Tuesday, July 16th 2024
Western Digital Intros 8TB Variant of WD Black SN850X SSD
Western Digital stealthily introduced a spacious 8 TB variant of its performance WD Black SN850X M.2 NVMe Gen 4 SSD. The drive debuted in 2022 and had topped off at 4 TB. The new 8 TB variant is priced at $849 for the bare drive (without heatsink, model number WDS800T2X0E), and $899 with the PS5-friendly heatsink (model: WDS800T2XHE). The drive combines an in-house controller by Western Digital, with KIOXIA-sourced 3D TLC NAND flash. We're not sure if it's using the same 112-layer BiCS5 that the 4 TB variant does.
Western Digital claims performance figures of up to 7200 MB/s sequential reads, up to 6600 MB/s sequential writes, and up to 1.2 million IOPS 4K random reads/writes. The read speed is a touch lesser than the 7300 MB/s max sequential reads of the 4 TB variant. The write endurance of the 8 TB variant is rated at an impressive 4,800 TBW. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor the drive takes advantage of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 interface. Western Digital is backing these drives with 5-year warranties.
Source:
momomo_us (Twitter)
Western Digital claims performance figures of up to 7200 MB/s sequential reads, up to 6600 MB/s sequential writes, and up to 1.2 million IOPS 4K random reads/writes. The read speed is a touch lesser than the 7300 MB/s max sequential reads of the 4 TB variant. The write endurance of the 8 TB variant is rated at an impressive 4,800 TBW. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor the drive takes advantage of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 interface. Western Digital is backing these drives with 5-year warranties.
47 Comments on Western Digital Intros 8TB Variant of WD Black SN850X SSD
You say that is not a sustainable business model, but someday 232-layer will be as cutting-edge (/s) as 64-layer is today.
I have the white label version of this drive in my laptop right now 8TB, I got 2 of them, I've had them for over a year. WD seems late to the party. A few other companies have the same drive in different names/models.
Early adopter tax I hope, and prices will eventually plummet down to like 1.9x 4TB at most.
That was five years ago!
Can we stop naming 8 TB drives as "enormous, gigantic, massive, thicc..."?
Remember when we had graphs on when SSDs will overtake HDDs in price per TB and in maximum capacity, since HDDs can't just squeeze extra data or and extra platters?
First consumer 8 TB HDD came in only 2014. In 2019 we had 16 TB disks. And now you can buy 30 TB.
Largest available consumer SSD in 2014 was 1 TB. In 2019 you could buy an 8 TB drive. And now in 2024 we are here arguing if anyone really needs 8 TB drive, and if they really need to come down in price?
I was thinking of graphs like this one. They are a bit counter intuitive, because they're logarithmic - in reality the difference in price per TB is much larger:
But this is now generated or added to by some redditor, not by industry or tech journalist, and is based on drives that have lowest cost per TB - that means it doesn't really matter that we haven't seen any increase in capacity in last 5 years, and it also doesn't show (apart from a slight bump, which already tells a lot, this is logarithmic) the large disruption that jump from SATA to M.2 caused - because SATA drives were still selling at the time, and then lower capacity M.2 drives take over. Also, what is not shown is a large disruption in late 2023 from $35/TB to suddenly $50/TB, and it's now only down to $45/TB... Such sudden price changes over entire stacks aren't business as usual. And it shallows the hell off that projected line on when we will achieve parity with HDDs - if it stays like this untill the end of year.
Such graphs with one entry per year also don't show the whole picture - we had SSD price increase in late 2023, but the entry for that year is of course low price before that. The high prices are now holding for more than half a year, but if we get some deals for Christmas it could again show steady price in graph, although in reality most of the year the prices will be terrible compared to last year
By various older, pre "M.2 shift" graphs we should already be in the intersection... In fact if you extend the pre-2019 line you arrive around here. :p
So if a 8TB NVME drive is too much for consumers, then why do we need more than a couple of M.2 slots? What's the difference between say 4 2TB drives, 2 4TB drives and 1 8TB drive? The latter is more efficient.
Also swapping it out every few years seems odd I have never treated any of my storage in that way, and I wont do so moving forward, I do value the money I have.
8TB enterprise NVME? a slight problem need access to U.2.
Also finally, if you hitting 600 erase cycles within 3 years on a 8TB drive, then its not consumer type usage, that would be 2400TB of data within 3 years excluding write amplification.
I cant comment on the 600 erase cycles corruption thing though given its very hard to work a modern drive that hard, older smaller drives with horrid write amplification is a different matter though, so take e.g. the Samsung 830, planar MLC, 128 gigs, my 830s currently have erase cycles in the 100s. But they are the only drive to do so, my 850 Pro which is approaching a decade of age, still hasnt done 100 cycles and it was previously used as a PS4 SSD which auto recorded game footage, and prior to that was my main SSD on my PC, my desktop 860 EVO 3D TLC is fairly old at this point also and has done 6 erase cycles, power on time is 38766 hours. 850 pro 3D MLC 1/2 TB power on hours 78907, cycles 86.Ironically on the SATA SSDs I currently use, I feel the pSLC is pointless for performance as they only slow down a very small amount after its exhausted, its main benefit is likely on the endurance side.I think it will eventually go down to within 2.5x of 4TB, I remember when 4TB NVME drives were horrificly priced compared to 2TB and now they have hit saner levels. Spindles have gone through the same phases as well, the biggest spindles often have had really whacky prices, but then when volume increases the prices go down.
But at that point it will be 6 or 7 years since we got 8 TB on SSDs, and I'll be bitching why are the larger drives at twice the price per TB!
:p
I guess the whole time I was looking at only the Samsung very high end or Sabrent and missed the other brands like WD black dropping the price down to reasonable levels.
I said SN580, WD's budget blue line of drives, which stops at just 2TB - not the 850X flagship. They don't even make a 4TB SN580, let alone an 8TB one :'(
8TB drives sure are premium still, but 4TB drives are cheap, which is why I raised the original point that WD don't offer any cheap 4TB drives when everyone else does. An 8TB budget drive would be lovely, but that's probably wishful thinking since the maximum-density NAND won't be any cheaper and the controller/DRAM savings are marginal when so much of the BOM is NAND.Huh? All drives are TLC at this price. If you want MLC or SLC you need to pay 10-100x more for an enterprise solution that will be almost impossible to even buy as a consumer. I might be wrong but I think the last MLC drive you could reasonably find on the market was the Samsung 970 Pro from 2018, and it was quickly superseded by the 980 Pro with TLC because the 970 Pro's MLC made it waaaaaay too expensive for marginal gains over the TLC competition that was also bumping up against the ~7GB/s limit of PCIe 4.0 for a lot less money.
The other comparable drives are $1000+Yeah, I thought you said 850.
I think the reason there is no 580 is simple: 8TB is for nerds. Just like 1TB drives were when they first came out, most people didnt want nor need that capacity. Even then, it wasnt comparable, back then backing up your media was a lot more common. Today in the world of streaming, most consumers dont even consider local storage. Its only a small number of us that want 8TB drives, or larger, thus the silly pricing. Which means they are in no hurry to release budget models.
- Bill Gates, 1981
This is the same thing which exists for a while now, just more of it. Using the same PCB, controllers, etc.
This is stupidity tax.
when 2TB NVMe SSD's aren't 4x the price of 1TB NVMe SSD's and 4TB ones aren't 4x the price of 2TB ones either
WD must think we're all stupid