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Western Digital Unveils First-Ever 512Gb 64-Layer 3D NAND Chip (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli quotes a report from BetaNews: As great as these solid state drives are now, they are only getting better. For example, SATA-based SSDs were once viewed as miraculous, but they are now looked at as slow -- PCIe-based NVMe drives are all the rage. To highlight the steady evolution of flash storage, Western Digital today unveiled the first-ever 512 gigabit 64-layer 3D NAND chip. "The launch of the industry's first 512Gb 64-layer 3D NAND chip is another important stride forward in the advancement of our 3D NAND technology, doubling the density from when we introduced the world's first 64-layer architecture in July 2016. This is a great addition to our rapidly broadening 3D NAND technology portfolio. It positions us well to continue addressing the increasing demand for storage due to rapid data growth across a wide range of customer retail, mobile and data center applications," says Dr. Siva Sivaram, executive vice president, memory technology, Western Digital. Western Digital further explains that it did not develop this new technology on its own. The company shares, "The 512Gb 64-layer chip was developed jointly with the company's technology and manufacturing partner Toshiba. Western Digital first introduced initial capacities of the world's first 64-layer 3D NAND technology in July 2016 and the world's first 48-layer 3D NAND technology in 2015; product shipments with both technologies continue to retail and OEM customers."
1) because they can 2) it takes a while to recoup the investment money of the $$$$ fabrication equipment
I don't care what vendor you use...
If you care about your data you either RAID (and monitor) or keep good backups that you routinely test. (preferably both)
My Personal file server is software RAID-5 with a hot spare and a replacement drive on the shelf. PLUS I keep a nightly mirrored backup online and rotate the spindles offsite to the In-laws basement every time we visit. (I know I'm cheap, but 4 Gig is kind of expensive to back up to the cloud and I have security to consider.) I lost a small portion of the photos once and thought my wife was going to kill me, NEVER again unless the zombie apocalypse happens.
WD drives do seem to be on the lower end of reliability, but I really don't care that much myself. I buy what's cheap and I'll toss it when it breaks...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Maybe I'm just not keeping up, but Western Digital seems to have been on a downward path for quite a long time....I'm not sure why they are still in business.
Back in the early 90's, WD drives were OK, but seagate had a better reputation for anything important. Since then, they seem to have just languished - acquiring other companies products. Their enterprise/datacenter drives aren't that bad, but seagate still seems to rule the roost. On the consumer end, quality control has been quite hit or miss and despite their making ever larger drives at cheaper prices, I would never trust their drives with anything important.
As for SSD's, their competition has really been for the last several years between intel vs samsung versus 3rd parties (kingston/seagate/etc). Does WD sell a lot of SSD's comparatively?
While it is, indeed, prudent to keep a cold spare on the shelf, wasting a slot in your enclosure for a "hot spare" is just that — a waste. Here is my proof of it, but you can find other people telling you the same thing.
It is extremely unlikely, that a second disk will randomly die on you during those few hours it will take you to replace the first one with your cold spare and for the array to rebuild. What you want to avoid is correlated failures — when multiple drives fail for the same reason (such as a firmware bug, manufacturing defect, or an environmental factor — like heat).
But having a hot spare online is not helping against that either — buy drives from different manufacturers, different models, and from different batches.
Oh, and if by "software RAID-5" you mean anything other than ZFS (RAID-Z), then you really ought to upgrade.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm interested to know what /.ers opinions are on PCIe and RAID.
We run SATA SSDs as RAID1 or RAID6 in our servers and support for PCIe RAID is not great yet.
Are PCIe drives so reliable now, as to not needing RAID?
46137
If you can get 512Gbits on one chip why are they expensive? Unless yields are low chips are not expensive to manufacture.
I know this one! "3D lithography" is actually just regular lithography with an ridiculous amount of chemical deposition layers (64 in this case). Each layer has steps to add, subtract and verify that layer was properly made. Overall, this can take several weeks before a wafer is completed and yes, there are defects and they track those defects. They have a suitably high yield or they don't bother making them until they work out the process so that they do. Much of the work is done by machines but humans ensure quality is as optimal as possible. I would say that all in all, it's because it's a lengthy process and people are willing to pay for the resulting chips.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If you can get 512Gbits on one chip why are they expensive? Unless yields are low chips are not expensive to manufacture.
I think they are expensive to manufacture, particularly depending on which process node. Also, are these NAND chip 1-bit, 2-bit or more bits per cell? That translates into very sensitive voltage sensing, which increases the manufacturing complexity
RAID != backup Please try to remember that kids. It has its place but don't be fool enough to think RAID will save you. RAID is perfectly happy to copy corrupt data until the bad drive is marked as failed. RAID is really only useful when a drive goes immediately from ON and working properly to OFF and dead.