Sooo…How much faster (& cheaper) would DRAMless QLC / PLC / HLC / OLC / DLC (no SLC cache) PCIe x2 NVMe SSDs be for this task? Also HDD sounds…

[PianoPlayer88Key]

First question is in the title, see pic(s) below.  BTW, "HLC" = Hexa-Level Cell, "OLC" = Octa-Level Cell, and DLC = "Deca-Level Cell; please correct me if I'm wrong and there are other official terms for those levels.  I'm sure we all know QLC, and I've seen articles mentioning PLC in the last several months.  (I thought about putting "CLC" (Centa-Level cell - 100) in there, but I'm not sure when or if we'll get there, or anticipate the drawbacks would outweigh the benefits long before we get there; also no sense going for "GLC" - Giga-Level Cell - 1 billion.   or "ELC" - Exa-Level Cell, "ZLC" - Zeta, or "YLC" - Yotta.)  BTW as you probably see in the pics, I'm copying between two mechanical hard drives.

 

 

 

Small file copy section / screenshot in spoiler - slowed way down at this point.  (Said 1181 hours remaining, at 814.6 kb/s, after having copied 1.2 of 4.7 TB.

 

Spoiler

 

 

(Also yesterday I was doing another copy operation, and it showed a pretty slow transfer rate (around 248.3 kb/s) with a lengthy time-to-completion - over 1456 hours.)

 

 

 

 

Could those SSDs I asked about be cheaper per TB compared to drives like these, as much as the highlighted tape backup media is cheaper than the highlighted similar-capacity HDDs in the picture (of a magazine ad) in the spoiler below?

Spoiler

Compare the 250MB HDD for $215 vs the 250MB tape for $20, or the 2.1GB HDD for $1850 vs the 2GB tape for $59.  Today, some 8TB HDDs can be had for around $215, and some are quite a bit less.

 

 

 

 

Also, is this considered a "normal" sound for when hard drives are initializing on system bootup?  (Skip to about 0:16.)

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/eQF2Xdi4fDdP1t5D8

 

The drives aren't giving me any issues, no bad sectors, etc.  They've generally made that sound since they were new.  Also when they're being accessed, I periodically hear a clearly-audible tick sound from across the room while I'm doing a mass file copy, like the multi-TB job I have going now.  (I think they're mostly the 8TB or 10TB HGST Deskstar NAS drives making the sounds; I generally don't hear my 4TB and 5TB drives doing that.)

 

At least they're not doing this...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/uZV2t8DvbNyu1F4q9

BTW that fan going crazy is on my video card, it does that on startup now and then.

There's actually 2 clicking HDDs there, the 2nd one can be heard in https://photos.app.goo.gl/LX1x7ZQ1Kt6pN3rR9 without the GPU fan drowning it out.