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Fixstars has unveiled the world’s first 13TB 2.5-inch solid state drive, more than doubling the capacity of the next largest SSD of 6TB. There is a catch, however, and it’s a pretty big one: the Fixstars SSD-13000M will be priced at approximately $1-per-gigabyte, putting the cost of the 13TB drive at around $13,000, according to spokesperson Shien Zhu (via PC World).
The drive uses a SATA 6Gbps interface and is based around 15nm MLC NAND flash technology from Toshiba – a minority shareholder in Fixstars – but with a proprietary Fixstars controller that boasts faster sequential read and write speeds of up to 580/520 MB/s. The random read/write speeds are yet to be revealed.
The SSD-13000M will be sold directly via the Fixstars website, and not through other retailers. While Fixstars sees the drive as appealing to enterprise and business customers, anyone with $13k to burn can get their hands on one.
Competitors in the SSD market have indicated that they don’t plan to release a drive to compete with Fixstars’ 13TB drive in the immediate future, with SanDisk launching 6TB and 8TB SSDs this year, and Samsung releasing a 4TB SSD.
Fixstars has also revealed a 10TB iteration, the SSD-10000M, which is also expected to be priced at around $1-per-gigabyte. The release date for both SSDs is yet to be confirmed.
