The real answer is: no one actually cares.

Very few people have the technical understanding required to make such a choice. And of those, fewer people still would actually pick SLC over QLC.

At the same time: a lot of people would, if facing a choice between a $50 1TB SSD and a $40 1TB SSD, pick the latter. So there's a big incentive to optimize on cost, and not a lot of incentive to optimize on anything else.

This "SLC only" mode exists in the firmware for the sake of a few very specific customers with very specific needs - the few B2B customers that are actually willing to pay that fee. And they don't get the $50 1TB SSD with a settings bit flipped - they pay a lot more, and with that, they get better QC, a better grade of NAND flash chips, extended thermal envelopes, performance guarantees, etc.

Most drives out there just use this "SLC" mode for caches, "hot spot" data and internal needs.

Agreed. I have some technical understanding of SLC’s advantages, but why would I choose it over QLC? My file system has checksums on data and metadata, my backup strategy is solid, my SSD is powered most days, and before it dies I’ll probably upgrade my computer for other reasons.

> Very few people have the technical understanding required to make such a choice. And of those, fewer people still would actually pick SLC over QLC.

There was a period of time when you could still by consumer SLC drives and pay a premium for them. I still have one.

Anyone assuming the manufacturers are missing out on a golden market opportunity of hidden SLC drive demand is missing the fact that they already offered these. They know how well (or rather, how poorly) they sell.

Even if consumers had full technical knowledge to make decisions, most would pick the TLC and QLC anyway. Some of these comments are talking about optimizing 20 year old drives for being used again two decades later, but ignoring the fact that a 20 year old drive is nearly useless and could be replaced by a superior option for $20 on eBay.

The only thing that would change, practically speaking, is that people looking for really old files on drives they haven’t powered up for 20 years wouldn’t be surprised that the were missing.

The rest of us will do just fine with our TLC drives and actual backups to backup services or backup mediums.

I’ll happily upgrade my SSD every 4-5 years and enjoy the extra capacity over SLC while still coming out money ahead and not losing data.