8th July 2015

The world's first 2TB consumer SSDs

Samsung has announced the first 2 terabyte solid state drives for the consumer market – continuing the exponential trend in data storage.

Samsung has announced two new SSDs – the 850 Pro and 850 EVO – both offering double the capacity of the previous generation. The 2.5" form factor drives can greatly boost performance for desktops and laptops. They will be especially useful in the accessing and storage of 4K video, which can often require enormous file sizes. The available capacities include 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB, all the way up to 2TB.

The 850 Pro is designed for power users needing the maximum possible speed, while the 850 EVO is less powerful but somewhat cheaper. The 850 Pro features up to 550MBps sequential read and 520MBps sequential write rates and 100,000 random I/Os per second (IOPS). The 850 EVO has 540MBps sequential read and 520MBps write rates, with up to 90,000 random IOPS. Both models feature 3D V-NAND technology, which stacks 32 layers of transistors on top of each other. The drives also use multi-level cell (MLC) and triple-level cell (TLC) (2- and 3-bit per cell) technology for even greater memory density.

Until recently, consumers were forced to choose between speed or size when it came to upgrading their hard drives. For pure speed, a solid state drive was the best option, while larger sizes were typically catered for with slower and clunkier spinning drives. These new terabyte-scale SSDs are going to change that – combining both high speed and high capacity. Price may still be an issue, as Samsung's new product line doesn't come cheap. The 2TB version of the 850 Pro will retail for $999.99 and the 850 EVO is $799.99. However, given the trend in price performance witnessed in earlier generations of data storage, it is likely these high capacity SSDs will soon be a lot cheaper.

"Samsung experienced a surge in demand for 500 gigabyte (GB) and higher capacity SSDs with the introduction of our V-NAND SSDs," says Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Branded Product Marketing, Memory Business, in a press release from Samsung. "The release of the 2TB SSD is a strong driver into the era of multi-terabyte SSD solutions. We will continue to expand our ultra-high performance and large density SSD product portfolio and provide a new computing experience to users around the globe."

Comments »