Nimbus Data launched the 100TB ExaDrive DC100 a little over two years ago and it still reigns as the world's largest capacity solid state drive. Though not revealed at the time, Nimbus Data has finally revealed the price: $40,000 (via TechRadar). That's a full penny more than the base price of the 2020 Lexus ES luxury sedan.

This works out to $0.40 per gigabyte, which is much higher if you calculate the cost based on actual usable capacity: in Windows, over-provisioning (space reserved for various features and firmware updates) and storage Due to the way space is calculated, we lose about 7% of the advertised storage. In binary, a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes, but driver manufacturers keep things neat and tidy ... And to keep it more attractive to buyers, they use integers.

If you don't want to crunch the numbers, there are handy online calculators that convert claimed capacity to recognized capacity; for a 100TB SSD, that means the usable capacity is roughly 93TB.

By all accounts, $40,000 is a lot of money for a single storage drive, even a 100TB model. To put that in perspective, consider the Corsair Force MP600 1TB, the best SSD if you're looking for a PCIe 4.0 model, at $194.99 on Newegg, less than $0.20 per gigabyte. Conversely, the White Barn Inn in Kennebunk, Maine, charged $40,000 for a single ruby rose cocktail to celebrate its 40th anniversary (though it came with 4-carat rubies).

Nimbus Data also revealed the price of a 50TB model. This is $250 per terabyte, while the 100TB model costs $400.

The good news is that I wouldn't want to install these drives in my home PC (I would still need a consumer SSD or traditional HDD for my Steam library). Designed for enterprise environments, shipping in a thicker 3.5-inch form factor rather than 2.5-inch, and using a SATA 6Gbps interface, Nimbus Data believes the thicker design will make it easier for customers to upgrade their existing 3.5-inch HDDs with these drives Nimbus Data believes the thicker design will make it easier for customers to upgrade their existing 3.5-inch HDDs with these drives.

It will be some time before we see this type of SSD capacity in the consumer space. The closest we've seen is Sabrent's Rocket Q 8TB SSD, priced at $1,499.99 (just under $0.19 per gigabyte).

Incidentally, we are currently testing this model and will post a review soon if you need to know if you should spend as much money on a high-capacity SSD as you would on a full gaming PC.