How SanDisk’s 4TB 2.5″ SSD changes everything

Storage has always been a major limitation of SSDs or solid state drives. However each generation of NAND improvement has contributed to the steady increase of SSD capacities. The question has always been how much storage can you fit inside a 2.5″ drive since that is the conventional form factor for most enterprise drives. SanDisk has a game changing answer in its new 2.5″ 4TB SSD. The SanDisk Optimus MAX SAS SSds have been designed to take the place of existing 10k and 15k RPM spinning 2.5″ hard disk drives, and it does that very well without compromising on either performance or capacity.

There is no denying that SSD capacities have been steadily increasing with each generation of NAND improvements and with newer and newer controllers. But the holy grail has always been how much capacity can you fit into a 2.5″ drive since that is the most commonly used form factor for more enterprise drives nowadays. As such, it wasastonishing to hear that SanDisk was able to cram 4TB of solid state storage into a single 2.5″ drive, which supposedly isn’t the end of SanDisk’s innovation. The SanDisk Optimus MAX SAS SSDs are specifically designed to replace spinning 10k and 15k RPM 2.5″ HDDs and to do it without compromising on performance or capacity, in fact, with the new 4TB drive (if you can afford it) you can actually get far more capacity than with a traditionally 600GB 15K RPM drive. If you go down towards a 10k RPM drive, you can probably get a drive up to 1.2 TB, but even then you’re nowhere near 4TB or anywhere near the IOPS that the SSDs are capable of delivering.