You may have wondered why HDDs have more capacity than SSDs. Currently we can find units Hard disk up to 18 TB, but the SSD is it so limited to 4 TB. Well, the reasons for these capacity limitations on SSDsIt has a lot to do with its characteristics.
There are several reasons why there is such a difference in capacity, but one of the most important is the size of the units. It should also be borne in mind that hard drives have been on the market for a long time and until recently the capacity did not exceed 8TB.
SSDs have two problems: size and technology
We’re not going to go over all the advantages that SSDs have over HDDs, which they win in almost everything. There is only one thing SSD is worse than HDD: capacity. The big problem with solid-state hard drives is that their capacity is less. Even the price of a 1 TB SSD it could be him twice as expensive one Hard disk or more.
Well, the part that makes them better than hard drives, like memory chipsson your big problem. SSD memory chips are limited by manufacturing techniques. The number of layers and number of bits per cell they set the current technical capacity limit for SSDs. But this is not the only factor that limits them, since temperature and space are two other factors.
SSDs have major temperature issues, especially on M.2 PCIe drives (those that mount on the motherboard). Also, this Format of these storage units severely limits capacity.
There is more to this. The controllers are another limitation, because in SSDs they must have cellular wear, which does not occur in HDDs. Writing to the same area all the time can excessively wear down the SSD and damage it. In fact, in the hard disk, this does not happen, because it is just randomly written in the empty spaces. What wears out on hard drives is the magnetic read/write arm, and there’s no way to fix the problem.
Do these problems have a solution?
Well, in the short to medium term, it looks like there won’t be any changes. We’ll see HDDs in the next few years with capacities over 18TB, but for now SSDs seem stuck at 4TB. Although there are manufacturers talk about M.2 up to 8TBthe prices would be ridiculously high.
It should be kept in mind that the M.2 formats of SSDs greatly limit the possibilities. The market is moving towards a “disappearance” of 2.5-inch SATA interface SSDs, which are totally obsolete. This not only limits the size of these hard drives, but also the significant temperature problems, which with PCIe 5.0 will go further.
One could even say that manufacturers work more on improving technology to reduce prices than on increasing capacity. In any case, M.2 SSDs, although they have less capacity than HDDs and are technically more expensive, the speeds they offer compensate.
