Wonder how many layers they can get this down to before reliability and the hardware's overall lifetime is reduced too badly, Penta(gram) layer SSD now and next up I suppose is hexa, whatever seven is called and then octa if this keeps going on. Then again really long huge numbers shrinking doesn't really say much either, hardware dies whenever the user is most inconvenienced by it as per some law from how the universe just works and that's that. 😛 Suppose storage capacity and affordability can continue to go up too, just have to monitor overall status and keep the priority files backed up and that should be good enough. EDIT: As for regular usage I'm pretty sure 3 - 5 years is still more than feasible same as the general lifetime for a HDD before they start showing signs and even then it can last quite a while plus no mechanical parts in a SSD and it can theoretically keep going even more removing that little wear and tear and other issues with spinning headers and platters even if the memory cells have a finite lifetime but tech keeps it optimum so it gets a lot of lifetime regardless of some arbitrary number of hours. 🙂

Development of new technologies is always welcomed. That said, I hate the reliability of QLC and much rather stick to TLC. I can't imagine the endurance PLC will have... I'm sure that with help from development of PLC, QLC will get better reliability. But there's a point that I'd rather my drive live for longer than having more density. My current Crucial MX100 256GB drive has 5 years and still going strong. I'm upgrading to NVMe but this drive will live on my old mom's computer to keep working.

Usually you have most drives starting to have issues with non-nand related stuff (controller etc), and around 1 out of 4 drive (of the same type) will have nand related problems after a few years, so it might work for most consumers (especially at lower price), but when i saw that the sustained TLC numbers on a nvme get beaten by an older MLC drive running sata, yeah, i wont get anything "after" TLC. even switched back to MLC for one of my backup drives i replaced, just to make sure.

What I don't really get is why stop there? Why not just jump to OLC (octa level cell)? That way you get a nice even 1 byte per cell. I'm not sure if that affects performance at all but I imagine it'd be easier than an awkward number like 5.

Loophole35:

If it means I can get a 4TB games SSD for ~$150 I’m all for it.

Same. Most of the detriments to such SSDs are totally irrelevant to things like game and media storage. At some point, I'm going to need to upgrade my RAID1 array in my home server, which uses a pair of laptop HDDs. Ditching them for a low-cost PLC SSD is really starting to sound enticing. I'm basically just waiting for one of the drives to die, or, until I run out of space, so I have an excuse to ditch them.

spectatorx:

I just finished watching this video and i was shocked when i've seen copying files onto QLC drive is comparable to/worse than copying similar files of similar total size between HDDs. On HDD similar process goes at speeds between 100-150MB/s (depending on particular models or units) and speeds are stable all the time, unlike as with this QLC drive.

QLC only slows down if you're copying really big files, and the SLC cache gets used up. Reading is still a lot faster than mechanicals. I switched to a quiet case not long back and the mechanical HD was the last noisiest bit, so swapped that up for a QLC SSD once it started making strange noises. You still get better slower degradation rather than complete fail with mechanical drives, and the quietness of them is appealing to me at least.

Loophole35:

I didn’t click the like but I’m assuming it’s the Linus video. Keep in mind he used an unrealistic scenario to slow the drive down. Most people won’t be simultaneously copying 10GB files from one drive to another on a daily basis. As I and others have stated (even Linus in the video) this a a perfect game drive.

It's from Christopher Barnatt (ExplainingComputers). I really like his channel. Linus is fine, but can be a drama queen sometimes. 😀

@Richard Nutman so far i had never any problems with degradation, but the controller dying, and no data recovery possible. the only HDDs i couldn't recover, were the grinding/clicking units, were customers tried to boot/mess with it, even that it made a strange sound..

That's unlucky with the controller dying. What brand(s) was that ?

one was a myssd msata (only port that was left on a matx board) and the other a ocz vertex4. both were mainly OS drives (but still some user data i wanted), so not too bad, but i wont care to reinstall all my games (siege alone is around 120gb already), just because i wanted a big cheap drive. for me perf does matter, and after tlc, the sustained speeds are below what i get from a 7200rpm 2.5 hdd, even my 960 evo will have lower writes than a mlc sata drive i use as external backup, so that will be the type i wont go past..

slyphnier:

if u look at google there tons report of dead(complete-fail) SSD too, i personally read more dead ssd rather than sudden dead hdd without any sign eitherway complete fail in hdd is same to various chip failure in SSD which fail completely the SSD if u read most hdd reliability report, complete hdd failure is quite low, usually hdd will giving sign first, like sector error, read/write error etc. before complete failure. thats why like backblaze, not straight replace the hdd, when something flagged in smart status so overall for me personally, both SSD & HDD is not perfect, both have cons and pros if only SSD keep on SLC/MLC with capacity+price like now, then it would be ideal storage system even that ssd still not good for archival purpose, not that hdd perfect either, there is data-degradation/decay in all storage medium, but compared ssd, hdd still hold better

This is my personal experience - mechanical HDD's tend to die slowly and you normally have time to do something about it before they fail. An SSD is going fine one day, and dead the next, which is very annoying.

Fox2232:

Thing is that for some weird reason, it is not so hard to find TLC SSDs at almost same price as QLC. I can't really justify QLC. And funny part is something like: Kingston SSD A2000 1000GB It is TLC, is quite cheap (SATA TLC cheap) and fast enough to saturate 2nd M.2 slot on x470 board. Would that be 2TB at appropriately higher price, I would already have that.

I got the Samsung 1TB 860 QVO. It's the 2nd cheapest 1TB SSD on overclockers right now. Performance is still way higher than mechanical in real world use, read speed still saturates SATA. I expect by next year you should be able to get 2TB QLC for the same price.

spectatorx:

I just finished watching this video and i was shocked when i've seen copying files onto QLC drive is comparable to/worse than copying similar files of similar total size between HDDs. On HDD similar process goes at speeds between 100-150MB/s (depending on particular models or units) and speeds are stable all the time, unlike as with this QLC drive.

Ive got a couple of those Samsung 860 1TB QVO drives in my new rig, i don't copy large files, and they're fine, they're just as fast as the EVOs.

@Fox2232 like many other "improvements", this looks like being more helpful (saving money) to the maker/seller, rather than the buyer. @Rich_Guy except the evo has mlc with multiple times more cycles.

@fry178 those will trickle down to consumers the ssd market is oversaturated with brands and ssd's competition is very very fierce thankfully! Now about 5 bit nand ...qlc i say is great as a game library drive told that in the past since you get the nand snappiness on seeking files and fragments of it and traditionally games are 1 install and forget about it just read after that.....in that sense the new ones might be still good .........but the life cycle s if they are down to 300 or so .....that would make me really uneasy.

@Venix guess then your not playing R6 siege 😀 regular updates around 1GB sometimes a couple, to fix what they broke with the last map/update, and new ops/maps usually mean around 10-20GB per update. since the game was around 80gb, went past 120gb, and now is around 100GB, its a lot of "new" data, that will add writes... The thing is, if you write to the actual cell, it is a write, no matter what or how "you" treated the data. And they can give 100y warranty on a drive, still dont care, as i know a lot of businesses dont care if they take a little "hit", by possibly having (a bit) higher rma rate, if they can grab more sales because ppl believe the drives will actually last longer. E.g. not one car rental company insures their fleet past basic coverage, even that you they charge extra when you take the option. They make more money that way, even if they have ppl totalling a car. So far the only reason to do those nands (past TLC), is price, and i value my data more (even the game drive), than saving "20$" on a drive. And part of the reason why i have couple of 2-3y sata drives still doing higher (sustained) writes, than the 960 evo nvme (on pcie 4x) i have..

well i dont care if its called grmblfx. AFTER the data gets thru ANY "stuff" (before the nand) and gets written to the actual nand/chip (to be stored) it is data written to it, no matter what you say. yes, you might not have the 1gb file "you" copied taking up 1gb on the drive, but as long as i see the data after powering the pc off, removing power long enough to not have any cache or anything else powered (and unable to hold the data), the only place the data is, is on the chip, as in written to it. and i guess you didnt process what i typed. i have seen enough examples were companies will claim stuff (no matter what it is), to get consumers to buy product over the competition, and i also know that companies have no problem "taking the financial hit" if a few ppl have an issue, as the large amount of ppl that wont have a problem (within warranty coverage) will make them more money, even if the product doesnt "deliver". e.g they can claim 1M TBW, but because no consumer will have that much load on the drives, so they dont worry if they have to replace "a handful" of drives from ppl like us, so for +90% of their sales they dont even have to worry if the drive can never handle the (claimed) numbers. and as long as the price for the drive doesnt equal the drop in "quality" (things like cycles/tbw), i dont see it making more sense to get them anyway (e.g. if the nand does cost 10x less, give me the drive at 1/4 of the cost of the same sized "next better" nand drive). not even talking about the fact that (to me), replacing my data is more of a PITA, than getting a "free" replacement drive if it dies. and for that tech site to try to "recover" a drive that stores data randomly? ok. even when i was using my first sd/usb or even ssd storage, i instantly discarded the hope to ever get any data recovered from it, if there is an issue (with the drive).

I'm all for this. I just got a 2TB Samsung 860QVO for £174 for use as my data drive to replace the last of my HDD's. If PLC has an even shorter life this is fine (depending on usage). I wouldn't buy it for an OS drive, but for an application or data drive then this is great news.

schmidtbag:

What I don't really get is why stop there? Why not just jump to OLC (octa level cell)? That way you get a nice even 1 byte per cell. I'm not sure if that affects performance at all but I imagine it'd be easier than an awkward number like 5.

The reason is that the number of bits expressed in a cell's voltage is an exponent. Flash cells are analog devices (as is everything physical). Each cell "stores" a single particular voltage. PLC, expressing 5 bits per cell, requires 2^5 = 32 distinct readable / writable voltage levels. 8 would require 2^8 = 256 distinct levels. They're not moving *from 4 to 5*, they're moving *from 16 to 32*.

Christ, what is this? Kindergarten? To both of you, keep it respectful.

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

Christ, what is this? Kindergarten? To both of you, keep it respectful.

Hilbert, kindly read through the thread and see for yourself who started the personal attacks. Fox always does this, this is not his first time and he does this when he is cornered. OmniDyne remained very very respectful right until it was not bearable anymore.