Why not 3.5" form factor SSD?

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philb2

[H]ard|Gawd
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The problem with 2.5" form factor SSDs is that over 2 TB they get very expensive due to the need for high-capacity flash chips. Why not use more but less expensive chips in a 3.5" form SSD? Probably two or maybe even three layers of circuit boards, each much bigger than the circuit board in a 2.5" form factor drive.

Just wondering.
 
I would imagine it is very much driven by the chip manufacturers. There is no desire to move less dense cheaper parts. Plus the laptop market likes smaller drives as well. Run into it often with microcontrollers especially now. Older cheaper stuff gets pushed aside for newer more expensive chips. No one wants to run the fab for less profit especially right now.
 
I think they do exist (in the past at least):

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/294935927781?hash=item44ab8d1be5:g:hPEAAOSwgrliXy3E
https://www.dell.com/en-ca/work/shop/sas-ssd-drives/ar/8373/35?appliedRefinements=32154

I feel there is a reason that buying a lot of cheaper SSD is not that much cheaper than a large one either:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#t=0&sort=-a_capacity&page=1

Cheapest large form is 0.087 by GB for an 8 TB Samsung 870 QVO
A cheap 2 TB is 0.08 by GB not much cheaper, it is not like small capacity drive are really cheap by GB.

That about the same price, using what is made for the 2 TB but adding the more controller/trace/complexity of 4 time more chip to drive in a larger drive (if it is needed, not sure space is an issue looking at pictures), do you end up much cheaper ?
 
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Open a 2.5" ssd case from the last some years and see how empty it is. Even the big capacity ones are rarely even half filled inside.

I think the cost is more of a controller limitation than physical space.

3.5" ssds are pushing 100TB or more (at a price comparable to a nice car).
 
Grebuloner said:
Open a 2.5" ssd case from the last some years and see how empty it is. Even the big capacity ones are rarely even half filled inside.

I think the cost is more of a controller limitation than physical space.

3.5" ssds are pushing 100TB or more (at a price comparable to a nice car).
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It almost definitely this. The number of channels a consumer SSD controller chip has is limited, so going to higher density chips is probably cheaper than going to a chip with more channels.
 
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GotNoRice said:
The flash really doesn't take up that much space. Just think about how much smaller NVMe is compared to the 2.5" form factor, and that has not limited capacity in practice. If you really need more then just get something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-4x32Gbps-Individual-Indicator-Support/dp/B09BJ163KY/, pack it with 4 high-capacity NVMe SSDs and create a big raid volume.
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Those are nice, but the cheap ones like that model rely on 4x4 PCIe bifurcation support from the MB, which isn't common in the consumer space.
 
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They basically don't exist for 2 reasons: servers and laptops, both use 2.5" size drives and sell in a much higher scale than desktop PCs with 3.5" drive bays.
 
D-EJ915 said:
They basically don't exist for 2 reasons: servers and laptops, both use 2.5" size drives and sell in a much higher scale than desktop PCs with 3.5" drive bays.
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I get that laptops all use 2.5" drives but servers? If servers dont use 3.5" drives, then where are they used? Then why do Seagate and WD sell those drives?
 
philb2 said:
I get that laptops all use 2.5" drives but servers? If servers dont use 3.5" drives, then where are they used? Then why do Seagate and WD sell those drives?
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They have servers which use both, in high volume. The larger drives and smaller drives have different usecases in servers, I imagine, with different tradeoffs. Capacity, density, heat, noise, being a few considerations which might be fine in one server usecase but not in another.
 
oops quoted wrong person lol.

philb2 said:
I get that laptops all use 2.5" drives but servers? If servers dont use 3.5" drives, then where are they used? Then why do Seagate and WD sell those drives?
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Servers only really use 3.5" drive for bulk storage/data streaming where performance/latency isn't really necessary. We have 30TB 2.5" modules now so for high performance spinning disks just aren't used and if they are it's with auto tiering with 10k 2.5" drives to drive down cost. I've been putting out for quotes for a san replacement for my company is the only reason I've really looked at this lately lol. It's pretty crazy that storage density with flash shot past hard drives a while ago.
 
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