[PunchyHamster]

I bought 4x (1TB->4TB the storage for half the price after my SSD died after 5 years (thanks samsung), what you mean they 'stopped being bigger'?

Sure, there is some limitation in format, can only shove so many chips on M.2, but you can get U.2 ones that are bigger than biggest HDD (tho price is pretty eye-watering)

[superkuh]

By stopped getting bigger I mean people still think 4TB is big in 2025. Just like 2010 when 3/4TB was the max size for consumer storage devices. u.2/u.3 is not consumer yet, unfortunately. I have to use m.2 nvme to u.2 adapters which are not great. And as you say, low number of consumer cpu+mobo pcie lanes has been restricting from the number of disks side until just recently. At least in 2025 we can have more than 2 nvme storage disks again without disabling a pcie slot.

[loeg]

> I mean people still think 4TB is big in 2025.

I think this is more a symptom of data bloat decelerating than anything else. Consumers just don't have TBs of data. The biggest files most consumers have will be photos and videos that largely live on their phones anyway. Gaming is relatively niche and there just isn't that much demand for huge capacity there, either -- it's relatively easy to live with only ~8 100GB games installed at the same time. Local storage is just acting as a cache in front of Steam, and modern internet connections are fast enough that downloading 100GB isn't that slow (~14 minutes at gigabit speeds).

So when consumers don't have (much) more data on their PCs than they had in 2015, why would they buy any bigger devices than 2015? Instead, as sibling commenter has pointed out, prices have improved dramatically, and device performance has also improved quite a bit.

(But it's also true that the absolute maximum sized devices available are significantly larger than 2015, contradicting your initial claim.)