Just opened an old 2.5" solid state drive and was amazed how empty the inside was.

SneakySpectator

I had an old PC that I wanted to get rid of so decided to strip it and sell the cpu and gpu but scrap everything else. When I took the solid state drives out they felt empty, like there wasn't actually anything inside the case. 

So I opened it up and was totally amazed at how much empty space is inside. Take a look 



The bottom one is 120gb and the top one is 500gb. Is there any logical reason why they have so much extra space? You could reduce the size of these drives by half... Sure it's not that big a deal as they're relatively small components anyway but I just don't understand why they have so much extra space if they don't need it?

I've looked on google images and even 4tb ssd still only uses half the case so it's not like the larger capacity drives need a larger board inside or anything.

paradigital

The logical reason is that 2.5” HDDs are a long standing form factor, so to keep compatibility with the maximum number of drives and devices, the sizes were kept to the same footprint (though different heights were available).

You only have to look at M.2 SATA drives to see how small they CAN be once the legacy SATA connector was ditched and the footprint changed to suit.  The 2230 form factor is barely larger than a postage stamp.

SneakySpectator

paradigital said:

The logical reason is that 2.5” HDDs are a long standing form factor, so to keep compatibility with the maximum number of drives and devices, the sizes were kept to the same footprint (though different heights were available).

You only have to look at M.2 SATA drives to see how small they CAN be once the legacy SATA connector was ditched and the footprint changed to suit.  The 2230 form factor is barely larger than a postage stamp.

So you're saying when the 2.5" ssd was first invented, it would have actually taken up the whole of the case? But now as tech has advanced, the size has decreased but they just keep the case size the same so legacy ssd can still fit together with current bay sizes and stuff?

mrochester

SneakySpectator said:

paradigital said:

The logical reason is that 2.5” HDDs are a long standing form factor, so to keep compatibility with the maximum number of drives and devices, the sizes were kept to the same footprint (though different heights were available).

You only have to look at M.2 SATA drives to see how small they CAN be once the legacy SATA connector was ditched and the footprint changed to suit.  The 2230 form factor is barely larger than a postage stamp.

So you're saying when the 2.5" ssd was first invented, it would have actually taken up the whole of the case? But now as tech has advanced, the size has decreased but they just keep the case size the same so legacy ssd can still fit together with current bay sizes and stuff?

2.5” hard drives have existed for a lot longer than SSDs have. 

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1045738-REG/hgst_0s03788_500gb_sata_2_2_5.html

alanrowell

The form factor is for conventional hard drives - the sort with spinning platters. SSDs were originally designed to fit into the same space.

paradigital

Exactly.  It had to happen that way.  In the early days of SSDs they were inordinately expensive for a usable capacity.  So device manufacturers had to be able to sell both cheaper and more expensive variants of the same device with the offering of either solid state or spinning disk.  For this to work the physical dimensions of the disks had to be the same.

it also ensured that there was an upgrade path for pre-SSD devices. If SSDs had always been a different footprint then upgrading older devices would have either been fraught with the perils of understanding adapters and converters, or would have simply not been offered to the masses.

The introduction of mSATA for laptops and other portable devices eventually paved the path to M.2 and the gradual decline of traditional drive bays, even for desktop computing.

Interestingly in the Enterprise space PCIe NVME drives are still used in 2.5” U.2 form factor, allowing for the same hot-swap ability that 2.5” SAS and nearline SAS (SATA essentially) allowed for.

SneakySpectator

IvanOpinion said:

If you look at USB pen drives you can get 500Gb on something not much bigger than the USB male connector itself.
Assuming the drives were still working, It's a pity you damaged them - they could still have been useful backup drives with a cheap USB to SSD adaptor cable.
Out of interest why didn't you wipe them and sell them on with your other components? You might have got £10 for the smaller one and £20 for the larger one.

Well one of them I was unsure what personal data / files would have been on it so didn't want to risk someone plugging it in and accessing the data. And the other one was only 120gb for the O/S. For the effort of trying to sell it for a tenner I just rather throw it away. 

The reason I didn't sell the whole PC is because I was getting all kinds of power issues, I tried to resolve it but wasn't sure what component it was but I knew it wasn't the cpu or gpu so those 2 components will be sold. Think it was either the mobo gone bad or the psu.

Will probably get £150 for the gpu and £50 for the cpu so I'm ok with that.

poppellerant

Of lot of it is the drive to increase chip density, which in turn cuts the cost of manufacturing.  As you can see for yourself, they only need the minimal of chips these days - the controller, possibly some DRAM and finally the NAND flash chips that hold your long-term data.

I have used computers with 5.25" hard drives, some of which held only 10 MB of data - not much these days, but quite a lot in the 80s.  So when I hold a 256GB microSD memory card, I am still in awe how they can fit so much data in something that's around the size of my fingernail.

Veteransaver

SneakySpectator said:

IvanOpinion said:

If you look at USB pen drives you can get 500Gb on something not much bigger than the USB male connector itself.
Assuming the drives were still working, It's a pity you damaged them - they could still have been useful backup drives with a cheap USB to SSD adaptor cable.
Out of interest why didn't you wipe them and sell them on with your other components? You might have got £10 for the smaller one and £20 for the larger one.

Well one of them I was unsure what personal data / files would have been on it so didn't want to risk someone plugging it in and accessing the data. And the other one was only 120gb for the O/S. For the effort of trying to sell it for a tenner I just rather throw it away. 

The reason I didn't sell the whole PC is because I was getting all kinds of power issues, I tried to resolve it but wasn't sure what component it was but I knew it wasn't the cpu or gpu so those 2 components will be sold. Think it was either the mobo gone bad or the psu.

Will probably get £150 for the gpu and £50 for the cpu so I'm ok with that.

I was under the impression that once deleted and the drive is trimmed/optimised, that files are unrecoverable anyway with ssds?

DullGreyGuy

SneakySpectator said:

paradigital said:

The logical reason is that 2.5” HDDs are a long standing form factor, so to keep compatibility with the maximum number of drives and devices, the sizes were kept to the same footprint (though different heights were available).

You only have to look at M.2 SATA drives to see how small they CAN be once the legacy SATA connector was ditched and the footprint changed to suit.  The 2230 form factor is barely larger than a postage stamp.

So you're saying when the 2.5" ssd was first invented, it would have actually taken up the whole of the case? But now as tech has advanced, the size has decreased but they just keep the case size the same so legacy ssd can still fit together with current bay sizes and stuff?

No, they were always fairly empty but as people transitioned from spinning disks to SSDs the mounting points for HDs etc were still based on the 2.5" form factor so they were put into cases so they could be mounted. 

You can still get them in this form as people still use older cases or old machines with SATA connections. We now have NVMe as a more compact connector and so they look more like sticks of memory, they're much lighter than old disk drives so dont need mounting

paradigital

Pedantry incoming, but NVME isn’t a connector.  NVME is an interface specification that can work over a variety of connector types.  M.2 (or NGFF) is likely what you are referring to, but NVME drives can also utilise common or garden PCIe connectors in varying lane configurations, or the enterprise U.2 connector, or even proprietary connectors such as in Apple products.

M.2 can support none-PCIE devices as well (such as SATA) depending on keying.