One of the biggest things plaguing the SSD market is that they just can’t compete against the capacities of spinning hard drives (HDDs). However, this is slowly changing as new advancements in SSD tech have led to larger capacity limits. This opens new doors to products like the new SanDisk 16TB Desk Drive Desktop (external) SSD.
This makes for a huge leap compared to the typical 1-4TB SSDs you find all over the market. Of course, these higher capacities do come with a hefty catch. SSD products have always been more expensive, so the price tag is much higher than the 16TB HDD counterparts, which usually range between $200-$300. But if you are ok with dropping that kind of cash into a massive SSD, you’re in luck, as it will be dropping sometime in the (near?) future.
I had to play with the word “near” since SanDisk didn’t actually say when it plans to launch the new capacity of its Desk Drive series. Currently, the largest and most recent capacity available is 8TB. It carries a price tag of $699 (currently on a temporary sale for $649 at the time of writing this) and offers a transfer rate of up to 1 GB/s (1,000 MB/s).
At this time, SanDisk is referring to it as a proof of concept. So the chance of it launching by the end of this year sounds a bit narrow. Hopefully, we could plan on seeing something next year. Along with a number of SSD solutions as competition will obviously push to get alternatives out there as well. For now, we play the waiting game until SanDisk (and other companies) are willing to release these products into the market.
At least with 8TB SSD options out there, light is shed upon a market dominated by outdated HDD products that suffer when it comes transfer speeds. We just have to work on getting those prices down so that the average consumer could actually afford them. Get them closer to or at the price of HDDs and they would be flying off the shelves. Sadly, we are still likely years away from seeing the various companies playing well together that lead to the development of these products (aka, global supply chain inflation, shortages, etc) . Not to mention increased R&D costs and I assume greed plays a part in it from time to time as well. Eventually, spinning HDDs will be something found in technology-themed museums.
