Micron Announces 5300 And 7300 Series Enterprise SSDs

Among several announcements today, Micron is updating two families of enterprise/datacenter SSDs to use their latest 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory.

SATA Update

The new 5300 series SATA drives are a replacement for the 5200 series that uses 64L 3D TLC. Micron has made a few changes to capacity and form factor options, increasing the maximum capacity available in the highest endurance tier and bringing back the M.2 options that were available with the 5100 series but missing from the 5200 series. Starting at the high end, the 5300 MAX family is the replacement for the 5200 MAX, still with a 5 DWPD endurance rating and similar performance. The 5300 MAX also adds a new 3.84TB model, but this one is only rated for 3.5 DWPD and has significantly lower random write performance.

Moving down to the PRO tier, the 5300 generation expands the capacity range to now include sizes from 240GB all the way up to 7.68TB, where the 5200 PRO only offered 960GB through 3.84TB options. The endurance ratings are a bit more consistent with the 5300 PRO series, with most models being rated for 1.5 DWPD while the 3.84TB model is rated for 1.2 DWPD and the 7.68TB model is rated for 0.6 DWPD. For comparison, the 5200 PRO series had endurance ratings from 1.3 to 2.5 DWPD depending on capacity. The 5300 PRO adds M.2 2280 models for capacities up to 1.92TB.

There isn't (yet?) a 5300 ECO tier to serve as a direct replacement for the 5200 ECO drives (~1 DWPD), but the 5300 PRO tier is now broad enough to mostly cover this market with slightly higher endurance ratings. The 5300 series does add a new Micron 5300 Boot model rated for 1 DWPD, available only with 240GB capacity and only in the M.2 form factor. No replacement for the 5210 ION QLC-based SATA drives has been announced yet.

Low-power NVMe is back

Micron is bringing back their low-power NVMe product family with the new 7300 series, successor to the  7100 series introduced in 2016 and abandoned in their transition to 3D NAND. The 7300 family includes 2.5"/7mm U.2 drives and M.2 drives in both 80mm and 110mm lengths. The U.2 drives offer higher capacities, and higher performance due to their 12W power limit compared to 8.25W for the M.2 drives. The high-endurance 7300 MAX series offers capacities from 400GB to 6.4TB and endurance ratings of 3.0-4.2 DWPD. The 7300 PRO series uses less overprovisioning to offer capacities from 480GB to 7.68TB with endurance ratings of 1.1-1.6 DWPD.

The Micron 7300 series is an alternative to the 9300 series NVMe drives that were introduced earlier this year. The 9300 series offers higher capacities and higher performance, but uses the thicker 15mm U.2 form factor, draws significantly more power (21W max vs 12W max for the 7300), and the 9300 series is still on 64L TLC rather than 96L TLC.