World’s largest SSD has tripled in price in just nine months and now costs more than a new car | Daily Reports Online
- The price of Solidigm’s monster 122.88TB SSD has increased by nearly 200% in just nine months
- The drive was originally listed at $12,399 and now costs $37,128 at Tech-America
- The U.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD is built for enterprise servers, storage arrays, and cloud data centers
Originally announced back in November 2024, Solidigm’s 122.88TB D5-P5336 SSD officially went on sale in May 2025.
Early estimates had suggested it would retail for close to $14,000, but as we reported, the enterprise drive became available through Tech-America for “just” $12,399, seriously undercutting market expectations.
Fast forward to now, however, and Tech-America is selling the exact same drive for $37,128, a near 200% increase. That’s a massive leap in around nine months. Sure, there’s discount pricing available, but buy 100+ of the monster SSDs and you’re still only saving $853 per drive.
$302 per terabyte
The D5-P5336 in question is a 2.5-inch U.2 SSD using PCIe 4.0 x4, built for servers, storage arrays, cloud storage, and data centers. It packs 122.88TB into a 15mm chassis weighing about 5.87oz.
Sequential performance is rated at up to 6.84GB/s reads and 2.93GB/s writes. Random 4KB reads reach 900,000 IOPS, while random writes top out at 19,000 IOPS, pointing to read-heavy workloads.
Endurance is set at 0.6 drive writes per day, with total bytes written listed at 137523.20TB. Mean time between failures is quoted at 228.2 years (a statistical projection rather than a literal lifespan).
The drive carries a five-year warranty and connects over U.2, an interface common in enterprise racks although absent from most consumer systems.
As for the price swing, several factors could be in play. Ultra high-capacity NAND isn’t produced at the same scale as mainstream flash, and supply can tighten quickly if hyperscale customers place large orders.
Enterprise SSD pricing also often revolves around contracts rather than public listings. Retail figures can reflect limited stock, distributor adjustments, or even corrections to earlier pricing.
At $37,128, the cost per terabyte now sits at roughly $302. That’s well above what most buyers are used to seeing, even in enterprise storage.
High-capacity consumer NVMe drives often fall somewhere between $40 and $80 per TB. Many enterprise SSDs in the 7.68TB to 30.72TB range can land under $150 per TB when purchased in volume.
On a straight per-terabyte basis, Solidigm’s monster SSD now sits at two to six times the cost of smaller alternatives.
At its earlier $12,399 listing in May 2025, the price per TB came out to around $101, much closer to mainstream enterprise flash pricing and arguably easier for buyers to justify.
That comparison isn’t perfect of course. A 122.88TB SSD allows far greater storage density in a single 2.5-inch U.2 slot, which can reduce the number of drives, ports, and cables needed in a rack.
For operators constrained by space or power budgets, that consolidation offers real value.
Even so, the leap from roughly $101 to about $302 per TB changes the economics massively. Buyers aren’t just paying for flash capacity, they’re paying a giant premium for packing it into one device.
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