve that 17TB? Or even some fraction of it? Are there speed tiers and/or bandwidth caps for either backup or restore? What are those? 17TB for $12/month maybe not be the deal it sounds like if the pipe is limited such that it takes 5 years to get a full backup.

Thought about mentioning this in the post but it felt a bit off topic.
As I test I setup a system at work with 2 - 16 terabyte drives in a raid 0 and was able to restore from backup all 16.6 terabytes in about 2 weeks.

Didn't cost a thing!

Not the fastest restore in the world, but now I have a 4th backup of my system ...even if the backup is a few months out of date
😛

 

[Rdslw]

Why not U.2? There are adapters you can get for connecting the cables to M.2 slots and most cases still have 2.5" drive bays with decent cooling.

The downside of the PCIe HHHL form factor is that these server cards are designed for a chassis with high airflow and are passively cooled, while often using much more power than M.2 drives. Most PCs don't have a lot of airflow naturally going over their PCIe cards, in which case the SSD might heat soak under even moderate loads.

As for cost, I got a new 4 TB Solidigm P5520 for just $311, last year, from an official reseller. Granted, that was a really good deal, since I bought at the trough of the datacenter SSD market downturn, but it wasn't much premium to pay for a datacenter-grade drive. When comparing costs, you have to keep in mind whether a datacenter SSD is TLC or QLC and compare it accordingly. If it's TLC and you're comparing against a consumer QLC drive, that's going to exaggerate the price delta even further.

I mentioned 2 U.2 options, I just tend to avoid it myself, after adapter failed one did fry the drive.
Simpler is better, so PCIE option is my first recommendation. Don't buy cheap adapters, guys.
Especially if you spend way over a grand for the ssd.

 

[bit_user]

I mentioned 2 U.2 options, I just tend to avoid it myself, after adapter failed one did fry the drive. ... Don't buy cheap adapters, guys.

This was a M.2 -> U.2 adapter? Do you have any recommendations for non-cheap adapters?

Simpler is better, so PCIE option is my first recommendation.

Newer drives tend not to be released in this form factor. Also, they're passively cooled and desktop cases often lack sufficient airflow over them, whereas the drive cage is always behind a couple big fans.

 

[Silas Sanchez]

I am a photographer and use 8TB SSDs - not in an array, but individually. I need at least 12 TB and 16 would be great. I have several 8TB Samsung SATA SSDs (those are getting cheaper and are slow, but still 4 times faster than spinning rust) and 2 or 3 very expensive 8TB PCIE 4 M.2 SSDs.
I am shocked that there is not more demand for some higher capacity SSDs. I predicted 3 years ago that by now we would have 16 TB PCIe 4 M.2 SSDs for less than 400 bucks. Boy was I wrong. We are stuck in the mud at 8TB.

I finally pulled the trigger on putting together my new PC a few years back after it really did seem clear to me we were in the golden age of hardware. At the time there was a huge amount of hype with fast and big nvme, it certainly seemed like I would have 8TB gen 5 nvme already and even 16TB gen 4 coming. And yet here we are...nothing...apart from some mediocre 8TB that have shot up in price. Its really frustrating as i wanted all 8TB.

Samsung make some of the best performing nvme but they are so not interested in 8tb. Really bloody ridiculous. Sadly the way the world has gone 8TB has just died, its like all the momentum has been shot. I guess so many stingy people are buying 1-2TB... The problem is made worse by the fact my mobo has only 4 M.2 slots, should have had 6, 4 is completely ridiculous when you have a dual boot and dual raw drives etc.

If 16TB come out I would use them for raw video storage. I tried going back to internal HDD, oh boy!! that sound of them spinning.... no way! Horrible.

I also have used the Samsung sata QLC 8TB drives and their sustained read speed with large photos and vids is ~325MB/s but an unusable 40-140Mb/s sustained write-a problem with large transfers. Samsung make the best 21700 li-ion cells by far, but sadly their sata drives are junk, but I brought them when they hadn't shot up in price, they were almost half the price they are now.
Even usb-c external drives using horrid shenzen "heatpads" that made no contact with the alloy housing and having mediocre nvme gen 4 cooking at 70C badly throttling vastly outperform those Samsung 8TB satas. There sustained write speeds while thermal throttling are ~250MB/s with 500GB of massive TIFF images, still much much faster. Throw in a samsung pro 990 and some large heatsinks or a simple fan on them and they will start to rival a good M.2 setup.

 

[bit_user]

Sadly the way the world has gone 8TB has just died, its like all the momentum has been shot.

Not sure if you noticed, but the SSD industry cratered last year. Lots of new developments had to get put on hold and production capacity had to get scaled back, just so these companies could remain solvent.

I also have used the Samsung sata QLC 8TB drives and their sustained read speed with large photos and vids is ~325MB/s but an unusable 40-140Mb/s sustained write-a problem with large transfers. Samsung make the best 21700 li-ion cells by far, but sadly their sata drives are junk,

You conclude that all of their SATA drives are junk, on the basis of an experience with their QLC SATA drives? That's hardly fair.