External 8 TB SSDs before internal?

[Bwaze]

What's with the latest push for ultra expensive external 8 TB SSDs, before we even got internal consumer 8 TB nVME SSDs?

Besides usual SSD makers there's also bunch of no name makers with seemingly legit products, and apparently tons of scammer products even on legit shops that offer 8 TB, but are much smaller drives, disguised as 8 TB!

Why do all these drives look and are marketed as "lifestyle" products, aimed at wealthy content creators that want to move their content from their ultra expensive laptop to ultra expensive tablet?

There's almost no reviews on usual PC tech sites, there are some on more general tech sites?

There's:


Samsung Portable SSD T5 EVO USB 3.2 Gen 1 for $1060

SanDisk - 8TB Desk Drive USB Type-C Desktop External SSD for $680

Glyph 8TB Atom PRO Portable Thunderbolt 3 NVMe SSD for $1400

VectoTech 8TB External SSD USB-C Portable Solid State Drive (USB 3.1 Gen 2) for $620

Teamgroup M200 8TB (eventually)

...

 

[Dristun]

aimed at wealthy content creators

You answered your question. There's money to be made there and that crowd generally doesn't balk at the price, as opposed to PC enthusiasts. Besides, that market is much bigger than DIY PC.

 

[DarkDreams]

Why do you think there are no internal 8 TB NVME drives? I can find:

• TeamGroup MP44 8TB
• Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 8TB
• ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade 8TB
• Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 8TB

Also all very expensive (over 100€/TB), but I feel that is to be expected at the high end of capacity.

 

[kapone32]

You answered your question. There's money to be made there and that crowd generally doesn't balk at the price, as opposed to PC enthusiasts. Besides, that market is much bigger than DIY PC.

One anecdote we could use is the Steam Deck (Handhelds). I am sure most owners have more Games than they can install on the internal storage on the Deck. There has been an 8TB SSD available from Kingston (I have one) that is actually more expensive than when I got mine about 5 years ago. There are 870 QVO 8 TB (Have been) but they seem to be the NAND that Samsung does not want as that drive has the most negative reviews I have ever seen. Apparently the endurance is very poor on those but you can get 8 TB for about $450 US. If M2 is your wheel house, Corsair will set you back about $1000 US on Newegg as well.

Then you have those $30 adapters that have HDMI, USB and USB C and the laptop market is suddenly in play too. As well as MINI PCs.

 

[Bwaze]

Why do you think there are no internal 8 TB NVME drives? I can find:

• TeamGroup MP44 8TB
• Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 8TB
• ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade 8TB
• Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 8TB

Also all very expensive (over 100€/TB), but I feel that is to be expected at the high end of capacity.

Yes, there are 8 TB nVME drives, but with the very high prices and very limited availability I wouldn't call them "consumer drives". There are also almost no reviews of the drives, and if there are, it's usually explained they tested the lower capacity from the lineup - as if the drives are too expensive to be sent to reviewers? Perhaps they are, but how come reviewers always get their hands on high end GPUs, costing twice as much?

And we're still talking about 8 TB as some almost unreachable cutting edge technology - more than 4 years after the release of Samsung SSD 870 QVO 8TB.

 

[GerKNG]

SSD Prices are just as high because you have no other choice.
nobody can convince me that half a fingernail worth of silicon on a strip of chewing gum sized PCB costs more than 5€ per TB in production.

 

[kapone32]

SSD Prices are just as high because you have no other choice.
nobody can convince me that half a fingernail worth of silicon on a strip of chewing gum sized PCB costs more than 5€ per TB in production.

The slap in the face is boards support even longer drives (22110) and now well provisioned boards have thermal pads on both the bottom and top so having NAND chips on the bottom is fine. It is the stupid narrative that did not have the community demand that we get Higher NAND Capacity drives. The penetration has been about the same but instead of paying less per TB like HDD, NAND flash has us convinced that the reverse is true.

 

[Bwaze]

I'm wondering if there's some kind of cartel agreement with HDD drive makers, to divide the consumer space between small SSD drives and larger HDD disks?

There have been some news several times in the past years on how we're on the brink of SSD drive capacity expansion, latest in the past month about WD with titles like "SSDs are about to become massive, thanks to WD", but when you read the article, it's all about some undefined future...

SSDs are about to become massive, thanks to WD

 

[Bwaze]

16TB M.2 SSDs will soon grace the market — Kioxia unveils 2Tb 3D QLC NAND to build bigger SSDs

"The increased storage capacity of Kioxia's 2Tb 3D QLC NAND devices will enable customers to build high-capacity SSDs in small form factors. For example, a 16-Hi stacked package (measuring 11.5 x 13.5 x 1.5 mm) could create a 4TB M.2-2230 SSD or a 16TB M.2-2280 drive. This will benefit Kioxia's customers who build SSDs."

So... 2, 4TB 2230 SSDs for consumer markets, and larger drives with premium prices for hungry AI servers? Or are we finally breaking the curse of 2019 Samsung 8 TB QVO? But it has been only... 5 years!

If I cite and correct myself:

I paid 165 EUR for my Super Talent Ultradrive ME 64GB SSD in 2009, and in the next 10 years the available size really exploded to 8TB! And now we are at more than 5 years of same available capacity - and that capacity still hasn't become widely available or affordable, and everyone acts like this is completely normal...

Imagine, from 64 GB to 8.000 GB in 10 years, that's 62% growth every year, we could be at:

2020: 13TB
2021: 21TB
2022: 34TB
2023: 55TB
2024: 89TB
2025: 144TB

You think we could get 1/10 of that in the next year, please?

 

[gurusmi]

What's with the latest push for ultra expensive external 8 TB SSDs, before we even got internal consumer 8 TB nVME SSDs?

There are a lot of internal SSD drives with 8TB+ available. Even as NVME with a PCIe 4.0x4 interface.

 

[Bwaze]

Sure. With twice the price per TB as for 2 and 4 TB drives for 8 TB models, and for larger sky is the limit. Availability is rather poor, and there are almost no reviews - I wouldn't call that normal consumer drives.

 

[gurusmi]

Well. What do you expect. There are not that much models available and they are more rarely tested as they are uninteresting for the typical SOHO User. Because of that also the prices are higher. All of that arguments shows a normal business. For what a standard user gaming day in day out should be in need for i.e. 32TB PCIe 4.0x4 8TB drives? He would also cry about the prices. I just need to see how much are crying about the prices of a NVidia 4090 GPU.

 

[Bwaze]

That's all true and fine. But when was the last time PC hardware just stopped evolving for 5+ years? All we're getting are faster sequential speeds, with all benchmarks showing this doesn't do squat for load, installation, boot times...

 

[gurusmi]

As far as i remember there were 2 upgrades from PCIe 3.0 towards PCIe 5.0 within the last years. 4 yrs ago i got one of the first PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD Drives for my actual system. I also got a PCIe 3.0 Drive for secondary data. All that didn't make my system remarkable faster. I use my rig for productivity. If my system boots 5 secs faster or not doesn't matter as it boots one time and then is running at least 12h at one piece. Also i get a Latte Macchiato whilst the PC boots. The calculation of a spreadsheet inside Excel did take the same time. The scanning and slicing of 3D models also took nearby the same time. With that new generation i did compensate the stupidy of M$ by integrating new unneeded features. I bet with my new system a full recalc of my spreadsheed takes the same time than before. As long as the dumb people can't differ between an interpreter and a compiler i don't expect faster calculations. I don't know which idiot did invent i.e. #net. I don't use it. I don't see any reason to get sources compiled to have it interpreted after at runtime as #Net only compiles to a virtual code and interprete that at runtime. One of the best programs for book management is written in python. How stupid one can be too use a Web-Language instead of a real language. Java is the same. There one can see that software engineering isn't of interest anymore. Also a good foundation of basic knowledge like the appropriate data structures. Algorythms are good for a certain amount of elements. If the amount gets bigger the algorythms get more worse and horrible slow.

Sometimes it is more wise to keep on old technics than implement all the time new ones. But that's strongly against the revenue. Everybody want's to use a cloud system and outsourced development. No matter what for. That those systems can and will be hacked much more easy than internal ones doesn't matter. Security is not in focus anymore. Get it free or at least cheap rules nowadays. In private or in business. So: What do you expect?

 

[AleXXX666]

What's with the latest push for ultra expensive external 8 TB SSDs, before we even got internal consumer 8 TB nVME SSDs?

Besides usual SSD makers there's also bunch of no name makers with seemingly legit products, and apparently tons of scammer products even on legit shops that offer 8 TB, but are much smaller drives, disguised as 8 TB!

Why do all these drives look and are marketed as "lifestyle" products, aimed at wealthy content creators that want to move their content from their ultra expensive laptop to ultra expensive tablet?

There's almost no reviews on usual PC tech sites, there are some on more general tech sites?

There's:


Samsung Portable SSD T5 EVO USB 3.2 Gen 1 for $1060

SanDisk - 8TB Desk Drive USB Type-C Desktop External SSD for $680

Glyph 8TB Atom PRO Portable Thunderbolt 3 NVMe SSD for $1400

VectoTech 8TB External SSD USB-C Portable Solid State Drive (USB 3.1 Gen 2) for $620

Teamgroup M200 8TB (eventually)

...

"d*mb consumer" products such as "glamorous" external drive or usb stick are created just for $$$ waste. People who understand something in that always prefer reliability before design, lol. So, I agree with marketing "lifestyle", let it be!

 

[Hardcore Games]

I saw a Samsung 870 QVO SATA SSD 8TB for $670 in Canada suggesting the cost per GB is falling even faster now. Sold out fast.

Team Group QX SATA 4TB is $260 which is some serious price rot

 

[chrcoluk]

I'm wondering if there's some kind of cartel agreement with HDD drive makers, to divide the consumer space between small SSD drives and larger HDD disks?

There have been some news several times in the past years on how we're on the brink of SSD drive capacity expansion, latest in the past month about WD with titles like "SSDs are about to become massive, thanks to WD", but when you read the article, it's all about some undefined future...

SSDs are about to become massive, thanks to WD

Market segmentation/manipulation is no doubt a factor, whether its cartel dont know of course.

No doubt SATA SSD's can hit much higher capacities than they currently sold at.

M.2 we know can hit 8TB, but SKU availability from a practical point of view is nothing as those listed are rare and not consumer friendly pricing.

A 4TB 870 EVO during the good price era at start of this year was £170. (ironically cheaper than the QVO variant, and it still is cheaper than the QVO variant). 8TB if existed could have been below £350.

We know they artificially maintaining prices on a per GB basis. We also know there is segmentation so there isnt consumer SSD's made that attract enterprise customers. With both of these in mind, at current pricing a 8TB 870 EVO would be circa £500.

Personally I dont consider M.2 a mass storage platform, thats what SATA is for, M.2 is about fast burst performance, it especially has great marketing benefits, as an example not long ago in another thread there was multiple posts claiming SATA SSDs are now some kind of junk tech to be placed alongside USB storage. When in reality on most consumer workloads they are as fast as a M.2 NVME. So the focus of the consumer market is to release faster and faster M.2 devices to keep those prices up. Its a high burst performance that attracts gamers and editors.

Of course given dramless NVME devices can utilise HMB and no casing needs to be manufactured, the margins are higher which will be the real reason manufacturers prefer making these to SATA models its all about the $$$.

HDD's are an interesting one as I struggle to see how the margins are as good as SSDs, they must be lower due to the size and complexity of the units. However when you factor in market segmentation it makes sense, if we replaced large capacity HDD's with e.g. 12TB SSDs, even if they were SATA based, I expect we would see some high datacentre demand, and that then murders extreme margin enterprise sales.

I am assuming the demand on here is because there is a bunch of users who want to start using M.2 as consumer mass storage which as I said in my opinion is not suitable or designed for that purpose. HDDs are plenty fast for mass storage, my main issue with using them is the power consumption. Of course M.2 drives power consumption is now not a lot better than HDDs, its the low powered SATA SSDs which are kings in that area.

£300 seems to be the consumer ceiling on a per device bases, above that sales nose dive, given 4TB SSDs at current pricing are a little below that, it ultimately explains whats going on as well. We definitely need pricing to go back to January 2024 levels before we would start seeing 8TB consumer models, the issue is the manufacturers dont like that pricing.

 

[Bwaze]

It was really a surprise that after a debut of Samsung QVO 8 TB SATA drive market practically overnight completely adopted M.2 as the sole format for SSDs. I know even with the first NVMe drives going back to SATA would mean loosing on the simplest metric you can market, transfer speed.

The only available consumer 8 TB SSD for a very long time, Samsung QVO, is not only slow in comparison to M.2 drives or even other SATA SSDs, it is slow even compared to HDDs, with sequential speeds around 100 MB/s, after you fill the cache. Of course it's access time, random and small file speeds are still much better than with HDDs, so it still sells - but it's painfully obsolete, and they can charge 550 EUR for a product that uses years old tech that must be so cheap to make now...

But the alternatives are quickly 50% more expensive, either in M.2 or U.2, U.3 server focussed drives...

About the "comfortable price level" - I agree, and I think when we actually do see brand new high capacity chips first focus of storage companies will be actually to produce M.2 drives in "standard" capacities that are cheaper to make - but not necessarily cheaper to sell, high profit is oh so desirable...

 

[ShiBDiB]

Low demand, low supply, high price. Seems kinda simple to me no?

 

[Frick]

Low demand

This right here. Even 8TB HDD's are not that common, and it's not consumers that drive the need for that kind of storage.

 

[Bwaze]

WD quietly adds roomy 8TB NVMe SSD to its gaming lineup

Not terribly exciting, the price is in line with other 8 TB NVMe drives out there. That's probably the reason why they are doing it "quietly".

But at least it gives me hope that with the arrival of those new larger capacity chips, advertised by WD, Kioxia we could see a large price slash of 8 TB models, to be somewhat in line in cost per TB with smaller models, and the ultra high price shifted onto the new highest capacity models, 12, 16 TB which should theoretically be possible...

 

[A Computer Guy]

I saw a Samsung 870 QVO SATA SSD 8TB for $670 in Canada suggesting the cost per GB is falling even faster now. Sold out fast.

Team Group QX SATA 4TB is $260 which is some serious price rot

Don't forget that's QLC nand in those too.

I am assuming the demand on here is because there is a bunch of users who want to start using M.2 as consumer mass storage which as I said in my opinion is not suitable or designed for that purpose. HDDs are plenty fast for mass storage, my main issue with using them is the power consumption. Of course M.2 drives power consumption is now not a lot better than HDDs, its the low powered SATA SSDs which are kings in that area.

I would like to see power loss protection on consumer drives as a standard feature. So far I've managed to corrupt NVMe OS installation images several times more than SATA based SSD's over the years.

 

[Hardcore Games]

anybody try GUDGA brand SSD yet

 

[kapone32]

I saw a Samsung 870 QVO SATA SSD 8TB for $670 in Canada suggesting the cost per GB is falling even faster now. Sold out fast.

Team Group QX SATA 4TB is $260 which is some serious price rot

Are those Samsung Drives are the ones that have terrible endurance?

 

[Fizban]

Why do you think there are no internal 8 TB NVME drives? I can find:

• TeamGroup MP44 8TB
• Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 8TB
• ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade 8TB
• Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 8TB

Also all very expensive (over 100€/TB), but I feel that is to be expected at the high end of capacity.

There's also 8 TB Nextorage NEM-PAB's, which is pretty great.