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QLC is complete trash and should never be used outside of a WORM architecture in a larger pool. That they are trying to force it on consumers is criminal. Same
by shadilay 5y ago
QLC is complete trash and should never be used outside of a WORM architecture in a larger pool. That they are trying to force it on consumers is criminal. Same with SMR.
- gruez 5y ago>QLC is complete trash and should never be used outside of a WORM architecture in a larger pool. Not everyone is a creator editing/rendering 4k videos. For the typical surfer/office worker/gamer QLC drives are fine because they rarely need to dump 50+GB of writes at a time. What you're suggesting is basically "ban all atom processors because they're criminally slow!"
- sp332 5y agoI think they were complaining about reliability. QLC cells can't handle as many writes before failing.
- PixelOfDeath 5y agoQLC also has shitty slow write speed. (Slower then linear writes on spinning rust!) So consumer SSDs now depend on a limited dynamic part of flash being used as SLC to cache writes. Just that this dynamic part mostly gets smaller the fuller the device is. And as soon as you do anything with large writes you will hit a brick wall of slowness, on full devices sooner then on empty ones.
- Dylan16807 5y agoThe minimum size of the cache doesn't have to be bad. And I bet the vast majority of people basically never do >10GB writes at >200MB/s.
- PixelOfDeath 5y agoYes many consumers will be fine with this drivers. But the information about the limited write cache never gets mentioned by the manufacturers. So people that actually need to write large amounts of data from time to time, fall into a performance trap.
- Dylan16807 5y agoQLC drives, reasonably designed, can meet most consumer endurance needs.
- gruez 5y agoSamsung 980 is rated for 0.3 DWPD. For a 250 GB drive that's 75GB per day. I have a hard time imaging what type of workloads would cause the target audience (ie. surfers/office workers/gamers) would reach that limit on a consistent basis.
- shadilay 5y agoIt's worse than that. Most people do use their drives so it runs out of SLC cache and most QLC drives are low end and don't come with DRAM. The systems they're put in are usually equally low end with low system RAM so the OS is going to page a lot. QLC has atrocious write endurance so these devices are going to eventually run out and either die or go RO. QLC devices in consumer electronics are essentially just ewaste and waste wafers. SLC->PLC is a case of diminishing returns in terms of storage/area. I do actually think we need to attach warning labels for QLC drives/devices. Same for SMR HDD's.
- PixelOfDeath 5y agoCurrent consumer QLC devices still do very well in read speed and especially latency. The latency often is better then on older enterprise SSDs. Only device managed SMR is terrible. Host managed SMR is fine for data-hording if the savings in size/price are forwarded.
- shadilay 5y ago>Host managed SMR is fine for data-hording if the savings in size/price are forwarded. Exactly. When you architect your tiered data storage solution to take advantage of technologies such as SMR/QLC it works great. This is absolutely not the case in consumer applications. Consumers will use QLC for their boot drives and fill their NAS boxes with SMR drives and have a horrible experience.
- Dylan16807 5y ago> Host managed SMR is fine for data-hording if the savings in size/price are forwarded. I'll believe it when I see it, though. Unless you're trying to cram more data into a 2.5 inch drive, there seems to be zero upside to getting an SMR drive. They're priced about the same per byte despite "25% density improvements", and the high capacity 3.5 inch models on the market don't use it.
- PixelOfDeath 5y ago> and the high capacity 3.5 inch models on the market don't use it. Sure they do. WD sold device managed SMR 3.5 disks without telling anyone. And then people noticed because of absolutely terrible raid re-silvering performance. The consumer market is absolute trash for SMR devices, all the disadvantages with no benefit. But you can be sure that the enterprise sector gets host managed SMR drives at a better size/price ratio.
- Dylan16807 5y agoWhat's your definition of "high capacity"? The biggest SMR drives I can buy are 6TB or 8TB. The biggest non-SMR drive I can buy is 18TB.