I do not have any Micron SSDs, but I was hoping to grab a few now that the prices for SSDs are heavily in the consumer’s favor. I’ve noticed that Micron’s has 512e and 4Kn versions of their SSDs. Does anyone know if their 512e SSDs can be formatted to 4Kn post-purchase?
I’m asking because the new 6500 ION series are predominantly 512e with only one 4Kn listing on SabrePC: sabrepc.com/MTFDKCC30T7TGR-1BK4DFCYYR-Micron-S102580762. Depending on what they ultimately list the product for, I might want to just get the 512e SKU and reformat it to 4Kn.
These drives are price-competitive with Solidigm’s (formerly Intel’s) D5-P5316 30.72 TB SSDs with several notable advantages:
It uses 4 KiB indirection units (IU), so writes do not need to be 64 KiB for best performance.
The performance between sequential read and write is more balanced. Even though the maximum read speed is 6.8 GB/s versus the D5-P5316’s 7.0 GB/s, its write speed is 5.0 GB/s versus the D5-P5316’s 3.6 GB/s.
It uses TLC NAND versus the D5-P5316’s QLC.
Endurance is also higher at 9 TB/day with 4 KiB random writes versus the D5-P5316’s 1 TB/day with 64 KiB writes.
They come in a SKU that support OPAL SED.
Nobody has them in stock, but $2,517 is the lowest I could find on them, which isn’t much more than the D5-P5316’s low of $2,211.
Didn’t know they re-launched their ION series. Was the budget line for SATA SSDs. 232 layer NAND is state of the art Micron tech. And NVMe 2.0 might also include ZNS feature which would be great for endurance (which may be the reason why they can compete with QLC pricing on TLC). Power draw also is a solid 25% lower than normal.
You pay ~1/4 less for 1/3 of the endurance (0.3 DWPD vs 1DWPD) and lower performance specs. And higher capacities don’t scale well with write IOPS, so for performance, it’s better to get more smaller drives. 200k write IOPS can be had on 4TB 7400 Pro (I probably get a couple of those while they’re so cheap) or 8TB Solidigm D7-5510.
I think $2500 is a bit too much for my taste in terms of $/TB. But if you really need capacity on a single drive, you save 10-25% over e.g. a 30TB 9400 Pro.
Not sure if you can reformat them. But I know we have people owning 7400 and 7450 drives in this forum. Little point in selling different SKUs if you can just reformat them…that would be my guess.
I’m curious how the next generation of the 9400 with 232 layer NAND and NVMe 2.0 will do. Not that I can afford it, but Micron is really pushing innovation and setting the bar very high for the competition (which is always good).
The P5 Plus is a gaming SSD though, nothing like the enterprise-focused 6500 ION.
Ah. These 32 TB drives are going to be put behind some Optanes, which will take the brunt of the performance-sensitive I/O. Ordinarily, I would have gone the HDD route for high-density, but HDDs have not been competitive there for a while and the $/TB for SSDs have entered my comfort zone. A four-pack of these puts 128 TB in the same footprint as one 22 TB HDD.
Hmm… I wonder if that is dense enough for 64 TB Micron QLC SSDs on the horizon.
The 6500 ION is quite the statement. I don’t think we will see QLC from Micron. If they can sell cut-down TLC (less chips with less overprovisioning) at the same price as QLC, that’s a USP. Hynix doing the same, not sure how Toshiba, Solidigm and others will react.
60TB drives have been announced (we’ll hit 500 PBW on Flash ), but I doubt we’ll see those in retail channels any time soon. Micron has 7400 (phasing out), 7450 and the recent 9400 line on the market.
Last year we had 200$/TB on enterprise drives and $100/TB on consumer drives. Today, Enterprise drives range from 50-120/TB depending on model and capacity. Quite the landslide. Certainly made be reconsider my plans for future storage too. I’m certainly not buying QLC. SATA SSDs are officially on life-support now and HDDs still have and keep their edge for cheap capacity if IOPS aren’t critical (most stuff just isn’t).
And it seems U.2/3 is a somewhat future-proof form factor, at least as far as my use case is concerned.
I remember @aBav.Normie-Pleb talking about 7450 Micron in some thread. Maybe he can help with the 512e/4kn question. Never trust bavarians, but we’re desperate so this is ok
The Micron 7450 with 4 TB and above are my favorite SSDs currently (when looking at the market in Germany), they offer end users firmware updates and warranty service (spitting on Samsung).
Nice. So there is that and the 9400. I found the 9400 documentation to state explicitly that the sector size can be changed. So there is a good chance that the same applies to 6500 ION then.
Aww. Poo.
I already invested in a few 5.25-inch removable drive cages for SATA drives I’ve yet to buy.
Don’t know if this might be interesting for people here, but last year I bought two 7.68TB KIOXIA CD6-R from a Chinese seller over Ebay. The drives were prices at 1.2k USD, new, each at the time I checked. The drives I bought from China were 600USD each total, including shipping and tax. This is equivalent to 75USD/TB. Those offers looked shady, had typos and everything, but I not only received the product, it is legit. Original Kioxia SSDs, were still sealed. Have been very happy with them, write IOPS are a bit low, but sequential transfers are alright with 6.2GBs/4GBs. I did not check the IOPS, but the sequential speeds are reached as advertised. There have been various offers from Chinese sellers on different platforms and I would argue as long as you have buyers protection you might be able to save a nice sum this way.
