Why have we hit a wall with 2TB Capacity NVMe SSDs?

I used to think that 2TB is the most we can get for NVMe m.2 SSDs (at least for a while) when the average capacity seems to be 512GB to 1TB for most laptops sold but Samsung for example hasn't gone beyond 2TB for consumer based m.2 SSDs.

When ordering my MacBook Pro I was shocked to see they offer 4TB and even 8TB SSDs now! When I went into the system specs of my MacBook Pro it says the SSD is an Apple SSD. What is Apple now manufacturing SSDs and how come we've hit a wall at 2TB for other major brands?

@tilleroftheearth

Here is my Apple 4TB SSD Benchmark:

 

Im more irritated that we havent gotten more than 2TB for 9.5mm drives.

 

Those are the forgotten elephant. I don't think any manufacturer is interested in investing in creating more than 2TB for HDD 9.5mm

It's a shame we're still stuck at 4TB for 2.5" SSDs (at least for consumer level affordable ones not the enterprise models which cost an arm and a leg)

 

I've mostly gotten around it, but was a huge pain at the time.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Rocket-Internal-Performance-SB-ROCKET-1TB/dp/B07ZQSDQDB?th=1

 

apple doesn't make ssd though. even the chip/controller for their SSD might not be made by them. just they get the controller and flash and either do a custom pcb or solder onto main board and ask whoever provide them the controller for a custom firmware for power efficiency.

 

Apple, for one, doesn't use M.2. Even the older one's used proprietary NVME sockets, allowing for (in theory) more than 2TB of NAND chips. The older socketed NVME were custom samsung controllers, the new ones use the T1/T2 controllers on the mainboard. Current MBP's just simply have more room for more chips. Current M.2. top out at 4TB as far as I've seen, can't go higher simply because of NAND density. Current 2.5 drives top out at 2TB (for standard size) because of platter density, SSD's at 7.68TB.

 

they could make 15 TB 2.5" SSD easily though but they aren't doing it cause no one wants that size with SATA speed. m.2 standard for consumer SSD would be 2280 meaning 22 * 80mm. samsung made a 30 * 110mm which is only a bit bigger can go up to 15 TB, too bad its 12v.

 

Some want exactly that - but 15TB would sadly be prohibitively expensive for most individual users with current pricing policies.

 

15TB SSD at SATA speeds would be more than enough for many people. It would certainly beat out any and all HDD's on the market in regards to read/write, however, I do agree that with current pricing policies, those would be priced to ridiculous levels (far beyond what the regular consumer can afford - even though we both know they could easily price to more than affordable levels).

 

...and thats why manufacturers are currently already looking to serve us silly stuff like PLC in the future

 

My plex server would love 15TB SSD storage lol

 

i for one will sure be happy for several years now with 9.5 TB ssd space

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With the ever-decreasing number of drive slots in laptops, there's an ever-increasing need for higher density. Cloud storage is too expensive and too slow when one's working with many terabytes of data (not to mention the ever-present risk of provider changing their ToS or even entirely eliminating many such services).

 

Drive slots have increased if anything in laptops what with inclusion of m.2 drives.
Smaller and cheaper laptops will probably have less drive upgrade options than larger ones.

 

But M.2's have less capacity than 2.5's. The largest currently available M.2-2280 that I'm aware of is 2TB; the largest 2.5" is 7.68TB.

 

4TB

 

But those are just starting to become available, while 7.68TB 2.5" have been around for quite some time.

 

The availability is severely limited, but it does exist... @yrekabakery provided a link to one.

1TB is today what 256GB was 4 or 5 years ago... entry level capacity for an OS drive. I won't waste my money on a drive smaller than 1TB. It's inadequate for storage. 256GB is a joke. I don't even know why they waste resources manufacturing them. That should be typical capacity for a USB thumb drive.

 

256gb optane dimm MRSP cost $2500 rofl.

imma have to wait for micron to give some competition to intel or go with 2x 128GB sticks for ~$1200.

 

Yes, but 4TB is not the same as 8'ish TB. And combining multiple M.2's into a single larger filesystem requires using RAID or LVM, both of which have their headaches.

My storage needs are only going to increase with my next body, whatever that is. Hopefully Canon comes out with a 7DmkIII; if that uses the same 32MP sensor as the 90D, that's going to be a 60% increase in file size.

 

There are 4tb nvme drives. https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Rocket-Internal-Performance-SB-ROCKET-4TB/dp/B07ZQSDQDB?th=1

 

I'm aware of that, but as I explained, as time goes by I'm going to need more than that for photos (and yes, more than one or two of that size).

 

I think both of us replied to your post about 2TB being the largest you were aware of. That was right after @yrekabakery posted a link to a 4TB M.2 so it made it seem like you did not see that link. It may have been a typo in your post.

 

I'll swap 2 1tb m2 and 2 1tb ssd for a 4tb lol

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What you said

You know in theory something like this in nvme should be doable. https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-M-2-SATA-Adapter-S322M225R/dp/B076S9VK1M

That said, since we already have 1tb micro sd cards, the OP's logic of seeing 4tb+ drives really isnt out of the question.

 

If 4TB is tight now, 8TB isn't going to make a significant difference for any long-term gains.

Invest instead in an 8 Bay or larger NAS and give your storage (and backup/redundancy plan) a real boost instead.

If possible; use a 2TB M.2 drive for you O/S and a 4TB 2.5" SSD for your 'take-along' storage options. When back at the office; immediately transfer the keepers to the NAS and be ready for the next project.

If your shooting schedule doesn't allow time for the above between every shoot; you need two mobile platforms (identically setup). Or; external storage which is not ideal, on-site (theft/forgetfulness/drops/etc.).

4TB SSD's do not have the performance (vs. 2TB options) to power my mobile platforms, yet.

 

I have a 5-bay Synology NAS (someone had the box lying around which he gave me, I populated it with 10TB drives).

I keep a full set of my photos on my laptop, on my server, on my NAS, and on two sets of backup 5TB's, one of which I keep at home and one at work. The photos currently fit on a 2TB 2.5" spinner and a 3.84TB SSD; I have a 2TB system NVMe (Linux, home directory) and the original .5TB Windows install (which I only boot to update it and reflash the BIOS). I'm considering replacing that with another 2TB NVMe with 250GB or so allocated to Windows and the rest to another overflow ext4fs filesystem (maybe for more room for VMs and such). And no, I don't want to rely on external storage.

A factor of 2 storage will last me until the next factor of 2 comes along. But having only one 2.5" bay would likely be problematic unless 15TB 2.5"x7mm drives come out fairly soon.

I'm definitely a digital (and otherwise) pack rat.

 

I have a feeling that by the time 16TB+ 2.5" drives are generally available, the mobile platforms we will want to use them on won't support 2.5" drives...

But for now, it looks like you have your data as safe as it can reasonably be.

 

By then everything mobile will probably all be soldered storage garbage that only the lowest common denominators will be willing to tolerate.

 

@Mr. Fox, yeah, but that is when the gas-powered generators will be coming along to power the 'portable' desktops we'll need to use then to do real work.

P.S. I hope your holidays were great too!

 

Exactly just like the maxQ range

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You know speaking of SAS drives, why havent they effectively been a working successor to sata? Or at least a 2.5 nvme drive with 16+gb storage. 2.5 doesnt need to go away in full sized laptops, but it does need to evolve. U.2 is the term for 2.5 inch nvme I believe.

 

I'd hope that workstation-class mobiles would do better than that, but given the direction of phones, the ThinkPad P73 with its non-user-replaceable battery, and the MacBook "Pro", it's all too likely that you're right.

 

U.2 would make a lot more sense than SAS, I'd think.

 

Zbooks have user replacable batteries

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And, we are already starting to see ALIENWARE laptops with more than CPU and GPU soldered to the mobo. That is a really horrible sign of how bad things might get. This sort of thing is absolutely inexcusable, but I knew this would happen once the BGA cancer started to metastasize. A little bit of leaven leavens the entire lump of dough.

 

My thoughts exactly.

 

As long as there are people willing to tolerate this filth, there is not a chance in hell that things are going to improve. The only way it will stop is for consumers to reject the insanity and cause the sale of this sort of rubbish to fail, but it's clear that's not going to happen. There are too many people that either don't know any better, or their tolerance for disposable trash is too great to serve the greater good.

 

I think this goes too far. The number of people who will be interested in upgrading their CPU or GPU is pretty small. I've done it (on a Dell Inspiron 8000 and I don't recall whether I also did on an Inspiron 8200; for that matter, I also upgraded the display in the I8000) but these days the pace of CPU improvements is simply too fast to make that worthwhile for very long, since newer CPUs will need newer chipsets at least to take full advantage of their capabilities. There are at least some machines that cater to people who want to do this (some of the big Clevos); I hope that those options don't go away, but that's never going to be mainstream.

I think a lot more people are interested in increasing the memory and storage capacity, and replacing the battery when it wears out. Again, that's probably not going to be mainstream consumer, but people who buy workstation type machines would have a more reasonable expectation of being able to do this.

 

Oh undoubtedly. Though sas is considered to be more reliable if I recall and is basically a scuzy interface too, which as I recall is the main reason its usually used in enterprise solely. My main gripe about nvme is actually the chip interface which is very inheriantly weak and not durable to shock compared to sata/sas, especially at the connection base.

Its worth noting that an adapter cable could be ran to the m.2 interface to a u.2 drive in a sata space.

 

Assuming that by "chip interface" you mean the connector, all three of the connectors -- SAS, SATA, and U.2 -- are quite similar. See https://pcper.com/2015/06/the-connector-formerly-known-as-sff-8639-now-called-u-2/.

SAS implements the SCSI command set (with extensions) over a serial connector. SATA implements the ATA command set over a serial connector. The serial connector is a lot smaller and simpler than the old-style parallel connectors, and doesn't need complex clocking across the parallel bits. SATA does implement a lot more SCSI functionality, but SAS still offers important enterprise functionality that SATA doesn't -- better error recovery and reporting, longer cable length, multiple initiators.

NVMe, of course, is very tightly coupled to PCIe. That has both advantages -- it's much faster and simpler with lower latency -- and disadvantages -- cable length is much more limited. For the purpose of a laptop, the longer cable length and multiple initiator capability offers no advantage, but the performance very definitely is advantageous.

 

i was thinking about that when considering a 900P U.2 drive for my machine. problem here is supplied voltage via m.2 is not sufficient to properly power up the drive. not sure if this is a general thing for U.2 drives or specifically related to Optane.

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Per http://www.ssdformfactor.org/docs/SSD_Form_Factor_Version1_00.pdf U.2 12 volts with 25W max (i. e. a little over 2A) are supplied for M.2, while 3.3 is optional. That seems strange, but there is an implementation note on page 42 (which note looks strange enough too). M.2 is 3.3V, which in principle could be overcome via an active cable, but this person claims that the limit is 7W: https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...in-power-consumption-among-nvme-ssds.3079717/

 

yep, im guessing that each laptop vendor would have implemented their own limits. i mean, around 10-12W should already be enough for most if not all "regular" M.2 SSDs, right?

 

If I'm reading it correctly, M.2 is defined to limit power to 7W, so if your motherboard doesn't at least 7W to the M.2 it's out of spec. Likewise, an M.2 that draws more than 7W is itself not in spec.

PCIe's slot limit (whatever it is) isn't enough to drive large GPUs and such, so they came up with the auxiliary PCIe power connector. I suppose in principle it would be possible to do the same for M.2, but nobody has done it and there's not a lot of space for such.

 

I think they used custom BGA NAND packages with NVMe 1.3 or higher. I can only link Micron's website and I think Apple used Samsung or Micron or SK Hynix BGA NVMe drives to increase the capacity with small footprint.
https://www.micron.com/products/nand-flash/3d-nand
These packages are temperature limited since too much sustained writes or steady state write workloads can heat up not only BGA SSD's but nearby mobo components. And they also make it hard to recover data unless you have specialized tools.
OR there's a possibility they used 4x 970 pro 2TB drives in BGA form in custom shapes to achieve the feat.