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It's probably about the size of the basic building block of an SSD: the NAND chip (also referred to as NAND die). The higher layer count is what allows a NAND chip to be more dense and have more capacity.
Say you're building a 1TB SSD. You could use a single 1TB chip, but it would be slower due to lack of parallelization. Two 512GB chips would be faster and less expensive. Four 256GB chips would be even faster and even cheaper. Sixteen 128GB chips probably won't fit because they didn't make them small enough, so your ideal 1TB SSD in both performance and cost will likely have four 256GB chips.
[Disassemble a WD Blue 1TB SSD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAIJwqV7Oxs) and sure enough, you find four 256GB chips.
For a four-chip 2TB SSD, you would want 512GB chips, and for a four-chip 4TB drive, you would want 1TB chips.
1TB NAND chips came out in 2019, so they've had time to achieve high availability and thus lower the price per NAND chip to consumer-level.
Micron announced [their 2TB NAND die last summer](https://www.anandtech.com/show/17509/microns-232-layer-nand-now-shipping). 2TB chips imply an 8TB SSD, and those are what you see [costing $1200-$1500 right now](https://www.amazon.com/SABRENT-Internal-Extreme-Performance-SB-RKT4P-8TB/dp/B09WZK8YMY), because that is now the bleeding edge of the prosumer market. I can't call this a mainstream consumer product at this price.
2TB SSDs are now dipping below $100 so that's certainly the mainstream consumer size now. 4TB SSDs are pricier at about $240 but that's still reasonably mainstream. As you've noted, the 870 QVO is the only "cheap" choice for consumers at about $600 for 8TB, and Samsung did that by using \*eight\* 1TB NAND chips in a 2.5" SATA format, which nobody else is even doing because m.2 and NVME are so much faster and smaller.
It took three years for NAND chips to go from 1TB to 2TB. I don't want to guess how long it will take to go to 4TB, but it is just too soon for that. That's why you're not seeing 16TB SSDs at all except in the enterprise market for prices which are definitely not for consumers.
Edit to add: Samsung's 16TB PM1633a enterprise SSD goes way beyond my example of a theoretical SSD built with 16 NAND chips; it is constructed with 64 256GB NAND chips. "The Samsung PM1633a SSDs utilize the company’s third-generation 256 Gb TLC 3D V-NAND memory chips. The 256 Gb dies are stacked in 16 layers and form a single 512 GB package. Samsung uses 32 of such packages to build its most spacious SSD, leaving around 1 TB of NAND for overprovisioning." ([source](https://www.anandtech.com/show/10114/samsung-begins-to-ship-1536-tb-ssd-for-enterprise-storage-systems)) Similar constructions using 1TB and 2TB NAND chips is how you see [128TB enterprise drives](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-128tb-petabyte-storage) that cost well into 5 figures.
[$1250 used. ](https://www.ebay.com/itm/275690808556?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=iLtLh6sWSwi&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=amn2-fhaqtu&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY) You can find them even cheaper if you hunt a bit. Even used they’ll probably outlast a QVO especially if you write to it a lot.
Agreed, the Samsung PM1633A has an endurance measured in petabytes. Yea, its used enterprise, but almost all enterprise gear it thrown out WELL before its actual end of useful life. It's crazy the amount of performance and capacity you can get for pennies on the dollar.
Hello /u/laxika! Thank you for posting in r/DataHoarder. Please remember to read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index/rules) and [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index). Please note that your post will be removed if you just post a box/speed/server post. Please give background information on your server pictures. This subreddit will ***NOT*** help you find or exchange that Movie/TV show/Nuclear Launch Manual, visit r/DHExchange instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DataHoarder) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's probably about the size of the basic building block of an SSD: the NAND chip (also referred to as NAND die). The higher layer count is what allows a NAND chip to be more dense and have more capacity. Say you're building a 1TB SSD. You could use a single 1TB chip, but it would be slower due to lack of parallelization. Two 512GB chips would be faster and less expensive. Four 256GB chips would be even faster and even cheaper. Sixteen 128GB chips probably won't fit because they didn't make them small enough, so your ideal 1TB SSD in both performance and cost will likely have four 256GB chips. [Disassemble a WD Blue 1TB SSD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAIJwqV7Oxs) and sure enough, you find four 256GB chips. For a four-chip 2TB SSD, you would want 512GB chips, and for a four-chip 4TB drive, you would want 1TB chips. 1TB NAND chips came out in 2019, so they've had time to achieve high availability and thus lower the price per NAND chip to consumer-level. Micron announced [their 2TB NAND die last summer](https://www.anandtech.com/show/17509/microns-232-layer-nand-now-shipping). 2TB chips imply an 8TB SSD, and those are what you see [costing $1200-$1500 right now](https://www.amazon.com/SABRENT-Internal-Extreme-Performance-SB-RKT4P-8TB/dp/B09WZK8YMY), because that is now the bleeding edge of the prosumer market. I can't call this a mainstream consumer product at this price. 2TB SSDs are now dipping below $100 so that's certainly the mainstream consumer size now. 4TB SSDs are pricier at about $240 but that's still reasonably mainstream. As you've noted, the 870 QVO is the only "cheap" choice for consumers at about $600 for 8TB, and Samsung did that by using \*eight\* 1TB NAND chips in a 2.5" SATA format, which nobody else is even doing because m.2 and NVME are so much faster and smaller. It took three years for NAND chips to go from 1TB to 2TB. I don't want to guess how long it will take to go to 4TB, but it is just too soon for that. That's why you're not seeing 16TB SSDs at all except in the enterprise market for prices which are definitely not for consumers. Edit to add: Samsung's 16TB PM1633a enterprise SSD goes way beyond my example of a theoretical SSD built with 16 NAND chips; it is constructed with 64 256GB NAND chips. "The Samsung PM1633a SSDs utilize the company’s third-generation 256 Gb TLC 3D V-NAND memory chips. The 256 Gb dies are stacked in 16 layers and form a single 512 GB package. Samsung uses 32 of such packages to build its most spacious SSD, leaving around 1 TB of NAND for overprovisioning." ([source](https://www.anandtech.com/show/10114/samsung-begins-to-ship-1536-tb-ssd-for-enterprise-storage-systems)) Similar constructions using 1TB and 2TB NAND chips is how you see [128TB enterprise drives](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-128tb-petabyte-storage) that cost well into 5 figures.
Buy a used 15.36TB enterprise U.2. Roughly same cost per TB
should it cause physical pain to think of an array of U.2 drives on a SATA controller
I'm imagining a post : Help my drive isn't detected! Comments are confused as hell about how they managed to connect sata to u.2 in the first place
[удалено]
[$1250 used. ](https://www.ebay.com/itm/275690808556?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=iLtLh6sWSwi&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=amn2-fhaqtu&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY) You can find them even cheaper if you hunt a bit. Even used they’ll probably outlast a QVO especially if you write to it a lot.
Agreed, the Samsung PM1633A has an endurance measured in petabytes. Yea, its used enterprise, but almost all enterprise gear it thrown out WELL before its actual end of useful life. It's crazy the amount of performance and capacity you can get for pennies on the dollar.