This one may be cheating, as it hasn’t actually come out yet. First revealed in August, Samsung’s new drive is too impressive not to mention. The PM1633a is Samsung’s latest solid state drive, and it represents a massive leap from the SSDs of yesterday.
Despite its bland name, this beast has 16TB of storage, far surpassing the 8TB hard drives that clutter the top shelf. The PM1633a’s massive size is a result of Samsung’s 3D NAND die setup, which consists of longer layers of memory cells folded over so that more can be fit in. This allows for a significant increase in cells over previous models, in which cell layers were simply laid out flat.
The whole system will fit in a 2.5 inch case, the standard for SSDs. The new drive promises a 30 percent reduction in energy consumption from Samsung’s previous model. Samsung has not yet announced a price nor a release date for the PM1633a. Barring a shocking development between now and its release, it will undoubtedly be the highest capacity hard drive on the market.