Intel And Micron Launch First QLC NAND- Micron 5210 ION Enterprise SATA SSD

[Evilsizer]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1274...-qlc-nand-micron-5210-ion-enterprise-sata-ssd

this might be a nice boost for consumers when it finally hits and for those still on the fence about ssd's. the QLC should show that reliability is that much better now then it has been in the past. this will also further drive down prices on TLC drives once the QLC hits for consumers.

 

[Woomack]

I guess it's more like QLC in enterprise storage and higher capacity drives as Intel released QLC earlier this year in consumer series. It was actually called quad-cell MLC what is the same as QLC. I think that TLC was registered by SanDisk (I can be wrong) so other brands were trying to use MLC naming as multi-level cell what also includes 2/3/4 cells. Some drives in last years were specified as three-level MLC and users still thought it's MLC as 2 cells.
In servers were only SLC and MLC. Market moved really fast from SLC to MLC because of ridiculous price per GB of SLC drives. Right now most servers have MLC drives which are not much different than higher desktop series

I'm just glad to see that with higher capacity also comes higher endurance. I guess that QLC will have the same max writes, if not more than current TLC. TLC right now have the same max writes as MLC 3-4 years ago.
Considering that except datacenters barely anyone needs high capacity drives then I just think that HDD will slowly die and in 2-3 generations will be replaced by SSD. I'm not offering any PC with HDD anymore and servers are mixed, depends on the price point.

For me it's weird how Micron releases their new products. They have fast NVMe but only in server products while their partners are using some components in their consumer grade drives ( like HP ). I just wonder why there are no NVMe drives from Crucial which is Micron brand. There was one drive presented on the Computex or CES last year which never appeared on the market.

 

[Alaric]

Considering that except datacenters barely anyone needs high capacity drives then I just think that HDD will slowly die and in 2-3 generations will be replaced by SSD

Not for me. I can get 4 TB of HDD for over 10x less than an SSD of that size. I'm not paying $1000 for storage I can get for less than $100. That's just crazy.

 

[mackerel]

I think HDs will still be there, lurking whenever people want capacity over performance for a given cost. For lightweight uses a 240GB SSD might be plenty, but for a gamer, no chance. Big name titles are high tens of GB, and while I don't play that many contemporary AAA titles, I wouldn't be surprised if some already passed 100GB footprints. Look at mid range gaming laptops, often they combine a SSD + HD. I can't see SSD dropping that quickly in price to make HD irrelevant.

That aside, I also do game recording with the vague thought some day I might edit it into something anyone else might want to watch. That's working out at 20GB an hour if you don't want quality to suck too much. Photography? A day out will be 10's of GB, and if I return to astrophotography again, much bigger.

If anything, I'd like to see 2.5" 7200rpm HDs reach higher capacities faster, and none of that shingled rubbish Seagate. I note Seagate do 5TB 5400rpm now... even then a SSD is roughly 5x more cost per capacity. Looks like 7200rpm drives are limited to 1TB, at least I've not found any offered in higher capacities yet. You might question, either you care about performance or you don't, but I have found 7200rpm drives feel not bad compared to 5400rpm ones. They might both be nothing compared to SSDs, but there is still enough of a gap between them to make a difference.

 

[Alaric]

My music folder is 52.7 GB, games are 234.5 GB before Warframe, and my recorded TV folder is 840 GB. Out of 3.63 TB on one drive I have 1.04 TB free on a build not quite two years old. Yeah, I'll be needing more storage. LOL

 

[Woomack]

Believe me, most users don't need more than 500GB, gamers or typical home/office users. Of course there are some who need 4TB+ but prices of higher capacity SSD are going down so I'm not saying in next year but maybe in 3-4 prices should be low enough to replace HDD. It's also because the largest HDD manufacturers are moving to SSD. When production will be focused on SSD then HDD prices can go up or at least won't drop anymore.

Most gamers don't need HDD and 500-1000GB is more than enough. I mean who plays 20-30 games at once ? The largest games have up to 50GB, most still have 1-3GB. Maybe those who are recording their play will need additional space. Also, who keeps their games on HDD nowadays ?
Other thing is that a lot of users move to cloud services etc. A lot of people use netflix or spotify or anythng else and don't care to save anything on their PC.

On the other hand it's the whole point of PC, you can add whatever you need. It doesn't change fact that some people will try to make us happy at all cost and replace HDD faster than some may think.

Mid range laptops have SSD+HDD because of price. They put there 120GB SSD and 1TB HDD so it looks better. It's all marketing... like 'look how fast OS starts and there is still a lot of space'. Most higher laptops don't have HDD anymore or it's additional option (if there is a space to install additional drive).
If in laptop is HDD then to reduce costs and to focus on laptop series. In product description there is no word about drives or RAM other than it boots fast if there is SSD as standard drive.
Why all cheaper gaming laptops have an HDD and a single memory module ? So they look inexpensive. Users see it's cheap like they buy TV, fridge or anything else. I mean most users, also gamers buy computers as a whole item. They have no idea and don't even want to know what is inside. They think that what is advertised is true and their new computer will be 5 times faster than their old one.

 

[mackerel]

While I throw money at my main system, on my secondary/test/laptop systems I don't. I have a mix of 120/240GB class SSDs and they need HDs if I'm going to install any number of games on them. Even at 240GB, it is barely enough for a few big games. Doom: 67GB. GTAV: 72GB (without any mods). WoW: 83GB. SC2: 50GB. I understand if you install the 4k texture pack on FFXV, that totals around 150GB, although that is a bit extreme and certainly isn't representative of all modern games. You might not play all games at the same time, but if you jump between some older ones, some newer ones, it's going to get tight pretty quickly. Around the 500GB mark, maybe shuffling isn't going to be a pain any more but I'm still not sure pricing will drop enough in a few years to make them standard on anything less than an upper mid range gaming laptop.