Samsung is reportedly preparing to wind down its SATA SSD business, and a notable hardware leaker warns the move could have broader implications for consumer storage pricing than Micron’s decision to end its Crucial RAM lineup. The report suggests reduced supply and short-term price pressure may follow as the market adjusts.
  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    As long as they keep selling the flash memory chips to drive makers, what’s the big deal of them dropping the SATA protocol from their consumer devices?

    There are plenty of China-based companies which still make flash memory drives with a SATA interface using Samsung chips and at this point that tech is so mature that there really isn’t any great added value in terms of performance from getting Samsung SATA drives over getting some generic SATA drives with Samsung chips.

    It actually makes some sense that Samsung is focusing their consumer-facing device production in a higher performance protocol which is very well established now and were the device speeds are not constrained by the protocol itself, rather than in a protocol were the maximum speed of the protocol (600 MB/s) is actually what constrains the device performance since the memory chips themselves are capable of more.

    As a consumer, 6 or 7 years ago it definitelly made sense to get a Samsung SATA drive because they were actually some of the fastest in the market, but these days even shitty-shit no-name brand has SATA devices with 580MB/s read speeds (and, if large enough, similar write speeds) which is near the theoretical maximum of SATA3 and M.2 devices supporting PCI4 x16 offer several times the speeds of that.

  • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    Tbh its not a bad call. Used to work somewhere that bought hundreds of 500gb SATA SSDs for laptop upgrades that just… sat on a shelf, because none of the new laptops ordered could even take a SATA drive. Hell, they’re Crucial branded so they’re probably collectable if micron keeps crucial dead for long enough.

    • RamRabbit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      That sucks. They probably could give them out to employees as a little bonus thing. Build a bit of goodwill. Rather than have them sit on a shelf.

      • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        Government. Ain’t nobody want to get caught “stealing” from the government (they’re probably going to be destroyed ten years after they’re completely obsolete). Waste of damn near a hundred terabytes of storage.

        • bthest@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          Government. Ain’t nobody want to get caught “stealing” from the government

          It’s fine as long as you’re rich. Trump and friends are clearing the place out.

        • RamRabbit@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          It would have to be a voluntary thing, not just handed to everyone. “Put your name on this sheet if you want one.”

          • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            10 months ago

            My wife would sign up and she has no idea what a drive is, of any type. If you try to explain it to her she’ll turn her ears off. But she’ll only hear “FREE STUFF!”.

    • xthexder@l.sw0.comEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      I just spent $200 on a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB :/

      I’m finally swapping my main PC to Linux full time and ended up buying an entire new boot drive rather than dealing with shuffling files around to make space.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        I did similar when preparing my wife and I for windows 10 EOL. I went back to Linux on the new drive, my wife to Windows 11. Honestly both have a similar amount of issues (mostly wake from sleep challenges on Linux, although my PC wasn’t great about waking from sleep on Windows to begin with) and most importantly my wife can still play Fortnite and I can have fun trying new stuff out and reveling at how every single game I try just works on Linux whereas 5 years ago it was more of a 50/50 chance whether or not a game would work

      • Valmond@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        I bought exactly that one for my linux box (because I swapped mains to linux and wanted a big boot :-) ), but that was a while back, it’s 280€ now, so $328…

  • calamityjanitor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    I have 4x 6TB HDDs in my NAS. Around 5 years ago I decided to simply replace any dead drives with 6TB ones instead of my previous strategy of slowly upgrading their size. I figured I could swap to 8TB 2.5" SATA SSDs that had just started to exist and would surely only get cheaper in the future…

      • calamityjanitor@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        In my head I thought one could make relatively cheap high capacity in 2.5" SATA form factor by having more NAND chips of lower capacity. You give up speed and PCB space but that’s fine since bandwidth and IOPS are limited by SATA anyway and there’s plenty of space compared to M.2.

        Turns out to not shake out that way, controller ICs that support SATA aren’t coming out any more, and NAND ICs are internally stacked to use up channels while not taking up PCB space.

        There are some enterprise options, but they’re mad expensive.

        • SapphironZA@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          I’ve cracked open a few faulty sata SSDs. Quite a few of the recent models are just 2242 or 2230 m.2 ssd’s with a converter. Even bigger 2TB ones.

  • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    When I built a PC a couple of years ago when I really didn’t need one, then over specced it just because. I’m very happy right now as the prices are insane, feel like I could sell the PC for more than it cost me which mental.

    • Randelung@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      Don’t worry, you can use AI on anything that can access the internet! No need to ever have personal (let alone private) thoughts - I’m sorry, data - again.

      MS has been trying to get you to give up your personal computer for years. Do everything in the cloud, please! Even gaming with Stadia! And now they’re getting their wish. All it took was running the entire global economy.

  • nao@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    Why would ending sata ssd production create price pressure for m2 ssds? If anything, they should be able to produce more of those.

    • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      M.2 is just a connector, you can run SATA over M.2. But you’re right, freeing up 2.5" production for M.2 should reduce price pressure.

    • Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      Discontinuing outdated tech has nothing to do with AI. SATA SSDs need to be retired. NVME is superior and widely available.

      • The_Decryptor@aussie.zoneEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        Especially since you can get M.2 to SATA adapters, so people stuck with SATA only motherboards can still upgrade their storage.

        Literally the same deal when companies stopped making IDE drives, people just used SATA to IDE adapters instead.

        • FrederikNJS@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          Do you know of any m.2 to SATA adapters that support NVMe? Or are these only for Sata M.2s?

          • The_Decryptor@aussie.zoneEnglish
            0·
            10 months ago

            Man, it sure would be helpful for my argument if I could.

            I went back and checked the ones I was looking at, very helpful fine print stating “not for NVEM ssds”, so they all only work with mSATA M.2 SSDs, hell of a let down.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      If you look at the top sellers, SATA SSDs still occupy a few of those spots, including 3rd place.

      There is still huge demand for SATA SSDs.

    • jj4211@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      The issue is that as dumb as it is, SATA ssds are still a big part of the consumer market.

      Even though nvme isn’t appreciably more expensive to make, it’s still used as a “premium” product., and SATA is a product tier to capture budget market whole protecting their more premium market.

      This move is a clear symptom of the real issue. Manufacturers shifting as much capacity as possible towards big datacenter buildouts at the expense of starving every other market for these products. Trillions of dollars that will pay whatever it takes competing with a more rational market

    • magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      They’re still making mobos with SATA. Not everyone uses laptops.

      Most reasonably priced power edges on eBay don’t have NVMe sleds yet. Some of us selfhost, y’know…