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posted by n1 on Tuesday July 07 2015, @10:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the always-more-data-to-store dept.

Big things can come in small packages. According to Computerworld, Samsung has released the world's first 2 TB consumer SSDs:

Samsung today announced what it is calling the first multi-terabyte consumer solid-state drive (SSD), which will offer 2TB of capacity in a 2.5-in. form factor for laptops and desktops.

[...] The 850 Pro is designed for power users and client PCs that may need higher performance with up to 550MBps sequential read and 520MBps sequential write rates and up to 100,000 random I/Os per second (IOPS). The 850 EVO SSD has slightly lower performance with 540MBps and 520MBps sequential read/write rates and up to 90,000 random IOPS.

The 2TB model of the 850 Pro will retail for $999.99 and the 850 EVO will sell for $799.99.

The 1TB EVO SSD will retail for $399; the 500GB for $179; the 250GB for $99 and the 120GB for $69. The 1TB 850 Pro will retail for $499; the 512GB model for $259; the 256GB model for $144.99 and the 128GB model for $99.

[...] Samsung guarantees the 2TB 850 Pro for 10 years or 300 terabytes written (TBW), and the 2TB 850 EVO for five years or 150 TBW.

To put that in perspective, there are approximately 7 billion people on earth. One of these drives has sufficient space to keep about 285 bytes of information on every single person on the planet! Put another way, that is over 6 KB for every single person in the USA.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2015, @03:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2015, @03:12PM (#206136)

    > Encryption is already used on every modern ssd since repeated patterns are bad for data retention. It's just the master key is blank.

    I don't believe you. If that were true then all modern SSDs would expose that interface to the users so that they could use non-blank master keys. I don't even believe you that "repeated patterns are bad for data retention." You are encourage to provide reputable 3rd party support for your claims.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by WillR on Tuesday July 07 2015, @03:36PM

    by WillR (2012) on Tuesday July 07 2015, @03:36PM (#206143)

    If that were true then all modern SSDs would expose that interface to the users so that they could use non-blank master keys.

    Um.... No.

    "Exposing this hardware feature would cost X more hours of contract dev time, so we left it hidden" is very much a thing. The things your average cheap home router can do when it isn't saddled with firmware written by the lowest bidder, working to a spec designed by marketing drones to preserve sales of high-margin "enterprise" devices would shock and appall you.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2015, @09:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2015, @09:01PM (#206219)

      > "Exposing this hardware feature would cost X more hours of contract dev time, so we left it hidden" is very much a thing.

      That's only plausible if you ignore the fact that full-disk encryption is a very marketable feature. Nowadays everybody wants their disks encrypted, stuff like HIPAA mandates it for healthcare businesses, regular people don't want their data falling into the wrong hands if their laptop gets stolen.

      Note that you did not provide any proof of the OP's claims.

  • (Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Tuesday July 07 2015, @05:57PM

    by Kilo110 (2853) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 07 2015, @05:57PM (#206180)

    Wow, a little civility goes a long way. You are encouraged to not sound like an ass when conversing with others.

    Anyway...

    Every mlc SSD uses some form of data randomization. Encryption is a common way to achieve that. Enjoy http://soc.yonsei.ac.kr/Abstract/International_journal/pdf/106_Data%20Randomization%20Scheme%20for%20Endurance%20Enhancement%20and%20Interference%20Mitigation%20of%20Multilevel%20Flash%20Memory%20Devices.pdf [yonsei.ac.kr]

    Also, as the other reply said, adding that feature costs money to develop so not every product will have it. I use a crucial m500 which supports eDrive on my bitlocker windows laptop. eDrive is a MS implementation of changing the master key. So I get instant "encryption" times with zero performance loss.

    And yes, it's very common for potential features to be omitted due to time and cost constraints.

    • (Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2015, @09:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2015, @09:20PM (#206226)

      > Wow, a little civility goes a long way. You are encouraged to not sound like an ass when conversing with others.

      Whose the bigger ass, the guy makes a bullshit claim or the guy who calls them on their bullshit?
      You bluntly asserted a falsehood, you've got no standing to whine about being bluntly challenged.

      Actual working link to the cited paper, [etri.re.kr] thank you very much.

      Cited paper says absolutely nothing about encryption at all.

      > I use a crucial m500...

      Me too! Twinsies!

      > And yes, it's very common for potential features to be omitted due to time and cost constraints.

      And as I said in response - full-disk encryption is a very marketable attribute, the marginal cost of exposing it to the BIOS using the standardized SATA command-set is tiny compared to the increased value in the marketplace making it a no-brainer. Perhaps not on the first firmware revision in the rush to market, but any update afterwards would certainly contain it. Citing another soylent post that itself contains no citations is not even close to a "reputable 3rd party support."

      • (Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Wednesday July 08 2015, @03:39PM

        by Kilo110 (2853) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 08 2015, @03:39PM (#206484)

        Easily the latter as you are perfectly capable of refuting a claim without being an ass. Sorry bro, you're being an unnecessary asshole and trying to justify your attitude by blaming my supposedly incorrect statement doesn't change that. Learn some social skills. I hope you know how to behave in public as there are more penalties for that behavior in that realm than online.

        I said patterns are bad. You said I was wrong. I provided a paper to show I'm right when I said patterns are bad. Encryption is one way to break up patterns and it has other benefits too. Compression is another method. There are others, one such was outlined in the paper I linked.

        And who knows why companies don't show the feature. Maybe it's product and market segmentation (enterprise drives get it but consumer drives don't). Maybe some idiot somewhere in management or accounting decided not to add it to save a few bucks. Samsung disks got firmware updates adding edrive to many ssd 1-2 years ago. More companies are coming around to it. The feature exists but often isn't given to the user. The world isn't ideal. Get over it.

    • (Score: 2) by hankwang on Wednesday July 08 2015, @06:59AM

      by hankwang (100) on Wednesday July 08 2015, @06:59AM (#206364) Homepage

      "every mlc SSD uses some form of data randomization. Encryption is a common way to achieve that."

      Encryption is not a common way to achieve that; it's an expensive way. The paper you cited (link provided by the helpful AC) talks of an 8-bit pseudorandom generator, presumably with a period of 255. A decent encryption (AES) will require vastly more silicon to deal with 500 MB/s throughput.

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday July 08 2015, @08:22AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday July 08 2015, @08:22AM (#206386) Journal
    Using encryption for data randomisation has far weaker security properties than advertising it. If they advertise it as a security feature then there's the potential for some really bad publicity when someone finds that it's easy to break. If it's just a reliability feature, then no one who knows about security needs to audit it and it's a lot cheaper (and they can take shortcuts that would harm security, as long as the distribution of the encrypted data is more or less random).
    --
    sudo mod me up