When will we see new standard size for hard drives?

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

we have been using 2.5 inch drive for ssd for 10 yrs+ , but when you open it up, the physical pcb just occupies less than half of the volume. and we are having 1tb capacity on m.2 size, which means they are not utilising the space inside 2.5" box.

 

when would you expect to have new standard size drives?

(i am guessing 2021? available one yr after last am4 roll out )

[Skiiwee29]

it was never about creating a new form factor with 2.5 inch drives. Its more that it was the smallest existing standard so they built around that instead of forcing the rest of the industry, case manufactures specifically, to adapt to them. Almost all cases out there already had support to fit 2.5inch drives and SSDs gave an very very measurable boost in performance so it was only natural that the NAND market conform to that standards, instead of everyone else conforming and supporting what NAND created. 

[Fasauceome]

We're getting to the point where it might not be practical to make smaller drives, human hands are a certain size and minuscule drives would not be so easy to install by hand. M.2 does it for me as a small storage standard personally.

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

4 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

We're getting to the point where it might not be practical to make smaller drives

I was thinking about the wasted space of the case, eg. behind the mobo, usually manufacturers provides 2x2.5" bay for storage, where if you use smaller size you could fit more

[.Apex.]

7 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

I was thinking about the wasted space of the case, eg. behind the mobo, usually manufacturers provides 2x2.5" bay for storage, where if you use smaller size you could fit more

only the low capacity SSD's don't fill the 2.5inch enclosure, but 1TB+ will fill the entire thing

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, _Syn_ said:

only the low capacity SSD's don't fill the 2.5inch enclosure, but 1TB+ will fill the entire thing

The 4tb drives can still be on like 4 flash chips. You need thos 16tb drives to need the full space of flash chips.

 

13 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

I was thinking about the wasted space of the case, eg. behind the mobo, usually manufacturers provides 2x2.5" bay for storage, where if you use smaller size you could fit more

I see hdds just going away in consumer desktops and getting replaced by ssds, I don't see hdds changing, just going away.

[RollinLower]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I see hdds just going away in consumer desktops and getting replaced by ssds, I don't see hdds changing, just going away.

probably what will happen with the 2.5" drives aswell. in the end my guess is that it will become replaced with on board storage solutions like M.2.

[Enderman]

There probably won't be any smaller size.

There's enough room on motherboards to put M.2 slots and everything is much cleaner and simpler without power and data cables going to every drive.

You can't pass 3GBps through a sata cable anyway.

The only way to get high speeds through a cable is through U.2 connection.

If you take a look at U.2 SSDs they definitely do not have any 'free space' inside.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Some of the larger Enterprise SSDs (10-30TB; sadly, those are all SAS rather than SATA) need to use 2.5" cases that are up to 15mm thick instead of the 7mm we are used to seeing so there will be a need for 2.5" for some time to come. 

 

mSATA has been around for a few years and is usually an open PCB (Printed Circuit Board) that's roughly half the size of a 2.5" drive. The power and data connectors look like a shrunken version of standard SATA connectors. Except for small devices, like tablets and thin laptops, mSATA hasn't really caught on much.

 

M.2 B key is probably the most commonly used, smaller form factor for SATA SSDs. M.2 SSDs are currently limited to 2TB.