A hard drive that could fully utilize SATA Express?

[XavierMace]

Yes. Definitely Yes. (drives that used that NAND as 384Gb 3D TLC rather than 256Gb 3D MLC were even slower at the same capacity)

Even Intel uses PCIe x 2 for its current Optane memory.

I've never found info stating SATA Express is limited to a certain version of PCIe. In fact, the first SATA Express drives used PCIe 2.0 x 2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA_Express

If your drive only needs PCIe x2, that's fine. But putting ports on your motherboard limited to that when there's another port available without that limitation is self defeating. Arguing about what could be in the future is pointless.

I think the main problem was software.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/8820...a-128gb-ssd-4tb-hdd-35-sata-express-dualdrive

That article is 3 years old. Are you seeing the trend here? Have you seen people clamoring for this drive in the 4 years since they first brought it up? Seriously, where are you trying to go with this? LOL.

SATA Express offers no real benefit over U.2 and is unable to handle the throughput of existing products. What incentive is there to release products using it?

 

[cbn]

I think the main problem was software.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/8820...a-128gb-ssd-4tb-hdd-35-sata-express-dualdrive

That article is 3 years old. Are you seeing the trend here? Have you seen people clamoring for this drive in the 4 years since they first brought it up?

If you look at the comments under the article they were all generally optimistic (with the exception of two comments) if the SSD and HDD could be used as a single volume.

This, in contrast, to the idea of having to use as dual drive.

 

[XavierMace]

If you look at the comments under the article they were all generally optimistic (with the exception of two comments) if the SSD and HDD could be used as a single volume.

This, in contrast, to the idea of having to use as dual drive.

I would call most of those comments neutral at best. I also wouldn't consider a small handful of comments on a 3 year old article definitive proof of anything. I think the fact that said product has disappeared without a track speaks much louder.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Even Intel uses PCIe x 2 for its current Optane memory.

Optane is all about random I/O performance at low queue depths. Sequential R/W doesn't matter that much there. A side benefit of sticking with a x2 interface is that it actually lowers the interface latency a bit, further enhancing what is already impressive performance.

I just went a little crazy and replaced my HTPC with a new AM4 based system, using a 32GB Optane drive as the boot drive. You think an SSD is fast? You ain't seen nothing yet...

I shouldn't have done that though. My upgrade itch is already screaming 900p...

 

[cbn]

If you look at the comments under the article they were all generally optimistic (with the exception of two comments) if the SSD and HDD could be used as a single volume.

This, in contrast, to the idea of having to use as dual drive.

I would call most of those comments neutral at best. .

Here were the comments I thought were generally optimistic if drive were single volume:

Hybrid drives make sense. But this isn't a hybrid drive, it's just two drives in one.

Yeah, why not make a hybrid with 128GB? It seems that the largest failing of hybrids is the small SSD cache. You're already paying for the hardware, so why not make it great?

If they get the hybrid software ready by launch time I could see some value to it. Joe User doesn't want to have to worry about saving some files on his fast disk drive, and others on his slow one; but 2 separate drives is kinda pointless.

This is just as dumb as the Black2. I'm a huge WD fan but the Seagate SSHD's are a significantly better implementation than this dual-drive crap. What kind of "gamer" is going to be able to utilize a 120GB SSD. That's like 2 modern games. BF4 and COD-AW are both 50GB and for AW that doesn't even account for the future expansions.

Finally a high-end hybrid drive! If this implements caching transparent to the OS, like Seagates solutions, it could be of tremendous value for entry-level servers.

 

[XavierMace]

You're just grasping at straws now, aren't you. Basically your hand picked comments (which by no means are the majority of the comments) are basically saying a better version of Seagate's SSHD's MIGHT have value.

A) For the umpteenth time, the lack of any further news on this product should be telling. Have you seen a single thread asking what happened to this product?
B) Seagate's SSHD's have been out for years and aren't exactly a hot topic of discussion either.
C) I don't know a single business using Seagate's SSHD's and no this product wouldn't be a tremendous value to servers.
D) At this point you've still made no compelling arguments for SATA Express and are having to make arguments for nonexistent products that could possibly make use of SATA Express.

Seriously, what is your attachment to this? It's dead, move on.

 

[cbn]

Basically your hand picked comments (which by no means are the majority of the comments)

There were only 18 comments all together..... Here are some of the other ones I would consider neutral:

we can only hope they're planning on packaging it with some caching software at least??

The iMac?

My server is full, and currently runnign off an SSD I scotch-taped to the side of the chassis.

The spec card in the photo clear says:
"World's Fastest 4TB Hybrid Drive"
further
"Engineering sample SATAe Hybrid Drive"

The article states: "the prototype shows off as two separate volumes, although Western Digital is also working on a caching software to make the solution more user friendly"

What gave you the idea they'd release this as two drives?

Since they're calling it a hybrid drive I would expect to see ONE drive in the device manager. If it's seen as two drives then they should at least suggest in the naming scheme for the prototype that the "hybrid" part is still only on paper. It could be a bit misleading to name a prototype a certain way but not clearly state that the main feature mentioned is missing.

I see 3.5" all the time in the server space. These drives would make an interesting choice for ceph OSD, put the journal on SSD and the data on HDD. Saves a bit of space.

Although SATA Express is a deal breaker.

How do you put 4 of these in a pool? They're SATA Express, systems generally don't come with more than one or two of these ports.

Linux device mapper could do all those things independent of RAID controllers etc..

And here are the 2 out of the 18 comments (acknowledged in post #27) that I would consider negative for the device (if it were used as a single volume):

Unless you have a laptop with only one drive bay (Plenty have two!) then I would be more inclined jumping towards Sandisks Readcache SSD's.
They're cheap and work well, I have them in my grand parents machines.

Does anyone else think they are 2-3 years behind the times? I wanted this 2-3 years ago, in laptop form factor, with actually intelligent software to manage what stays on the SSD (i.e. entire OS + most programs + recent documents). But they STILL don't have a laptop hybrid drive that offers truly SSD-like performance.

And they have now missed the boat. I don't need a product like this anymore when I can get a 500GB SSD for around $200 without even waiting for a sale.

By the time their mobile solution comes out, large SSDs will be even cheaper and this will be a solution strictly for the low-end of the market. A huge opportunity missed by Western Digital to bridge the gap between price, performance, and storage capacity.

So I wouldn't say those five comments I posted were handpicked.

 

[cbn]

D) At this point you've still made no compelling arguments for SATA Express and are having to make arguments for nonexistent products that could possibly make use of SATA Express.

See my question in the opening post.

SATA Express has a unique connector with two SATA 6 Gbps ports and a PCIe x2 connection.

How difficult it would be to have an internal storage device capable of using all those connectors simultaneously?

P.S. I have to think when SATA-IO made the SATA Express specification they were thinking a good bit into the future (logically expecting additional hardware to become available which would eventually allow full use of the specification). It is the only reason I can think of why there are two SATA ports in addition to PCIe x2. (Otherwise why not use M.2? Example are the Z97 boards (one shown below) which came with both 10 Gb/s SATA Express and 10 Gb/s M.2 PCIe 2.0 x 2)