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200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

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Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#41
post #6

I will say, SSD pricing is pretty frustrating. There's a lot of focus on faster and faster nvme that's barely noticeable while actual capacity has really stagnated at around 2-4tb. As someone who is very into photography, it takes not very long to fill 2tb of space. If I could buy a cheap 16tb ssd with fast reads and slow writes I'd be a happy camper but it doesn't exist unless I want to buy spinning disks (I don't)

Silly question - what makes you dislike buying four 4tb SSDs compared to buying one 16tb SSD? I could see it being less portable to have multiple drives, but I would presume that 16 TB isn’t really something that needs to be brought around portably unless you’re going somewhere for extended period of time without internet (preventing the use of a NAS/cloud storage). Multiple SSDs also allows the use of RAID for incre…

If one SSD has a failure rate of 5%, 4 SSDs will have a failure rate of 18.6%. If the 4 devices are in a RAID0 for convenience (don't have to figure out where to put files), there is an 18.6% chance of losing all data vs 5% with a 16TB drive. You can use RAID5/6 to mitigate the risk but then lose capacity.

IMO, higher SSD speeds are not a target for improvement by manufacturers, but a side-effect of using higher-density chips, which is more cost-effective. They probably can't make a slow, high-capacity SSD economically.

Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#42
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magic (at least as far as I'm concerned). I would love to see an updated version of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4

I have basic understanding of a generic process. I mean specifically 200+ layers. Do they “just” deposit layer after layer after layer, 200-something times?

I am not going to pretend to be a process engineer (I am chemical engineer by education) but I can't imagine any other way to do it than as you described. Would really love for someone more knowledgeable to chime in though.

Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#43
post #3

While I'd have no need for anywhere near 100+ TB, I'll be really happy when SSDs are cheaper than spinning disks. If they can make a 200TB drive for business, a 20TB drive for home users should be pretty reasonable.

What about longevity though.

My experience with SSDs and rotational drives (which may be somewhat dated and also biased by the specific models I was exposed to) is SSD failure rate is significantly lower than spinning drives, although I don't think I got much experience at 5+ years with SSDs, maybe there's a cliff. The downside is that SSD failures had no known prefailure indicators and tended to result in a completely inaccessible device with no chance of a last minute copy, whereas rotational drives often give signs (SMART metrics/warnings, failed reads of specific sectors, etc) and a last minute copy can be pretty effective if the signs are noticed in time. Sure, you should have backup protocols, but many people don't... so probability of an incident goes down, but probability of full data loss given an incident goes way up. In theory, SSDs are supposed to detect when they wear out and go to read only mode, but I've never seen that happen, and I've not run write heavy workloads that got them close to wearing out anyway.

Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#44
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly question - what makes you dislike buying four 4tb SSDs compared to buying one 16tb SSD? I could see it being less portable to have multiple drives, but I would presume that 16 TB isn’t really something that needs to be brought around portably unless you’re going somewhere for extended period of time without internet (preventing the use of a NAS/cloud storage). Multiple SSDs also allows the use of RAID for incre…

If one SSD has a failure rate of 5%, 4 SSDs will have a failure rate of 18.6%. If the 4 devices are in a RAID0 for convenience (don't have to figure out where to put files), there is an 18.6% chance of losing all data vs 5% with a 16TB drive. You can use RAID5/6 to mitigate the risk but then lose capacity. IMO, higher SSD speeds are not a target for improvement by manufacturers, but a side-effect of using higher-dens…

> If one SSD has a failure rate of 5%, 4 SSDs will have a failure rate of 18.6%

That doesn't make sense, the probability that all 4 SSDs will simultaneously fail at any given moment, assuming a uniform distribution, is p(0.05)^4.

Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had big hopes for Samsung’s QVO line but they’ve barely done anything with it. They’re often not much cheaper than EVO. And the 8TB drive is almost £200 more expensive than 20TB of spinning rust. I could get 30TB+ storage for the same money.

Have you looked at something like Intel 660p? They're pretty crappy as SSDs go, but they're quite cheap (by about 40% compared to what I would put into my desktop, at least where I live).

Once the SLC cache is exhausted on a drive like the 660p, sustained writes drop to below 100MBs

Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#46
post #6

I will say, SSD pricing is pretty frustrating. There's a lot of focus on faster and faster nvme that's barely noticeable while actual capacity has really stagnated at around 2-4tb. As someone who is very into photography, it takes not very long to fill 2tb of space. If I could buy a cheap 16tb ssd with fast reads and slow writes I'd be a happy camper but it doesn't exist unless I want to buy spinning disks (I don't)

why don't you want to buy spinning disks

Earthquakes.

Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#47
post #11

Probably relavent: This is an SSD?! from Linux Tech Tips ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4AKeW0Y-F0 ) They introduce in the program PureStorage's FlashBlade, which uses Intel Xeon CPUs as the controller for SSDs. https://www.purestorage.com/products/file-and-object/flashbl...

Pure is basically an enterprise flash storage company. Great products, but FlashBlade specifically has issues with maximum single stream performance due to their architecture.

But why are you posting an ad for Pure?

Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#48
post #44
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one SSD has a failure rate of 5%, 4 SSDs will have a failure rate of 18.6%. If the 4 devices are in a RAID0 for convenience (don't have to figure out where to put files), there is an 18.6% chance of losing all data vs 5% with a 16TB drive. You can use RAID5/6 to mitigate the risk but then lose capacity. IMO, higher SSD speeds are not a target for improvement by manufacturers, but a side-effect of using higher-dens…

> If one SSD has a failure rate of 5%, 4 SSDs will have a failure rate of 18.6% That doesn't make sense, the probability that all 4 SSDs will simultaneously fail at any given moment, assuming a uniform distribution, is p(0.05)^4.

You don't need all 4 to fail, you need one, assuming no redundancy, but then you are sacrificing space, thus requiring you to buy even more drives.

Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#49
post #11

Probably relavent: This is an SSD?! from Linux Tech Tips ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4AKeW0Y-F0 ) They introduce in the program PureStorage's FlashBlade, which uses Intel Xeon CPUs as the controller for SSDs. https://www.purestorage.com/products/file-and-object/flashbl...

Pure is basically an enterprise flash storage company. Great products, but FlashBlade specifically has issues with maximum single stream performance due to their architecture. But why are you posting an ad for Pure?

I think it's less of an ad and more an in depth explanation about the technology that goes into high capacity SSDs. Today, Pure just happens to be one of the only companies with a product on the market. That will no doubt change in a few months.

Re: 200TB SSDs could come soon thanks to Micron's new chip

#50
post #23

Capacity is not the major problem. It is the $/TB price points. SSDs are still 5x more expensive than HDD for bulk storage. It doesn't matter if you can buy a 200TB SSD if it is 200x more expensive than a 1TB SSD. HAMR technology is going to give us much bigger HDD. If I can buy a 50TB HDD or a 50TB SSD in a couple years, which one will I buy if the SSD is 5x more expensive? SSDs make total sense for storing the file…

> which one will I buy if the SSD is 5x more expensive SSD, because silence and random-access performance.

If I'm buying for my home 6 bay NAS, I'll take the savings and buy the HDDs. As it stands now, network performance is my bottleneck, not the hard drives.

I'll only consider SSD for that system when the price is competitive. And I do spend extra on NAS HDDs.

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