Samsung unveils 2TB 850-series SSDs

Now in 2TB flavours: Samsung 850 Evo (left) and Samsung 850 Pro (right)

Samsung is keeping itself at the forefront of consumer SSD development with the announcement of 2TB additions to its popular 2.5in 850 Evo and 850 Pro product lines.

The South Korean tech giant has established itself as a key player in the SSD marketplace and, with reports suggesting that prices are in free fall, the race is on to increase capacity and close the gap on traditional hard disks. Indeed, with SanDisk said to be preparing 16TB SSDs for 2016, it shouldn't be long before the limitations of mechanical storage spark a widespread transition to solid-state drives.

But it hasn't always been smooth sailing for flash-based media. The initial crop of drives offered limited storage space, and while subsequent die shrinks were an obvious means of increasing capacity, the switch to smaller nodes were often accompanied by a decline in endurance and performance on regular 'flat' planar NAND.

Samsung's solution, and a key contributor to today's 2TB models, is 3D V-NAND. Essentially a means of stacking cells in vertical layers, this clever technology allowed Samsung to revert to an easier-to-manage 40nm process node, while simultaneously increasing capacity, boosting performance and extending endurance.

3D V-NAND made its debut in 2014 as part of the company's 850 Evo and 850 Pro, and Samsung feels the time is right to augment both models with a new range-topping 2TB capacity. Here's how the new additions take shape:

Keeping to the familiar 2.5in form factor, the new 2TB 850 Evo SSD is priced at £637 and is able to tout the same performance characteristics as its 1TB brethren courtesy of an upgraded MHX controller and a 2GB cache of DDR3 memory.

The range-topping drive comes equipped with 128 of Samsung's 32-layer 128Gb 3D V-NAND flash chips, presumably still from a 40nm process, and is covered by warranty for five years or 150 terabytes written - whichever expires first.

Samsung's Pro variant continues to use less-cost-effective 3D V-NAND carrying two-bits per cell, but the drive's premium positioning brings with it enhanced longevity. Matching the existing 1TB drive in most departments, the £750 2TB 850 Pro is backed by a reassuring warranty that covers the drive for 10 years or 300 terabytes written. That's equivalent to writing just over 80GB of data every single day for an entire decade.

Commenting on the launch, Un-Soo Kim, Samsung's senior vice president of branded product marketing, stated that the company experienced a "surge in demand for 500GB and higher capacity SSDs."

"We will continue to expand our ultra-high performance and large density SSD product portfolio and provide a new computing experience to users around the globe," said Kim, whose team plans to introduce higher-capacity models in mSATA and M.2 form factors in the near future.