Western Digital and Kioxia announce 162-layer Gen 6 3D NAND flash memory chips

[Redaktion]

Improvements over Gen 5 include 40% smaller dies, reduced production costs, 70% more bits per wafer, improved write speeds by 2.4X and lower read latency by 10%, plus increased I/O speeds by 66%. The first SSDs to use these new chips are expected to launch in Q1 2022.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Western-Digital-and-Kioxia-announce-162-layer-Gen-6-3D-NAND-flash-memory-chips.522957.0.html

[NikoB]

Technology is supposedly improving, and SSD prices are not falling!

Moreover, the population in fact now needs not fast SSDs at all, but capacious, cheap and guaranteed data retention for 15-20 years at temperatures up to 50-60C. Even with a very limited resource, for example, a dozen write cycles, they will be in great demand as long-term backup devices.

It's the same with HDD - the prices are monstrous. There has been no real progress in pricing since 2011. Earlier, up to 2011, the capacity doubled in 2 years, and the price was the same.

Now people's needs have skyrocketed with 4K home video recording, and prices are not falling. No clouds can help here.

People need tens of terabytes of storage to store home video / photos in 2-3 backups at least, but most people outside the "golden billion" after the events of 2011 stopped feeling the progress in the world of storage.

[NikoB]

The most interesting thing is that with this technology it is already possible to make an SLC SSD with a capacity of 250-1TB, which is quite cheap with 100k rewrite cycles. However, some manufacturers like Gigabyte have already released them for 250-500GB.

But I repeat, people do not need a rewriting resource, people are more and more worried about the safety of data (with an increase in the volume of stored and automatic growth of "cold" data lying on SSD for years without updating the contents of the cells, since not a single cell firmware in the background updates, even if the SSD is powered all the time) for an extended period of time. And the capacity. Everyone needs devices from 10TB and above, cheap, because these are the modern requirements for the preservation of personal data. The volume swells constantly.

[vertigo]

While I agree prices haven't been dropping as fast as it seems they should, you can't at all honestly and realistically claim they're not dropping, and fairly significantly. Only a few years ago, I paid $400 for a 1TB 970 EVO drive. Last month, I paid ~$130 for a 1TB SK hynix, which is a far superior drive. That's quite a big difference. I really wanted 2TB, but there were only a couple options and they were both almost $400, so I'll agree we definitely need more, faster advancement in SSDs, but it hasn't exactly been stagnant. Nor have HDDs, which now cost ~$13-16/TB and come in capacities up to 14TB (or larger?), which is a pretty big improvement from when I paid $140-150 for 4TB drives ($35-37.5/TB) 7 years ago. So that's an almost 3x price decrease per TB with a simultaneous ~3x increase in capacity since 2013, yet you claim there's been no price progress since 2011. I get wanting/needing more, and I'm also often frustrated by the cost and size limits, but let's be honest about the situation.

And SSDs are absolutely not what anyone except people with far too much money should be using for long-term/cold storage. Data archiving doesn't require the speed, and cheaper platter drives are much better suited for the task.

As for storing all those HD and UHD videos, yes, they take a lot of space, but video encoding has come a long way in the past several years, as has the processing power and hardware optimizations for performing it, and videos can be shrunk to much more manageable sizes with little to no noticeable degradation in relatively little time. Even just 10 years ago, I would have to have my computer spend anywhere from 1-2x the length of a video in order to get a quality encode. Now, it takes a small fraction of that time and results in an even smaller file. So if storage is really that much of a problem, maybe consider going that route.

[_MT_]

The most interesting thing is that with this technology it is already possible to make an SLC SSD with a capacity of 250-1TB, which is quite cheap with 100k rewrite cycles. However, some manufacturers like Gigabyte have already released them for 250-500GB.

Is SLC still a thing? I thought it's a niche now (industrial, embedded, that sort of thing). With even enterprise storage having moved on.

If you want archival, then how about archival grade optical discs? Well, it's not exactly cheap, but they can survive a lot longer than 20 years. I think M-Disc has a 1000 year product. It's not an online storage unless you buy a library ("jukebox"; very expensive). But it's great for true archival. Personally, I find home video to be a waste of space and time. I mean, who watches it? Sure, there might be some truly exceptional moments worth preserving for decades but most are not. Expensive storage forces you to rationalize what you want to store. These days with streaming services so prevalent, most people shouldn't need that much storage. In the olden days when people bought DVDs and ripped them to their own home servers, you blew through storage like there is no tomorrow.

[_MT_]

Only a few years ago, I paid $400 for a 1TB 970 EVO drive. Last month, I paid ~$130 for a 1TB SK hynix, which is a far superior drive. That's quite a big difference. I really wanted 2TB, but there were only a couple options and they were both almost $400, so I'll agree we definitely need more, faster advancement in SSDs, but it hasn't exactly been stagnant. Nor have HDDs, which now cost ~$13-16/TB and come in capacities up to 14TB (or larger?), which is a pretty big improvement from when I paid $140-150 for 4TB drives ($35-37.5/TB) 7 years ago. So that's an almost 3x price decrease per TB with a simultaneous ~3x increase in capacity since 2013, yet you claim there's been no price progress since 2011. I get wanting/needing more, and I'm also often frustrated by the cost and size limits, but let's be honest about the situation.

Which SK Hynix is far superior to the 970 Evo? Sure, it's sequential write speed isn't anywhere close to the best there is. But if that bothers you, Evo Plus is just about 12 % more expensive, at least around here. I don't really care for Samsung as a brand but they're one of few brands of consumer SSDs that I trust to deliver a consistent product. Most of the players in this field switch flash and controllers around as it suits them so you can never be sure what you're getting. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone in the country sells SK Hynix SSDs (I have been looking around for the P31 to test). 2 TB 970 Evo Plus is among the cheaper 2 TB drives in my neck of the woods, retailing for around €300. Cheaper than many questionable brands, in my opinion, like ADATA. Not much more expensive than 665p from Intel (maybe 20 %).

There are 18 TB drives on the market. Unfortunately, the price is more like €40 per TB around here. The 18 TB drives are around €600 and they offer the best price per TB. Although, my favourite shop has a sale on them now for under €500 - cheaper then equivalent 14 TB drives. I'm considering only 24/7 rated drives. But even if I look at the cheapest 14, 10 or 4 TB drives, they're more like €23-25.

[vertigo]

Is SLC still a thing? I thought it's a niche now (industrial, embedded, that sort of thing). With even enterprise storage having moved on.

If you want archival, then how about archival grade optical discs? Well, it's not exactly cheap, but they can survive a lot longer than 20 years. I think M-Disc has a 1000 year product. It's not an online storage unless you buy a library ("jukebox"; very expensive). But it's great for true archival. Personally, I find home video to be a waste of space and time. I mean, who watches it? Sure, there might be some truly exceptional moments worth preserving for decades but most are not. Expensive storage forces you to rationalize what you want to store. These days with streaming services so prevalent, most people shouldn't need that much storage. In the olden days when people bought DVDs and ripped them to their own home servers, you blew through storage like there is no tomorrow.

Not sure about SLC. I primarily look at MLC or TLC, but QLC is perfectly fine for most people. People get all worked up over the lower lifespans, but most people, at least those that would even be considering them, would take a decade to go through their TBW.

As for optical discs, I used to do that, but not only is it more expensive than HDD space, but you get coasters, which drives up the cost, not to mention the time of swapping discs out, burning, swapping out, burning, ad nauseum, and trying to maximize their use by figuring out what to burn to what discs so you use as much of the disc as possible, instead of only using 80% because you don't have a file small enough to fill it. And finally, you can't reuse them, which unless you're doing true archiving, is a drawback. If you're archiving data that either occasionally changes or goes obsolete or whatever, it's nice to be able to change it as needed. Discs are probably fine for certain things, especially smaller amounts of data, but when you're talking large amounts and/or large files, they're not ideal.

The SK hynix I have is the P31 Gold. I looked at several benchmarks and it's currently one of the top performers both in speed and efficiency, which was particularly important because I'm using it in a laptop. I made a mistake in my earlier post, it was the 960 EVO I bought a few years ago (970 wasn't out yet), so the SK hynix is far better than it, but it is actually better than the 970 as well. And the PRO is much more expensive, I'm pretty sure more than 12%. I typically just buy a Samsung whenever I need an SSD, because, like you, I see them as a brand that delivers consistent quality (for SSDs, I hate Samsung for pretty much everything else), but I was first turned off of them by the large number of Amazon reviews saying people received a smaller or entirely different drive, where someone else had bought it, swapped it out, and returned it. And Amazon and Samsung were largely taking the stance of not believing them and doing nothing, despite the fact there were a very large number of people all saying the same thing. I just didn't want to risk it, nor did I want to support a company doing that.

So I started looking at others, and was about to go with the ADATA XPG until I found they did exactly as you said and switched out the controller after getting a bunch of good reviews on Amazon and review sites. I was leaning toward the WD SN750, but I felt they were asking too much for it, both on its own and, especially, compared to the 970, as they were asking for as much or more despite it being a mostly inferior drive based on all the reviews I looked at. And then I learned about the P31, and the more I looked into it, the more impressed I became. And SK Hynix is a big name in memory, just not on the consumer side. As I'm sure you know, they make a lot of the chips used by other manufacturers. So it's not like they're some unknown, unproven brand. Unfortunately, the only place I could find it was Amazon, though that's becoming the norm for many products due to their monopoly, so I had to buy it there. The only downside is that it's only available as 1TB, so I had to sacrifice space for a better price and better product. Hopefully they'll release their 2TB Platinum version before long and I can swap it out and either put the Gold in my desktop or use it as an external drive.

I always get drives when Best Buy and others do sales on the WD external ones, as those are cheaper than buying internal ones oddly enough. They're just Reds or Whites (which the general consensus is are also Reds) in an enclosure, and you can pull them out (shuck them) and use them as an internal. But I like to buy in increments of 4TB, so I prefer not getting 14 or 18. This is because when I bought 8TB drives, I could use my old 4's to back them up, 2 each, and if/when I switch to 12 or 16, I can use 3-4 4's or an 8 and a 4 or two 8's to back those up. Just works out better, and allows me to keep drives in use longer and minimize how many new ones I have to buy, by using the old ones as their backups instead of buying double the new ones to use them for the backups.

It sounds like it's not really an issue of HDD pricing but of regional pricing on them. The companies are making and selling them at better prices than ever, but clearly not everywhere. Not sure if they're only able to offer the prices they do here because they make up for it by selling so high in other places, or if it's due to tariffs or other factors, or just buying power of retailers here. So are prices stagnant there over the past several years, or has the price/TB come down a lot but it's just still high, and it was even higher before?

[_MT_]

Not sure about SLC. I primarily look at MLC or TLC, but QLC is perfectly fine for most people. People get all worked up over the lower lifespans, but most people, at least those that would even be considering them, would take a decade to go through their TBW.

For consumers, QLC is indeed typically perfectly fine. When consumers store bulk data, it's typically largely static. When it sits there for months on end, it's not going to wear out the drive. In this scenario, MTBF is more important.

For example, I use 870 QVO for bulk storage. I thought about getting PM883 with much better endurance (I think it's 4x higher), but it just wasn't worth it (it was about 50 % more expensive, I just don't need any more endurance). Coincidentally, my favourite store now sells 7,68 TB PM883 almost as cheap as 8 TB 870 QVO.

It's when you work with a lot of dynamic data that you need to think things through.

[_MT_]

As for optical discs, I used to do that, but not only is it more expensive than HDD space, but you get coasters, which drives up the cost, not to mention the time of swapping discs out, burning, swapping out, burning, ad nauseum, and trying to maximize their use by figuring out what to burn to what discs so you use as much of the disc as possible, instead of only using 80% because you don't have a file small enough to fill it. And finally, you can't reuse them, which unless you're doing true archiving, is a drawback. If you're archiving data that either occasionally changes or goes obsolete or whatever, it's nice to be able to change it as needed. Discs are probably fine for certain things, especially smaller amounts of data, but when you're talking large amounts and/or large files, they're not ideal.

When you compare prices, you have to realize that they have diametrically different lifespans. I think 100 GB Blu-Ray M-Dics is about €6-8. So, you're looking at 60-80 per TB. If I go with €80 and 80 % utilization, it's €100 per TB. But it's going to outlast you. Even if you consider that storage keeps getting cheaper, how many hard drives will it take to get you to 50 years. And how many if you try to "insure" yourself against drive failure. If you start getting into RAID or multiple copies, the cost equation is going to look very different. The main threat to M-Dics is physical destruction. Your biggest worry should probably be having a drive that can read the thing in the future. Not the survival of the data. Unless your house burns down (you can have a fire resistant safe - good for important documents as well) or a child stuffs them into a shredder, they will probably survive. No moving parts, no electronics to fail.

I think that video in particular is a good application for optical discs. It's static content. You can keep clips you really like online. And if you want to watch something else once in a blue moon, you can just pull the disc out and put it into a player. But what do I know. As I said, I find it a waste of time. Perhaps those people want to have everything at their fingertips. And then you want a server, probably a RAID, perhaps a couple backups. Not cheap. And as you said, you'll probably go with HDD, not SSD. SSD only for caching.

For regular consumers, I think a social network that allows you to upload video for free and share it in private might be the best compromise. It certainly has drawbacks. But I don't think a typical consumer is even aware of them. They have it available all the time on any device, there is no direct payment for space they use. And it might just survive on the Internet for ever.

[_MT_]

The SK hynix I have is the P31 Gold. I looked at several benchmarks and it's currently one of the top performers both in speed and efficiency, which was particularly important because I'm using it in a laptop. I made a mistake in my earlier post, it was the 960 EVO I bought a few years ago (970 wasn't out yet), so the SK hynix is far better than it, but it is actually better than the 970 as well. And the PRO is much more expensive, I'm pretty sure more than 12%. I typically just buy a Samsung whenever I need an SSD, because, like you, I see them as a brand that delivers consistent quality (for SSDs, I hate Samsung for pretty much everything else), but I was first turned off of them by the large number of Amazon reviews saying people received a smaller or entirely different drive, where someone else had bought it, swapped it out, and returned it. And Amazon and Samsung were largely taking the stance of not believing them and doing nothing, despite the fact there were a very large number of people all saying the same thing. I just didn't want to risk it, nor did I want to support a company doing that.

So I started looking at others, and was about to go with the ADATA XPG until I found they did exactly as you said and switched out the controller after getting a bunch of good reviews on Amazon and review sites. I was leaning toward the WD SN750, but I felt they were asking too much for it, both on its own and, especially, compared to the 970, as they were asking for as much or more despite it being a mostly inferior drive based on all the reviews I looked at. And then I learned about the P31, and the more I looked into it, the more impressed I became. And SK Hynix is a big name in memory, just not on the consumer side. As I'm sure you know, they make a lot of the chips used by other manufacturers. So it's not like they're some unknown, unproven brand. Unfortunately, the only place I could find it was Amazon, though that's becoming the norm for many products due to their monopoly, so I had to buy it there. The only downside is that it's only available as 1TB, so I had to sacrifice space for a better price and better product. Hopefully they'll release their 2TB Platinum version before long and I can swap it out and either put the Gold in my desktop or use it as an external drive.

I always get drives when Best Buy and others do sales on the WD external ones, as those are cheaper than buying internal ones oddly enough. They're just Reds or Whites (which the general consensus is are also Reds) in an enclosure, and you can pull them out (shuck them) and use them as an internal. But I like to buy in increments of 4TB, so I prefer not getting 14 or 18. This is because when I bought 8TB drives, I could use my old 4's to back them up, 2 each, and if/when I switch to 12 or 16, I can use 3-4 4's or an 8 and a 4 or two 8's to back those up. Just works out better, and allows me to keep drives in use longer and minimize how many new ones I have to buy, by using the old ones as their backups instead of buying double the new ones to use them for the backups.

It sounds like it's not really an issue of HDD pricing but of regional pricing on them. The companies are making and selling them at better prices than ever, but clearly not everywhere. Not sure if they're only able to offer the prices they do here because they make up for it by selling so high in other places, or if it's due to tariffs or other factors, or just buying power of retailers here. So are prices stagnant there over the past several years, or has the price/TB come down a lot but it's just still high, and it was even higher before?

Yes, the P31 is praised for it's efficiency and commonly recommended for laptops. I wrote Evo Plus, not Pro. Evo Plus is actually rated faster than Pro (even in random I/O). At least here, Evo Plus is priced very close to Evo. The main benefit of 970 Pro is twice the endurance. Which is not true for 980 Pro. It has twice the sequential speed of 970 Evo, but the same endurance. 970 Pro only makes sense if you need the endurance but not capacity or speed.

I think WD has also done this. Perhaps not in their black line, I don't know. It's not necessarily intentional scam. It can happen because of supply problems. Or they might intend it from the beginning to diversify their supply chain. Samsung makes both controllers and NAND. They're in a unique position. I'm not sure, perhaps Intel was the only other company in that position (but only some drives had their own controllers). In the consumer space, they typically reserve the right to change whatever they want. Without proper notification, without changing product names or numbers. Essentially, companies treat consumers like they shouldn't care about such things. Which is hypocritical beyond belief - on one hand, marketing feeds people technical parameters, on the other hand, we shouldn't care if those parameters suddenly change. In the enterprise or industrial worlds, you can find "locked BOM" products where manufacturer wows not to do such things. They can change components of no consequence (like resistors), but they can't touch anything that would affect performance.

I try to avoid Amazon like the plague it is. Fortunately, they often don't have very good prices. I prefer smaller, local stores that are much better for our economy. And employees.

Yes, it seems the only place I could get P31 is German Amazon. But they refuse to ship it outside of Germany. So, even if I was inclined to do business with them, they don't want it. And it's not like I'm going to ask a friend in Germany to buy it for me. If SK Hynix don't want my business, I will happily give it to somebody else. I guess Amazon UK would work as well and they might even be willing to ship (has happened before), but after UK left the single market, they really stopped existing for me as far as e-commerce is concerned. Especially now in the early stages with a huge mess around taxes and duties. I would rather import from Australia than UK right now, it's that screwed up.

It's partly taxes. In the olden days, you could use $1 = €1 as a rule of thumb because €1 was about $1.3. And that would roughly cover VAT and tariffs/ duties. With current exchange rates, it doesn't work out. It, however, doesn't explain the entire difference. Different companies in general behave differently. Often, when you subtract taxes, products here are cheaper than in the US. And that's before you account for stricter laws when it comes to consumer protection or recycling. It can also be a question of not all the lines being available. In general, the weakness of the EU is that companies don't treat us as a single, big market. I guess it's partly because of language barriers. Retail chains are often more local. There can be significant differences in prices within EU. Even with very expensive products like cars (I have seen even crazy differences like 30 % right across a border). And so we can't truly leverage our size as the whole EU.

I mostly buy through my company where I have discounts and can reclaim VAT so I'm fuzzy on retail prices (I don't buy privately often). But I looked at mid-term historical data (2016 - 2021) for a few drives. It looks like there was a significant fall in prices around 2017 (often about a third down, in exceptional cases even a half). Quite a few drives show rise in prices around 2019-2020, some starting in 2018 already. Some drives sell now for close to a third compared to mid-2016 (meaning down two thirds). But many sell now barely any cheaper (10 % or even less) than in Q1 2018 (which is the case for internal WD Red, both 8 and 4 TB). Others are maybe 20-30 % cheaper compared to 2018. I wouldn't say prices are stagnant. But I would have to look at the bigger picture. There were shortages which drove prices up short term. I don't recall the time frames any more. That might be why 2017 saw such a drop. In particular, the 4 TB WD Red is 25-30 % down compared to mid-2014 (5-10 % down compared to mid-2018).

[_MT_]

I think 100 GB Blu-Ray M-Dics is about €6-8. So, you're looking at 60-80 per TB. If I go with €80 and 80 % utilization, it's €100 per TB. But it's going to outlast you.

The rub is that €100/ TB is SSD territory. That's where the 870 QVO lies. Without any moving parts to fail.

[vertigo]

When you compare prices, you have to realize that they have diametrically different lifespans. I think 100 GB Blu-Ray M-Dics is about €6-8. So, you're looking at 60-80 per TB. If I go with €80 and 80 % utilization, it's €100 per TB. But it's going to outlast you. Even if you consider that storage keeps getting cheaper, how many hard drives will it take to get you to 50 years. And how many if you try to "insure" yourself against drive failure. If you start getting into RAID or multiple copies, the cost equation is going to look very different. The main threat to M-Dics is physical destruction. Your biggest worry should probably be having a drive that can read the thing in the future. Not the survival of the data. Unless your house burns down (you can have a fire resistant safe - good for important documents as well) or a child stuffs them into a shredder, they will probably survive. No moving parts, no electronics to fail.

I think that video in particular is a good application for optical discs. It's static content. You can keep clips you really like online. And if you want to watch something else once in a blue moon, you can just pull the disc out and put it into a player. But what do I know. As I said, I find it a waste of time. Perhaps those people want to have everything at their fingertips. And then you want a server, probably a RAID, perhaps a couple backups. Not cheap. And as you said, you'll probably go with HDD, not SSD. SSD only for caching.

For regular consumers, I think a social network that allows you to upload video for free and share it in private might be the best compromise. It certainly has drawbacks. But I don't think a typical consumer is even aware of them. They have it available all the time on any device, there is no direct payment for space they use. And it might just survive on the Internet for ever.

Again, it largely depends on what you're storing. If it's home videos, they're not really going to change, you want them to outlive you, and it's not that much data. If it's movies and TV shows, you can't upload it online, it's a significantly larger amount of data, so optical discs really do become much, much more expensive, to the point it's probably cheaper to actually buy ever-increasingly large hard drives and transfer stuff to them over time, especially if you continue using the older ones for backup, if you even need backups since there's also the original discs, and I don't care if it outlives me. Then there's the significantly improved ease of use over discs, which is worth something. And finally, unlike a home video which you will likely never want to alter or get rid of, it's quite likely you will in the case of movies and TV shows. For example, when I used discs years ago--and so I speak from experience when I say, IMO, hard drives are cheaper and far superior--I was using them for DVD movies. These days, I will rarely even watch a movie in that quality, and prefer 1080p (no real need for 4K at least, because that would be really expensive storage-wise), so all those discs are useless. It does me no good that they'll last for decades, because I'll likely never use them. Plus, as you mentioned, a server is preferable, so instead of having to find a disc and put it in, I just scroll through everything on something like Kodi, find something to watch, and within a second it's playing. And no worries about the discs being scratched. But then, I'm not talking true archiving, but my situation is much more common for people using TBs of storage. People just archiving documents, home videos, etc, aren't typically going to need more than a few TBs, if that.

[vertigo]

Yes, the P31 is praised for it's efficiency and commonly recommended for laptops. I wrote Evo Plus, not Pro. Evo Plus is actually rated faster than Pro (even in random I/O). At least here, Evo Plus is priced very close to Evo. The main benefit of 970 Pro is twice the endurance. Which is not true for 980 Pro. It has twice the sequential speed of 970 Evo, but the same endurance. 970 Pro only makes sense if you need the endurance but not capacity or speed.

I think WD has also done this. Perhaps not in their black line, I don't know. It's not necessarily intentional scam. It can happen because of supply problems. Or they might intend it from the beginning to diversify their supply chain. Samsung makes both controllers and NAND. They're in a unique position. I'm not sure, perhaps Intel was the only other company in that position (but only some drives had their own controllers). In the consumer space, they typically reserve the right to change whatever they want. Without proper notification, without changing product names or numbers. Essentially, companies treat consumers like they shouldn't care about such things. Which is hypocritical beyond belief - on one hand, marketing feeds people technical parameters, on the other hand, we shouldn't care if those parameters suddenly change. In the enterprise or industrial worlds, you can find "locked BOM" products where manufacturer wows not to do such things. They can change components of no consequence (like resistors), but they can't touch anything that would affect performance.

I try to avoid Amazon like the plague it is. Fortunately, they often don't have very good prices. I prefer smaller, local stores that are much better for our economy. And employees.

Yes, it seems the only place I could get P31 is German Amazon. But they refuse to ship it outside of Germany. So, even if I was inclined to do business with them, they don't want it. And it's not like I'm going to ask a friend in Germany to buy it for me. If SK Hynix don't want my business, I will happily give it to somebody else. I guess Amazon UK would work as well and they might even be willing to ship (has happened before), but after UK left the single market, they really stopped existing for me as far as e-commerce is concerned. Especially now in the early stages with a huge mess around taxes and duties. I would rather import from Australia than UK right now, it's that screwed up.

It's partly taxes. In the olden days, you could use $1 = €1 as a rule of thumb because €1 was about $1.3. And that would roughly cover VAT and tariffs/ duties. With current exchange rates, it doesn't work out. It, however, doesn't explain the entire difference. Different companies in general behave differently. Often, when you subtract taxes, products here are cheaper than in the US. And that's before you account for stricter laws when it comes to consumer protection or recycling. It can also be a question of not all the lines being available. In general, the weakness of the EU is that companies don't treat us as a single, big market. I guess it's partly because of language barriers. Retail chains are often more local. There can be significant differences in prices within EU. Even with very expensive products like cars (I have seen even crazy differences like 30 % right across a border). And so we can't truly leverage our size as the whole EU.

I mostly buy through my company where I have discounts and can reclaim VAT so I'm fuzzy on retail prices (I don't buy privately often). But I looked at mid-term historical data (2016 - 2021) for a few drives. It looks like there was a significant fall in prices around 2017 (often about a third down, in exceptional cases even a half). Quite a few drives show rise in prices around 2019-2020, some starting in 2018 already. Some drives sell now for close to a third compared to mid-2016 (meaning down two thirds). But many sell now barely any cheaper (10 % or even less) than in Q1 2018 (which is the case for internal WD Red, both 8 and 4 TB). Others are maybe 20-30 % cheaper compared to 2018. I wouldn't say prices are stagnant. But I would have to look at the bigger picture. There were shortages which drove prices up short term. I don't recall the time frames any more. That might be why 2017 saw such a drop. In particular, the 4 TB WD Red is 25-30 % down compared to mid-2014 (5-10 % down compared to mid-2018).
[/quote]

Ah, yeah, I misread that. When I say 970 EVO, I always mean Plus anyways, because it's typically actually cheaper than the non-Plus variant and, of course, better, so there's no reason not to get it over the regular EVO. As for the PRO, IMO the bigger difference isn't the endurance, it's the speed. The EVO uses TLC with an MLC cache IIRC, whereas the PRO uses MLC. So the EVO can more-or-less match the PRO's speeds for short bursts, but once the cache is exhausted, it slows way down, until it recovers and it gets a short burst again, and so on. So if you're regularly transferring very large amounts of data from one to another (because the other drive has to be able to keep up in order to actually benefit from it), it will save a lot of time over the EVO+. But very few people will actually be doing this, much less on a regular basis, and so it's not worth the extra cost, which I suppose could be a reason to see the endurance as the main difference, since despite being the lesser theoretical difference, it's the larger practical one, being the one most people are actually going to see. But even then, probably not, because with the endurance of either, most people will upgrade it long before they reach that point. Even on a QLC drive, the typical user will take 5-6+ years to hit it, and with a TLC or MLC drive, it will probably take a decade or longer. Well before either of those times, you will very likely be able to buy a faster drive with twice the capacity for half the cost.

Yeah, most companies only care about the bottom line, and nothing else. They save money switching to a cheaper controller, so they do it. They might claim it doesn't affect the performance (as ADATA did, but from what I could tell they were full of it with those claims) and maybe even genuinely believe that, or at least believe it's not enough to affect 99% of their consumers, but then they should be transparent about it and let the consumers decide for themselves. The thing is, most SSDs are so fast losing even 20% of their performance due to a component swap probably will go unnoticed except in benchmarks. So if the price is right, and the company is honest, I'd probably not mind. It's the deceitfulness of it that I don't care for, and I'm not going to buy a product from a company that flat-out lies (or withholds the truth) from its customers if I can help it. So I ended up getting an even better drive after doing more research. Hope the money they're saving by swapping controllers was worth the lost sale, not to mention how many other lost sales from others.

I'm the same with Amazon, but it's getting a lot harder. I actually spent half a day driving around to three or four local computer shops looking for something I needed (mSATA-USB enclosure), and none of them had it (and one didn't even know what mSATA was, which made me seriously question their competency). I looked online, but couldn't find one anywhere, except Amazon. And I'm finding this to be more and more common, especially with small electronics. It's very disturbing. I wonder if there's a block on sale of certain technology to your country. It seems strange they wouldn't sell to you, especially since I'm guessing they'll sell other stuff. Seems strange, but can't say I'm surprised.

When I was in Europe about 20 years ago, I noticed electronics in particular seemed more expensive there. I figured over time, as things became more global and with the creation of the EU, it would have improved. But yeah, it sounds like it's largely an issue of buying power, if each country is acting independently in that regard instead of the EU behaving as one large market.

I know there have been fluctuations, mainly spikes, due to things like flooding in the far East which affected production, but that was several years ago. It really sounds like prices are just all over for no real reason for you guys.

[_MT_]

Again, it largely depends on what you're storing...

Sure. The scenario given was home video (as a reason for why people need a lot of storage). As I wrote, when you rip movies, you can blow through storage like crazy. But these days, many people use streaming services and online rentals. So, that scenario should be even more niche than it used to be.

[_MT_]

As for the PRO, IMO the bigger difference isn't the endurance, it's the speed.
...
They might claim it doesn't affect the performance (as ADATA did, but from what I could tell they were full of it with those claims) and maybe even genuinely believe that, or at least believe it's not enough to affect 99% of their consumers, but then they should be transparent about it and let the consumers decide for themselves.
...
I'm the same with Amazon, but it's getting a lot harder. I actually spent half a day driving around to three or four local computer shops looking for something I needed (mSATA-USB enclosure), and none of them had it... I wonder if there's a block on sale of certain technology to your country.
...
But yeah, it sounds like it's largely an issue of buying power, if each country is acting independently in that regard instead of the EU behaving as one large market.

I primarily work with small files. So, it's all about random access for me. Endurance matters to me when it comes to caching, scratch drives, memory swapping, that sort of stuff. To the extent that I even use Optane. In professional settings, some people can generate terabytes of data in a day. And then endurance really matters.

Frankly, SATA is plenty fast for office work. I guess the biggest benefit an ordinary consumer can get from fast NVMe drive is loading in games. They probably don't have a fast enough Internet connection or NAS to see the difference when downloading/ copying. Even their home LAN is probably not fast enough. How many people have 10 GbE or something even better in their home?

Fortunately, around here, all the shops with computers/ electronics worth a dime are on the Internet, they have their e-shops, I can see their inventory across the country, they participate in product comparison sites, so I don't have to go blind. Often, they don't have the part in a store, it's in a warehouse. It can be in a store within hours, but you have to place the order first. We have logistics networks where one store can send a product to a participating, but unrelated store for you to pick up locally that's cheaper than post (great for small stores in small towns). Recently, I was building a PC for a friend, it was a wonderful winter day and so I made a walk out of it (they all happened to be in the same direction). 25 km loop, five stores, under five hours, I did over half of the distance through wooded parks, the rest was mostly in quiet streets. Life is good. :-) I placed orders in the morning and computer was built in the afternoon. They were not easy to get components either, hence why five stores instead of one (among them, 4750G which is currently offered by only one store in the entire country and they had to get it from their supplier as they just sold out their stock before I could place an order).

I think it's the seller who can limit where an item ships. I think it's mainly related to shipping. They're just not interested in dealing with it. Or perhaps they don't want to deal with warranty across border. I have certainly encountered German e-shops that don't ship into all EU countries (not even all Schengen countries).  And they're typically large. The small ones actually tend to be flexible. There are some tax implications for the bigger players (based on volumes delivered into individual countries). We're both in the EU and it's not like I'm buying explosives. :-) There is no legal problem. Amazon DE in general does ship. Funnily enough, I can buy a firearm in Germany and have it shipped home. And on the other hand, there are German e-shop that have language mutations of their website to attract more cross-border business. SK Hynix has, for whatever reason, decided not to. They're new to SSDs and they're probably still in the process of rolling out. I can get RAM from SK Hynix locally so they have distribution channels. It looked like even in Germany, Amazon was the only place that had P31.

It's really not about acting, we get treated that way. And I think languages really play a big part of that. From both sides - it's more difficult to build pan-EU presence, but it's also more difficult for people to shop around the entire EU. It's hard to shop in Spain when you don't know Spanish. And try reaching out to them for help. We've got almost as many official languages as countries. There're many chains that are pan-EU. But not really in consumer electronics. And even pan-EU presence doesn't necessarily mean same prices. I remember a British brand I liked, they set-up a local branch, the British website started redirecting me to a local one, they started refusing fulfilling orders placed with the British one if you managed to get around that geo-IP nonsense. I would happily buy from the local store... if only it wasn't almost twice as expensive as in London. Given how cheap airline tickets were, it was ridiculous. That was an extreme example but it suits many sellers to have EU divided. To have different prices or to even offer different quality in different countries. You can get into a ridiculous situation where you're paying more money for a lower quality. Typically, excuses involve something like differing tastes.