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Data Storage

Sabrent Unveils Record-Breaking 8TB Rocket Q NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD (betanews.com) 74

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Sabrent, an LA-headquartered computer vendor, has expanded its Rocket Q family of 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB drives with a new model that offers 8 terabytes of super-fast storage in the same M.2 2280 form-factor by utilizing Micron's 3D QLC NAND technology. The company shares features of the drive below: M.2 PCIe Gen3 x 4 Interface.
PCIe 3.1 Compliant / NVMe 1.3 Compliant.
Power Management Support for APST / ASPM / L1.2.
Supports SMART and TRIM commands.
Supports ONFi 2.3, ONFi 3.0, ONFi 3.2 and ONFi 4.0 interface.
Advanced Wear Leveling, Bad Block Management, and Over-Provision. No word on pricing.
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Sabrent Unveils Record-Breaking 8TB Rocket Q NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD More

Sabrent Unveils Record-Breaking 8TB Rocket Q NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD

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  • So what are we looking at here? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chrism238 ( 657741 ) on Thursday May 21, 2020 @02:29PM (#60087686)
    Stuff that matters, or a press release?

    • Identical headlines showed up in Slashdot & Betanews on my RSS feed within a few minutes of each other. Some PR outfit is earning their keep while "editors" are not. I was just perusing my feed & sadly wondering how much of that content was thinly veiled sponsored content already.

      • Some PR outfit is earning their keep while "editors" are not.

        You mean like a press release getting picked up by news aggregators and published? HOLD THE PHONE! What is the world coming to!

    • I believe those were the ssd specs albeit at less density, for the new Playstation 5. One developer said loading times are so fast, they are going to have to fake some Loading screens for a second or two just so the player doesn't have a sense of unease with such fast transitions.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by edwdig ( 47888 )

        This is still a PCIe 3 drive, peaking at 3.4 GB/s. The PS5 SSD uses PCIe 4 and peaks at 5.5 GB/s.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by slaker ( 53818 )

          The interface isn't as relevant for this sort of drive. This is Micron's QLC tech, which can't saturate even the PCIe v.3 interface. I know this is Slashdot and expecting people to know that both memory tech and data interface (plus the controller and available cache) contribute to the performance of a a drive might be a bit of a stretch, but this isn't a drive you buy because it's going to be fast.

          • 8 TB in a standard flash drive still seems like a new high water mark...

            • Meh, not really... it might be a larger form factor (U.2), but you can get 15TB in a Micron 9300, and without the trashy QLC NAND, too.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by edwdig ( 47888 )

            That's true, but irrelevant to the post I was responding to. The parent was suggesting this drive had the same specs as the PS5 SSD, and I was pointing out that they're very different.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dissy ( 172727 )

      On the other hand, this isn't one of those brand new never before heard of technologies that likely will never exist.
      It may be just a press release, but an iterative advance on existing tech, that this company also already has on the market.

      If we're going to have product placement advertisements, they can (and have) certainly done worse!

      And at least they didn't give pricing in number of football fields (which sadly is probably about the right units of measure here)

    • Re:So what are we looking at here? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Thursday May 21, 2020 @04:35PM (#60088150)

      Press release. The only "record-breaking" thing here is that they're the first company dumb enough/willing to put 8TB on a single M.2 board, but that isn't a technological breakthrough. Anyone else could have done it, but no one has wanted to because the market isn't there.

      A competitively priced, 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD, including the 2TB Sabrent Rocket Q, costs about $0.13/GB, which puts them around $250. It's steep, since you're paying for both NVMe speeds and the M.2 form factor, but it's not crazy steep. A 4TB Sabrent Rocket Q costs $0.23/GB, putting it at $750. That's quite the premium, but it isn't terribly out of line with industry norms, at least on a Price/GB basis. If they simply maintained the same Price/GB for the 8TB, we're talking about a $1500 SSD. If they increase the premium, which is likely, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes upwards of $2000.

      Meanwhile, most people who would be in the market to pay $2000 for 8TB of NVMe storage (i.e. people who need high capacities of fast storage) would be better served by picking up something like this $55 adapter [amazon.com] and loading it with four 2TB drives (e.g. Sabrent 2TB Rocket Q at $240/ea. on Amazon). Not only would you quadruple your throughput, you'd also save $500-1000 while achieving the same capacity.

      Alternatively, even my mini-ITX gaming rig from 2018 has a second M.2 slot on the back that I'm not using, and modern ATX or EATX motherboards (which I imagine would be more common among people will to drop $2000 on a drive) frequently have many more slots. Instead of shelling out $1500-2000 to replace your existing 4TB drive, why not just buy a second one at half that cost? Or, if you have more slots, but multiple, smaller ones to save yourself even more. Plus, if those slots are on different PCIe channels, you stand to see a potential performance improvement to boot.

      • In my day we paid $1 per each 5.25" floppy disk and we were stoked when double sided became fully supported so you could get 360k on a single disk! Combine that with PKarc and you were golden! You could store anything!

      • Meanwhile, most people who would be in the market to pay $2000 for 8TB of NVMe storage (i.e. people who need high capacities of fast storage) would be better served by picking up something like this $55 adapter and loading it with four 2TB drives (e.g. Sabrent 2TB Rocket Q at $240/ea. on Amazon). Not only would you quadruple your throughput, you'd also save $500-1000 while achieving the same capacity.

        Nope. You don't get something for nothing. To get 4x your throughput you'd have to put them in a parallel RAID configuration, so you would not be getting 8TB of storage, you'd be right back to 2TB.

        Having said that, you could, as you say, have your 8TB cheaper than the Sabrent. Just not at 4x the throughput.

        • Nope. You don't get something for nothing.

          I think you missed the fact that that’s a PCIe x16 adapter card, which goes in a x16 slot, which means it has 4x the bandwidth of a top-end (i.e. PCIe x4) M.2 slot. You’re not getting something for nothing. You’re using 4x as many PCIe channels to get 4x the throughput. Simple as that. No need for RAID. Moreover, the RAID configuration you’re suggesting would saturate a PCIe x4 slot‘s bandwidth before you managed to quadruple the throughput.

          • I know how PCIE channels work.

            But you have 4 different devices. Just like with a 4-disk SATA system, which BTW also runs over PCIE. On, I might add, different PCIE channels.

            With your SATA Raid, you only get 4 x the throughput if you use a 4-disk RAID system. Even though each of those disks occupies a different PCIE channel.

            I have zero reason to think that being directly on PCIE is any different.

            Now maybe, Intel's newer "virtual raid" system will do that, on a newer motherboard and newer CPU. I d
            • I think the confusion here is you're thinking that because you're using all 16 PCIE lanes, you can simultaneously access all 16 of those lanes on each access cycle.

              I doubt that very much. You have disk controllers in the way.

            • Hold up, I think I see the source of the hang up between us, and it has nothing to do with PCIe vs. SATA.

              When I said you could quadruple the throughput, I was talking about the throughput across the storage system as a whole (i.e. they’d be four separate drives capable of four unrelated reads/writes in parallel, each at full speed, thus 4x the throughput), not the throughput for a single read/write operation (which would of course continue to be limited by the capabilities of any one drive unless you

      • If you want 8 TiB in your laptop, it's the way to go.

        • Right. Laptops. Those are a thing. Thanks for pointing them out. They're definitely a valid use case that I failed to consider.

          • Intel NUC. Mac Mini. Synology. M.2 is used in lots of places.

            The thing to note here instead should be that it's QLC. Maybe for Joe Consumer the low durability will be tolerable.

            • I covered SFF use cases in another post [slashdot.org], so I won't rehash all of that here.

              The Mac mini is an interesting one to bring up, but I don't think it's actually relevant to this discussion, since there hasn't been a Mac mini model yet that can take this drive (the current model has its storage soldered in, the prior top-end model was limited to PCIe x2 and apparently doesn't work with x4 SSDs, and all other configurations and prior models used 2.5" SATA drives).

              Similarly, I'm not sure about Synology's relevance

      • I know right! Everyone in the storage industry is just plain stupid for pushing single densities. Personally I run windows on a RAID array with 1024 1GB drives. All those companies years back pushing for 2GB and 3GB HDDs were just dumb and stupid and don't understand the market.

        When you reply please speak up, it's very loud in here.

        • I know right! Everyone in the storage industry is just plain stupid for pushing single densities.

          That's a nice straw man you have there, but it sadly bears no resemblance to what I actually said.

          I said they were stupid for creating a product that has no market and laid out how various use cases are better served by other products in the market that offer more storage, more speeds, or both at a lower price, though I'll grant that I missed laptops in my initial comment, as other responses have helpfully pointed out. Obviously, there's demand for greater capacities, but not at prices beyond what the mark

          • I'm not sure this product is aimed at the usual consumer nor at notebooks, but in the server and workstation arena, it would be useful.

            Backing up a notebook is already a nightmare, imagine having to do 8TB's, eurgh.

            • I don't see how it could be aimed at anything other than consumer use. They're using Micron's QLC (quad layer) flash. With each jump to include additional layers, the ratings for the number of read/write cycles have dropped. As I recall, Micron's QLC flash is rated for just 1000 cycles before failure, which, while respectable, puts it firmly in the consumer space. Enterprise users tend to stick with SLC (single layer) or MLC (multi layer, i.e. 2 layer) NAND products that are rated for orders of magnitude mo

      • There are a small number of customers who whom this might make sense: people who travel a lot and need to bring along massive amounts of data. The near term potential sales are probably not over 1,000 units. It's not a large enough market niche to attract the major players like Samsung or even Micron's own Crucial brand, but a small player like Sabrent can use it as a way to increase awareness of their brand while making a bit of money filling demand for a low volume product.

    • Because 8 terabytes of storage in something the size of your little finger is totally not at all newsworthy...

    • I'm sorry we published anything related to tech on this site. We'll get back to stories about a monkey running the country shortly.

    • So far as I know it's the first 8GB M.2 SSD. If that is correct, it is at least mildly stuff that matters, certainly to anybody who wants to stuff more storage into their laptop. I doubt the product will be alone for long.

  • Sabrent? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Thursday May 21, 2020 @02:31PM (#60087700)

    I immediately associate Sabrent with kind of shoddy oddball peripherals and cables. Like a lower cost StarTech, not a leading component manufacturer.

    • Re:Sabrent? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by slaker ( 53818 ) on Thursday May 21, 2020 @02:42PM (#60087762)

      They're just repackaging somebody else's memory cells and controllers. In my experience, they've been perfectly serviceable in making unsexy cables and adapters we all need from time to time. I'm perfectly willing to believe they've done the same thing in a new product line. Particularly given the dozens of no-name vendors currently shipping SSDs.

         

      • That is true, I imagine there are entire factories just pumping out white label SSD's

        They do have the good assortment. I just have had bad experiences with their USB to Serial adapters in particular. Chances are they may have been knockoff Prolific chips.

      • They're just repackaging somebody else's memory cells and controllers.

        You just described basically 99% of the storage industry. There are very few companies out there producing NAND and their controllers.

      • Check out their various SATA docks with compatibility issues with larger drives, and that bizarrely care about disk labels.

    • I immediately associate Sabrent with kind of shoddy oddball peripherals and cables. Like a lower cost StarTech, not a leading component manufacturer.

      You've pretty much hit the mark with this product. This isn't a technological breakthrough. This is simply them being willing to shove more of Micron's chips on a single M.2 board than anyone else, but the reason no one else has is because they've had the sense to see that no one is in the market for a $1500-2000 8TB drive.

      If capacity is your priority, an NVMe M.2 SSD is exactly the wrong thing to get. A "spinning rust" SATA 3 HDD will give you more capacity at a much lower cost (albeit, at a much slower sp

      • I like the amount of thought that you've put into your post but, I'm going to point out a segment you've missed that this SSD might fit into. People who own laptops and who are upgrading them. I have a Lenovo Yoga 720 with only one M.2 port. It came with a 512 GB NVMe M.2 SSD in that port. If I want to go "big" concerning my onboard storage, I'll have to pick up a multi-terabyte M.2 SSD or tote around a high capacity external drive. With those choices, I know what I'd want to go with.

      • What if *actual data safety* is my priority?

        Like not having to restore from backul
        p every n months when som ebits flip their shit.
        Especially as a home user who can't affort keeping versioned triple-mirrored backups of all their data, and expects the damn thing to just reliably do its job!

        • What if *actual data safety* is my priority?

          Like not having to restore from backul
          p every n months when som ebits flip their shit.

          This is a nonsensical question. If data safety is actually your priority, then redundancy MUST be built into your system somewhere. This is not optional. Anything else, regardless of how big or small it is, would mean putting all your eggs in one basket. You'd have no data safety at all. If you do not consider backups to be an option for some reason, then your only other option is to introduce redundancy elsewhere in the system, such as by using RAID or a different, comparable system.

          Especially as a home user who can't affort keeping versioned triple-mirrored backups of all their data, and expects the damn thing to just reliably do its job!

          This is also a nonsensi

  • the OWC 4TB Aura P12 M.2 NVMe SSD $1,149.88.

    So I'd guess 2-3K for one of these, which isn't bad until you figure out how many 4TB disk drives you can buy for $3K

    • The Sabrent 4TB SSDs are $749 or $849 at NewEgg (Rocket Q vs. Rocket): NewEgg 4TB SSDs [newegg.com]

      So I'd expect something closer to $1500-$2000.

      More than spinning disks, but loads faster and possibly more reliable. Oh, and you can stick this (or possibly 3 of these) in a laptop.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by slaker ( 53818 )

        Speed and reliability are both kind of questionable with QLC in general. Intel's 660 drives are only barely faster than spinning disks under some conditions and each memory cell has a fraction of the endurance of SLC or MLC NAND. There's something to be said for having bulk storage in that form factor, but it's not any more appealing to boot off a 4TB QLC NAND drive than it is to boot off a 4TB SMR drive.

    • I use a pancake stack of 2TB drives because they're cheap and sexy. Sexy precisely because they're not sexy, with caching taking care of that speed thang. Storage is a bit like digital cameras; when all you have is pixel counts that's all you have to market.

    • 4TB Sata III is no where near the same as these NVMe specs. NVMe 1.3 I nearly as fast as ram. Its using 4 lanes of PCIe at full capacity.

      • The NVMe interface is fast, yes. Load it up with shitty QLC memory and it's not going to be fast (at least for writing). Read speeds will be fine, and random access latency is nice and low, sure, but the industry is still struggling to figure out how to use QLC for things other than "write once, read many" applications. QLC would be great for a Netflix streamer box, for example, where they upload new content once in a while but it's 98% reads.

        QLC is sort of the flash equivalent to SMR. Reads are fine, b

  • ...when they make a version in PCIe4.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slaker ( 53818 )

      Er, why?

      PCIe v.3 4x is ~4GB/sec data transfer rate. Micron's claimed specs on the 3D QLC NAND say it tops out at 2.2GB/sec for reads. Assuming the controller is decent and there's enough cache on the drive to keep up that data rate, the gen 3 interface is still more than fast enough.

      AFAIK QLC is meant to be crummy, low endurance bulk storage, not the blazing fast stuff we normally consider for nVMe ports. 2.2GB/sec is still nothing to laugh at.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        2.2 GB/sec per chip. There are multiple NAND chips on an SSD. Nothing but bargain-basement controllers are single-channel anymore.

  • Let us see how fast they crash! I am still bitter from early OCZ SSD.

  • Pretty sure it won't be "Your first-born child."

    As villains have found that raising children is precarious and expensive.

    It's a far greater punishment to make your enemies raise their OWN little brats instead.

  • No gen4?

  • I have two 2TB drives in my alienware laptop. I'm constantly running out of space. I'd happily replace one of my drives with an 8TB. Then I'd run out of space far less often. I think I'll wait until there's some competition, though. I'm not going to spend 3k on 8TB. I'd definitely spend 1500.

  • AnandTech has this review [anandtech.com] of the Optane H10. Back in Dec. this had this summary [anandtech.com] where they mentioned the " 4TB consumer M.2 SSD: the Sabrent Rocket, using a Phison E12 controller" -- but I don't see any reviews.

    How does this 8 TB version compare?

  • This is great news - it's not a world changer, just an expected signpost on the road of progress.

    I don't need one today, but they will come down in price and eventually I'll put together a 4-stick desktop NVMe array. 16-32TB in something the size of a deck of cards will be a huge upgrade, both capacity and reliability.

  • QLC? (Score:1)

    by dhils ( 6891192 )
    I'll keep my hard drive thank you.

  • If I were a traveling DJ or VJ, a drive like this would make my day. I can put this in my laptop and carry a larger library, and/or upgrade the quality level of my library to provide a better experience. The low write speed of QLC won't bother me because I'm never writing significant amounts of data during my performances. Nor will the limited write endurance of QLC because most of my data will be written to the disk and then stay put for months or years.

    For me, I want a minimum of interconnections and a mi

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