This feels like it could be managed in firmware. It's been well established that many modern SSDs will use a large volume of the NAND in a SLC style mode for p

This feels like it could be managed in firmware. It's been well established that many modern SSDs will use a large volume of the NAND in a SLC style mode for performance reasons, and only switch to MLC/TLC/QLC mode as the available space to do so runs down. I would be curious what effect that has on reliability-- if an individual QLC flash cell goes bad, is it still typically usable if you're using psuedo-SLC coding? To go a bit further, I'm amazed you don't see a drive manufacturer offering an enterprise-client "firmware builder" tool, or at least as a build-to-order service if you're a big enough client. I could see customers that wanted to respec their 1TB drives as, say, 750GB to ensure an abundance of over-capacity for reallocation later, or the YOLO "I'm gonna run the cheapest drives in RAID0" crowd slashing overprovisioning and getting 1050Gb out of the same unit. If you dialed down the capacity low enough, the drive could presumably stay in "use SLC mode only" mode for its entire duration.