Almost two years ago, Samsung released a 15.36 TB portable drive that was said to have the most capacity of any SSD. But now, they’ve topped their own record with an SSD that features twice the capacity and performance. Inside, the tiny 2.5″ frame, the PM1643 has 30.72 TB of storage. It has read/write speeds of 2,100MB/s and 1,700MB/s. That’s incredible. If you watch the video below, that is Samsung introducing their T5 last year. What’s interesting is that the T5 provides transfer speeds of only 540MB/s. I say only because that’s incredibly slow compared to the PM1643. In general, it’s not that slow, but in comparison, it’s moving at snail pace. Don’t get me wrong, they are different, but I think it’s important to establish a baseline of speed for SSD.
Further, the PM1643 is half the size of the T5. What’s interesting is that Samsung is now able to mass produce them at this size. It’s likely that we’ll start to see Samsung make the capacity smaller, but this is great news. To start, typically when you want this kind of capacity, you need some kind of substantial external hardware. But not anymore. This tiny device is going to keep a lot of your important files safe and sound. Not only that, think about what this could mean from an industry perspective. If Samsung can get this kind of storage capacity inside a tiny SSD device, why can’t they put that into a computer or phone?
This could change the industry, don’t you think? I mean, think about the size of the phones that we have now. I think you can get a 128 GB iPhone now. Which does cost a lot, but I think the increased storage amounts are a good thing in a phone. Imagine what the world would be like if you could store 500 GB or even 1 TB directly onto your phone? Even from a computer perspective – this is potentially big, incredible news. People might not be willing to shell out that kind of dough in order to have that kind of storage on their phone, but they would on their computer. I know I have to constantly back up my laptop to my external hard drive – which is smart. But I don’t want to have to do it, simply because I don’t have enough space on my laptop.
In almost every post I write, I ask the question if it’s worth it? A lot of time, the answer is no. But in this case, the answer is yes. I mean, if the price doesn’t fit your budget, then I understand. But this is one of those devices that you kind of have to bite the bullet and save up for. But the other reason that I think it’s worth it (as I have mentioned in my previous paragraph) is because this is going to change the way that we look at storage. Storage is limited. We know that. To buy a 1 TB external hard drive is going to cost you around $100 (give or take), but that’s only 1 TB. While I don’t know what the cost of this will be, this device is 30 times that size. And that, my friends, is incredible.