When are we going to get beyond 5tb in the 2.5inch form factor - what is the hold up?

J

Jedibeeftrix

Limp Gawd
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Dec 1, 2016
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We got 5tb 2.5inch drives in 2016.

We now have easily available 3.5inch consumer drives at 14tb, nothing exotic.

Feels like we should have got 6tb 2.5inch in 2019, and should at least have seen product announcements for 8tb by now...

Where did it all go wrong?
 
I'm pretty sure SSDs have killed R&D into the 2.5" market. why make higher capacity spindle drives when faster SSDs are the future? They'd rather research and invest in high capacity SSDs than spindle drives. Bigger spindle drives can't match SSDs in performance and produce more heat and use more power.
Tey do have 4TB SSDs now, so its better to improve SSD technology so we can have 20TB 2.5in SSDS.
 
As Blue Fox said, there is no currently no commercial demand for high capacity 2.5" drives. In the past, 2.5" drive R&D focused on high-RPM drives (10K & 15K) which actually were used in 3.5" for factor drives. With most new laptops that can support 2.5" drives also coming with 1 or 2 M.2 slots, and more and more data available in/from the cloud the need for bulk-storage 2.5" drives has basically disappeared.
 
I see several things... I mean you can't just squeeze things into a smaller package. You not going to see a 4 cpu socket wafer thing 2lb. laptop with a high end GPU (for example).

But, it's still true that who would have thought we'd have 5TB 2.5" drives 5-10 years ago?

But, for me, the bigger issue is likely the advances in SSD. So as SSD density increases and cost decreases, it could become the better path? Sure, the spinny disk might be half the price (or more), but it's those kinds of things (the SSS "thing") that enterprise hw manufacturers think about. You have to understand their primary customer.

Edit: btw I'm a HUGE fan of bus powered USB drives in the 2.5" form factor. And, I mostly use this "on the cheap"... and SSD isn't even close yet....
 
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cjcox said:
So as SSD density increases and cost decreases, it could become the better path? Sure, the spinny disk might be half the price (or more)
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This is a big one. In its first generation, QLC (four bits per cell) was hitting US$90/TB. Yeah, that's more expensive, but it is also always faster than a spinning disk, and typically much, much faster. Lower-intensity workloads, including desktop operating systems and gaming, work quite well on QLC currently. And we should be seeing more advanced QLC-based drives as well as drives with five bits per cell (PLC?), along with more advanced tiering schemes using variable bit levels where endurance is enhanced by storing fewer than the maximum bits in some cells.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
This is a big one. In its first generation, QLC (four bits per cell) was hitting US$90/TB. Yeah, that's more expensive, but it is also always faster than a spinning disk, and typically much, much faster. Lower-intensity workloads, including desktop operating systems and gaming, work quite well on QLC currently. And we should be seeing more advanced QLC-based drives as well as drives with five bits per cell (PLC?), along with more advanced tiering schemes using variable bit levels where endurance is enhanced by storing fewer than the maximum bits in some cells.
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And for the people paying, most things support compression/deduplication - which is a reasonable add-on for flash, but kills performance to zilch on spinners. So flash is more expensive $/GB, but gets closer with those, and is STILL faster than spinners even with that turned on.
 
Jedibeeftrix said:
.........
Where did it all go wrong?
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WD moving all of their factories to Taiwan right before a massive flood. This was when I remember most pro-sumer types moving to SSDs, as HDDs were pretty expensive (and often hard to find) at the time as well. From then on, SSDs have been a mainstay in mainstream storage.

The usability of the NAND across all markets has lowered the price and ramped production, knowing that no matter what, they can dump the NAND somewhere in the market regardless of quality. This lowered pricing and, particularly in the past 2 or 3 years, has all but killed 2.5" platter drives usefulness in the consumer market. Even many budget laptops these days come with an SSD instead of a 2.5" HDD. About the only place 2.5" drives are regularly seen are in external drives and game consoles... and starting this winter, they won't even be in the newest consoles anymore.

You can say it was inevitable anyway, which is likely. But I think the one-sided "WD-VS-Nature" battle expedited the migration to flash storage. It was a good 6-8 months before you could reliably buy a new HDD on Newegg, Amazon, or TigerDirect. Those few HDDs you could find in stock were 3 to 5 times their pre-flood price. Then after stock started filling back up at retailers, it was another year or so on top of that before prices got back down to around what they were before the flood.

I was building a lot of custom systems back then, or at least a lot for me. I had to get creative on where to get HDDs. If I had to buy a drive, it was usually used. When I bought an SSD, it seemed more justified that I was paying extra for the performance, and not paying extra on a HDD because Western Digital had never heard the saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"
 
mwroobel said:
As Blue Fox said, there is no currently no commercial demand for high capacity 2.5" drives. In the past, 2.5" drive R&D focused on high-RPM drives (10K & 15K) which actually were used in 3.5" for factor drives. With most new laptops that can support 2.5" drives also coming with 1 or 2 M.2 slots, and more and more data available in/from the cloud the need for bulk-storage 2.5" drives has basically disappeared.
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I tore down my 3.5" 36GB 10,000 Rpm Seagate Cheetahs and was surprised to see such small platters in there.
I think they are slightly larger than a 2.5" platter but much smaller than a 3.5" platter.
And the magnet for the arm looks like a brake caliper.
IMG_3921.JPG
 
cheers all, interesting discussion all round.

cjcox said:
Edit: btw I'm a HUGE fan of bus powered USB drives in the 2.5" form factor. And, I mostly use this "on the cheap"... and SSD isn't even close yet....
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this is what prompted my question really:
i have just bought one of those WD D10 12TB 'xbox' drives for use as internal storage, for the princely sum of £180, and wondering when I would be able to buy an 8TB bus-powered external drive to partner with it for backups/transfer/etc.
 
Zepher said:
I tore down my 3.5" 36GB 10,000 Rpm Seagate Cheetahs and was surprised to see such small platters in there.
I think they are slightly larger than a 2.5" platter but much smaller than a 3.5" platter.
And the magnet for the arm looks like a brake caliper.
View attachment 273243
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All the fast SCSI drives and the raptors did that with the smaller platters. Spinning the bigger platters at that speed was not viable, and that is part of the reason bigfoot drives only spun at 4200 rpm.
 
If things continue the way they've been going, I'd expect the 4TB and 8TB SATA SSDs to be much cheaper next year. Then you won't have to deal with SMR either.
 
Got confused there as I was like “I’ve got an 8tb one ordered”

Anyway, Market isn’t really driving the need. In 3.5 inch drives the consumer version r&d is effectively done by the enterprise space as you still need those drives for things like backup / nas / san where your space needs still justify the rebuild time.

That same need isn’t there for 2.5 drives, servers now are largely ssd, don’t have the space constraints or can’t have a rebuild time that long. As soon as we moved past the 8*2.5” Drive for a DB server approach and having all laptops be ssd, high capacity small drives became an edge case.

Absence of market means no development, which means no trickle down.
 
lack of demand and i would assume difficulty jamming more platters/heads into such a small space.
 
rive22 said:
If things continue the way they've been going, I'd expect the 4TB and 8TB SATA SSDs to be much cheaper next year. Then you won't have to deal with SMR either.
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For me the problem is they are still 8 to 10 times the price of the 8TB external drives on sale. If it was only 2 times the price I would not want spinners at all for my home usage. It seems the only hope for SSDs to replace these sizes is more 3D NAND layers. A 5 level cell will not makeup the price difference and each additional level adds less among other technical problems.
 
drescherjm said:
For me the problem is they are still 8 to 10 times the price of the 8TB external drives on sale. If it was only 2 times the price I would not want spinners at all for my home usage. It seems the only hope for SSDs to replace these sizes is more 3D NAND layers. A 5 level cell will not makeup the price difference and each additional level adds less among other technical problems.
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And I would need at least two, maybe three 8 TB SSDs. TMM. Too Much Money.
 
Well maybe I was too strong on the would not want at all. I would use the current spinners as backups and the 8TB SSDs will be added over time to replace spinners that are currently online.
 
x509 said:
And I would need at least two, maybe three 8 TB SSDs. TMM. Too Much Money.
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I've been thinking of going this route, using 2 SATA m.2 drives in a 2.5" enclosure. That would give me 4TB in a 2.5" bay for ~$400, which would be about the same space as my current 8-ish TB in a 3.5" bay, but a little more than double the cost.

Note: this thing is B-key, though NVMe speeds wouldn't be even close to achievable anyway.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-M-2-SATA-Adapter-S322M225R/dp/B076S9VK1M
 
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Blue Fox said:
There is no demand for high capacity 2.5" hard drives.
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I have a laptop with NVMe and 2.5 SATA slots.

I would love to use the 2.5 slot as offsite backup for my home machines. No pushing over the internetz, just backup when home, and carry your archive with you.
 
uOpt said:
I have a laptop with NVMe and 2.5 SATA slots.

I would love to use the 2.5 slot as offsite backup for my home machines. No pushing over the internetz, just backup when home, and carry your archive with you.
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Large 2.5" drives are 15mm thick and have never fit in a laptop. Either get a high capacity SSD or USB hard drive.
 
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