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HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low

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Re: HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low

#31

Post by ptaipale »

executesorder66 wrote: post #24
rincebrain wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Close to 100% of the SSD failures I've seen have not been from being left off for a few years, nor from actual flash media failure, but from firmware bugs or, occasionally, mechanical failure. (I've had very small sample size of SSDs not being powered up for a few years, but the few I have powered up after not powering on for years have had all their data retained. Ask me in another 15 years or so, though.)

> mechanical failure. How does that happen?

Connectors are the weak point?

Re: HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low

#32

Post by tempestn »

Unfortunately for those of us who run home servers or NAS, prices and technology of large drives have also stagnated. I recently had to replace a few years old 4TB drive that had died. I was looking forward to grabbing an 8TB or something for the same price, but no. In fact, I ended up buying exactly the same model #, for only about $50 less. (I looked up the original receipt to check!)

Re: HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low

#33

Post by simoncion »

ck2 wrote: post #28

Before the "floods" you could get a WD Blue 1TB for $30 sometimes after rebate. Now they are $50 Something about supply/demand doesn't make sense here.

Uh, the floods were real, killed real people, and damaged real property. No need for the scare quotes.

> Something about supply/demand doesn't make sense here.

Yep. It feels like there's a price-fixing investigation that runs periodically in each PC component market that finds solid evidence of price fixing and then forces the prices down.

Re: HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low

#34

Post by m_eiman »

r00fus wrote: post #23
m_eiman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 2010 iMac that's unbearably slow at the moment, and since I suspect that the hdd is the reason I'm considering upgrading to a 1TB SSD (since I don't want less storage space).. But including installation, that's roughly $400. And spending $400 to prolong the life of an iMac with a fairly crappy GPU seems a lot. But on the other hand a new iMac (with a non-Intel GPU) is $2000 or more. Hard decision!

Would that $400 investment increase your resale price somewhat (probably not 1:1, but you will get utility out of it). Alternatively, just buy whatever's on sale for small SSDs and do a fusion-drive on it.

I'll keep the iMac until it gives up the ghost completely, so resale value isn't a parameter. It's more a question of "will the $400 give it enough longer life to make more sense than buying a new one now".

Perhaps I should go with a 500GB SSD and transfer the movies and whatever else is taking up space to the server. And then buy a new iMac once they put the next-gen GPUs in them.

Re: HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low

#35

Post by m_eiman »

beachstartup wrote: post #29
m_eiman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 2010 iMac that's unbearably slow at the moment, and since I suspect that the hdd is the reason I'm considering upgrading to a 1TB SSD (since I don't want less storage space).. But including installation, that's roughly $400. And spending $400 to prolong the life of an iMac with a fairly crappy GPU seems a lot. But on the other hand a new iMac (with a non-Intel GPU) is $2000 or more. Hard decision!

get a smaller one for your OS + common apps and a used nvidia gpu from a newer mac. an ssd is a completely different paradigm. it's night and day, even on an old sata bus. this shoudn't even be a question. hdd computers are completely unuseable to me now. i sat down at one the other day and i thought it had crashed and almost rebooted it, but it was just chugging the disk.

Hard to switch GPUs in an iMac, isn't it?

I have considered switching out both the HDD and the DVD drive to get space to build a Fusion drive, but I kinda want to keep the DVD drive; it's the only one we have in the house.

Hm. Maybe I should build a Fusion drive and add an external optical drive...

Re: HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low

#37

Post by qb45 »

rincebrain wrote: post #12
pcurve wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is SSD reliable? With no moving parts, it ssd should be more reliable, but that's not apparently the case. What's your experience? Also, have you seen case of SSD data loss due as result of not powering up for couple years?

Close to 100% of the SSD failures I've seen have not been from being left off for a few years, nor from actual flash media failure, but from firmware bugs or, occasionally, mechanical failure. (I've had very small sample size of SSDs not being powered up for a few years, but the few I have powered up after not powering on for years have had all their data retained. Ask me in another 15 years or so, though.)

Part of what you count as firmware bugs may have been cases of data/firmware corruption caused by unexpected power loss.

Re: HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low

#38

Post by danielbarla »

tadfisher wrote: post #21
jstx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/samsun... Think again

An $8,000 drive only serves to prove this point.

That drive certainly is a bit strange. For one, I would imagine lot of the potential performance is wasted by a SAS connector.

That said, it might be of interest to enterprises from a few different angles (largest drive available for that form factor, easier to manage, great performance, etc). Anything that widens adoption will serve to drive prices even lower. SSDs don't necessarily beat HDDs on price per GB, they just have to get close enough that enough people don't care anymore. And as the original poster pointed out, for many that's already the case.

Re: HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low

#40

Post by rodgerd »

pcurve wrote: post #9
ericabiz wrote: post #2

As far as I can tell, this doesn't include SSDs. Spinning drive shipments are down -- I say GOOD RIDDANCE! I run a repair shop, and one of the top computer repairs we do is to upgrade a spinning disk to a SSD. A 240GB SSD runs $60-$65 these days, and is perfectly adequate for 99% of users. For that other 1% (which I include myself in) 512GB is adequate for 90% of those. HDD -> SSD is the single most cost-effective up…

is SSD reliable? With no moving parts, it ssd should be more reliable, but that's not apparently the case. What's your experience? Also, have you seen case of SSD data loss due as result of not powering up for couple years?

> is SSD reliable?

We've returned 25% of the laptops of a particular model because the Kingston SSDs had failed. That's across a sample in the hundreds.

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