It also costs almost double to produce it. The main cost factor is the NAND, and you need twice as much of it. The controller and assembly cost is dwarfed by the (current) cost of 4 TB NAND. I'm not saying it costs 650$, but in principle I think it's fair. This is in contrast to HDDs where the fabrication cost increases sub-linearly with capacity, because additional platters and heads are not the dominant cost factor.
Actually platters ARE the single most expensive part of a hard disk so I'm not sure what you are on about. It doesn't help there are fewer producers of platters in the storage world than there are hard disk manufacturers (much like most SSD makers, most hard disk makers don't even make their own platters.)
Heads, however may start to eclipse platter costs as MAMR\HAMR materialize but Seagate has stated they intend to trickle this tech down to smaller capacities to save on cost of platters (fewer platters) which will help offset the development costs. This is indicative that platters will remain the dominant price component of hard disks.
All that said, there is no manufacturing reason that SSD prices more than double in cost for capacity density. They aren't using some mythical "high density" NAND here, they're simply using more physical NAND, ie, 8TB M2 drives are double sided. This is simply a niche product and the initial costs are going to be astronomical because 'some' people will actually pay it.
Platters are definitely the most expensive part of a HDD, but the base cost (motor, controller+PCB, housing) is significantly higher than for an SSD, and are also more variable as higher platter counts, HAMR/EAMR etc., and things like helium-filled drives all affect the total BoM. For SSDs the variables are essentially down to SATA/low-end PCIe/high end PCIe controllers and DRAM or not, and the effects of those choices are only visible at low capacities - once you reach something like 2TB the cost of the flash is utterly dwarfing the rest of the components.
There is also a small BOM adjustment for higher capacity drives that use an 8 channel instead of 4 channel controller, just for the development cost and lower volume of the part (unless they are surplus from some enterprise design). The main driving force for the cost of high capacity drives is definitely niche use case. Lower volume part + boatloads of NAND and virtually no competition means anyone making a 4-8TB consumer SSD can ask what they want for it, for now
It's actually not bad - usually you pay a premium for density. For many manufacturers 2 x 2TB ssd's are cheaper than a 4tb ssd - even if you pay for two enclousers, pcb's and controllers.
I don't have a problem with double the price for double the capacity. My issue is with the price premium for NVMe over SATA drives at the same capacity, and the premium of PCIe 4.0 drives over 3.0.
3 year warranty, meh. Sabrent is offering 5 years on their Rocket Q, and if I was spending over $1000 on a SSD, I'd definitely appreciate extra 2 years of peace of mind.
112 writes before that $1300 drive is toast. That seems like an exceedingly foolish investment. These SSDs are becoming lavishly expensive disposable storage devices. What's also crazy is that for $650 more you aren't actually getting any extra storage capacity over the (brief) life of the drive.
"These SSDs are becoming lavishly expensive disposable storage devices."
well, that's of a piece with smartphone 'longevity'. get the gullible used to short lifespan devices, and all devices fall to that lifespan. I mean, they're all the same bits and pieces inside, right?
Nope, that's only the minimum guaranteed writes. It won't magically go up in smoke after 112 writes - will last a lot longer, just as computers and HDDs aren't expected to break down the day after their warranty expires (it does happen but it's rare). T
here were some endurance studies on cheap SSDs, I don't have the links but I recall they went into the petabytes, possibly 100x their rated endurance, before breaking down. That was some time ago though, and I'd be interested in similar studies on more modern QLC drives which are a bit more fragile.
Most users (especially those willing to pay over $1000 on an SSD storage device) will have discarded this drive long before they've written 900TB of data to it.
My usual issue with this type of item, P-R-I-C-E. The price has got to come down to a sane level where I don't have to decide between this, or a car, or this, and my mortgage! :p Or this, and the actual laptop I would purchase to put it in. It's still mind-boggling that these do not seem to come down in price, even after 2 or 3 years on the market. The technology is impressive. I look at an m.2 ssd and I almost need a magnifying glass in order to get a good look at it, and yet the 8tb capacity, I think, would hold ALL of my files, music, pictures, EVERYTHING, and probably have a terabyte or two left to spare. That's impressive. Even more impressive, getting to the point where Samsung and others can manufacture them AND put them on the market at prices that don't make customers do a double take when they initially see the item somewhere. You would think Samsung would have some kind of program for all the customers that originally purchsed the EVO 840, where you could send that in for a discount on a current or more recent product.
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shabby - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
Let's increase the size and double the price 🙄🙄🙄MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
It also costs almost double to produce it. The main cost factor is the NAND, and you need twice as much of it. The controller and assembly cost is dwarfed by the (current) cost of 4 TB NAND. I'm not saying it costs 650$, but in principle I think it's fair.This is in contrast to HDDs where the fabrication cost increases sub-linearly with capacity, because additional platters and heads are not the dominant cost factor.
HyperText - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
Out of personal curiosity: what is the driving factor for the cost of HDDs?quorm - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
I am also curious about this.Samus - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
Actually platters ARE the single most expensive part of a hard disk so I'm not sure what you are on about. It doesn't help there are fewer producers of platters in the storage world than there are hard disk manufacturers (much like most SSD makers, most hard disk makers don't even make their own platters.)Heads, however may start to eclipse platter costs as MAMR\HAMR materialize but Seagate has stated they intend to trickle this tech down to smaller capacities to save on cost of platters (fewer platters) which will help offset the development costs. This is indicative that platters will remain the dominant price component of hard disks.
All that said, there is no manufacturing reason that SSD prices more than double in cost for capacity density. They aren't using some mythical "high density" NAND here, they're simply using more physical NAND, ie, 8TB M2 drives are double sided. This is simply a niche product and the initial costs are going to be astronomical because 'some' people will actually pay it.
Samus - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
"...much like most SSD makers, most hard disk makers don't even make their own platters."Pointing out before someone gets their panties in a bunch I am pointing out most SSD makers don't make their own NAND.
Valantar - Thursday, December 10, 2020 - link
Platters are definitely the most expensive part of a HDD, but the base cost (motor, controller+PCB, housing) is significantly higher than for an SSD, and are also more variable as higher platter counts, HAMR/EAMR etc., and things like helium-filled drives all affect the total BoM. For SSDs the variables are essentially down to SATA/low-end PCIe/high end PCIe controllers and DRAM or not, and the effects of those choices are only visible at low capacities - once you reach something like 2TB the cost of the flash is utterly dwarfing the rest of the components.FullmetalTitan - Thursday, December 10, 2020 - link
There is also a small BOM adjustment for higher capacity drives that use an 8 channel instead of 4 channel controller, just for the development cost and lower volume of the part (unless they are surplus from some enterprise design). The main driving force for the cost of high capacity drives is definitely niche use case. Lower volume part + boatloads of NAND and virtually no competition means anyone making a 4-8TB consumer SSD can ask what they want for it, for nowicebox - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
It's actually not bad - usually you pay a premium for density. For many manufacturers 2 x 2TB ssd's are cheaper than a 4tb ssd - even if you pay for two enclousers, pcb's and controllers.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
I don't have a problem with double the price for double the capacity. My issue is with the price premium for NVMe over SATA drives at the same capacity, and the premium of PCIe 4.0 drives over 3.0.shabby - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
16c per gb compared to around 10c for tlc nand 🤯zepi - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
You pay for the performance. Why is this somehow a problem?antonkochubey - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
3 year warranty, meh. Sabrent is offering 5 years on their Rocket Q, and if I was spending over $1000 on a SSD, I'd definitely appreciate extra 2 years of peace of mind.Samus - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
In 3 years the drive will be worth nothing anyway these aren't even PCIe 4.0lmcd - Monday, January 4, 2021 - link
Which means that they're still perfectly functional and operate at a good data rate for just about any application?I'm disgusted by this bad take.
wrkingclass_hero - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
112 writes before that $1300 drive is toast. That seems like an exceedingly foolish investment. These SSDs are becoming lavishly expensive disposable storage devices. What's also crazy is that for $650 more you aren't actually getting any extra storage capacity over the (brief) life of the drive.FunBunny2 - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
"These SSDs are becoming lavishly expensive disposable storage devices."well, that's of a piece with smartphone 'longevity'. get the gullible used to short lifespan devices, and all devices fall to that lifespan. I mean, they're all the same bits and pieces inside, right?
Tomatotech - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
Nope, that's only the minimum guaranteed writes. It won't magically go up in smoke after 112 writes - will last a lot longer, just as computers and HDDs aren't expected to break down the day after their warranty expires (it does happen but it's rare). There were some endurance studies on cheap SSDs, I don't have the links but I recall they went into the petabytes, possibly 100x their rated endurance, before breaking down. That was some time ago though, and I'd be interested in similar studies on more modern QLC drives which are a bit more fragile.
hechacker1 - Thursday, December 10, 2020 - link
People forget about all the strategies to prevent problems in the first place:1. Over-provisioning
2. Trim
3. Copy on Write filesystems (AFPS, btrfs)
And things like using the SSD as a cache in a NAS with supported tiering and hot cache for the whole volume.
You give the controller space to do its provisioning in the background and decrease write amplification.
inighthawki - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
Most users (especially those willing to pay over $1000 on an SSD storage device) will have discarded this drive long before they've written 900TB of data to it.inighthawki - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
To put it in perspective, that's 250GB of data per day for 10 years straight. That is *far* beyond what even the majority of power users do.Unashamed_unoriginal_username_x86 - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
"spinning rust""rotating iron oxides"
Revolving metal corrosion?
Gyrating tarnish?
Bow tie french fries?
5h1n2r0 - Wednesday, December 9, 2020 - link
Ssd got itRictorhell - Saturday, December 12, 2020 - link
My usual issue with this type of item, P-R-I-C-E. The price has got to come down to a sane level where I don't have to decide between this, or a car, or this, and my mortgage! :p Or this, and the actual laptop I would purchase to put it in. It's still mind-boggling that these do not seem to come down in price, even after 2 or 3 years on the market. The technology is impressive. I look at an m.2 ssd and I almost need a magnifying glass in order to get a good look at it, and yet the 8tb capacity, I think, would hold ALL of my files, music, pictures, EVERYTHING, and probably have a terabyte or two left to spare. That's impressive. Even more impressive, getting to the point where Samsung and others can manufacture them AND put them on the market at prices that don't make customers do a double take when they initially see the item somewhere. You would think Samsung would have some kind of program for all the customers that originally purchsed the EVO 840, where you could send that in for a discount on a current or more recent product.sonicmerlin - Saturday, December 26, 2020 - link
I’m looking forward to when we get 8 TB for $200