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SSD Prices in a Free Fall

networkcomputing.com

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Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#11
post #5

In a side-note in the article, the author mentions that Amazon Glacier runs on tape. Although I'm not sure Amazon officially explained the technology, I heard (and read on Wikipedia) that they store data on conventional HDDs, that are however kept "offline". Has anyone here some more knowledge about that?

It was never confirmed, but I recall this[1] article making a pretty persuasive case Glacier was using optical disks.

[1]https://storagemojo.com/2014/04/25/amazons-glacier-secret-bd...

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#12
post #2

Is the hdd demise indeed expected so quickly?

It appears so. "By packing 32 or 64 times the capacity per die, 3D NAND will allow SSDs to increase capacity well beyond hard drive sizes. SanDisk, for example, plans 8 TB drives this year, and 16 TB drives in 2016. At the same time, vendors across the flash industry are able to back off two process node levels and obtain excellent die yields." Goodnight spinning disk; you've served us well.

Time to join the ranks of his FDD and CD-ROM buddies

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#13
post #2

Is the hdd demise indeed expected so quickly?

SSDs need to be powered up fairly often to maintain data integrity. So, they're great for the drives in computers, but for external or backup drives--which might only be powered up occasionally, spinning magnetic disks will still be a better choice for a while, it seems. edit: maybe not. Bringing this article up from samcheng's post below: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-...

Do you have a source for this? Just curious.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#14
post #2

Is the hdd demise indeed expected so quickly?

It appears so. "By packing 32 or 64 times the capacity per die, 3D NAND will allow SSDs to increase capacity well beyond hard drive sizes. SanDisk, for example, plans 8 TB drives this year, and 16 TB drives in 2016. At the same time, vendors across the flash industry are able to back off two process node levels and obtain excellent die yields." Goodnight spinning disk; you've served us well.

And we just got 10TB spinning disks on the market! Can't wait for the price to fall down for big SSD storage!

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#15
post #5

In a side-note in the article, the author mentions that Amazon Glacier runs on tape. Although I'm not sure Amazon officially explained the technology, I heard (and read on Wikipedia) that they store data on conventional HDDs, that are however kept "offline". Has anyone here some more knowledge about that?

I'm probably explaining something most everyone here already knows, but:

I don't know what Glacier uses, but the "offline" storage is much the same how mainframes use tape - disk based files (datasets in mainframe speak) are migrated to tape after a given amount of time to decrease storage costs. These datasets needs to be recalled back to disk to be used again. This is nearly identical to how Glacier operates with S3 as explained by Amazon.

The reason tape isn't available immediately is because the tape drive, unlike a traditional harddrive, doesn't contain a reader. So multiple tapes typically sit in machines with only only a few readers that move back and forth based on requests made to read the tapes. If there are many requests, the amount of time to recall a dataset increases.

Glacier may or may not be using tape, but the behavior is nearly identical to how tape has been used in past systems.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#16
post #5

In a side-note in the article, the author mentions that Amazon Glacier runs on tape. Although I'm not sure Amazon officially explained the technology, I heard (and read on Wikipedia) that they store data on conventional HDDs, that are however kept "offline". Has anyone here some more knowledge about that?

Yes please. I was also intrigued by this statement. I was under the impression that Amazon never told what the "secret sauce" was behind Glacier. Looking at Wikipedia now, it seems there are still multiple contending theories. Also, is it true that the service is not very popular? Are people here using it or similar?

Everyone knows it is not very popular - the limitations are extreme so you have to have a very specific use case for it.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#17

Is keeping a SSD powered on enough to prevent bit rot?

It should have no impact. It really is about write capacity. The little cells can only handle being changed so many times before they wear out. The wearing is a chemical/semi-conductor type problem.

It's not like DRAM where keeping power applied keeps the cells "fresh" (and in DRAM it's done literally be refreshing each cell at a certain frequency.)

The simple equation is the more times a cell is erased the sooner it fails. Write leveling and other software efforts work to spread around or eliminate unnecessary writes.

But over the practical life of a drive (5-10 years?) being powered off will not cause them to lose data.

Edit: I've been following FLASH technology since before the terms "FLASH" was coined, back when it was called EEPROM -- Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory, an evolution of PROMs (write once) and ERPOMS (erasable with UV light). If there's a myth out there that flash drives just forget things, I'd like to point out that I've had flash drives (low quality at that) from the 1990s that were left for 20 years and then read successfully! Show some citations of real evidence before you down vote me.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSDs need to be powered up fairly often to maintain data integrity. So, they're great for the drives in computers, but for external or backup drives--which might only be powered up occasionally, spinning magnetic disks will still be a better choice for a while, it seems. edit: maybe not. Bringing this article up from samcheng's post below: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-...

Do you have a source for this? Just curious.

https://blog.korelogic.com/blog/2015/03/24

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#19
post #5

In a side-note in the article, the author mentions that Amazon Glacier runs on tape. Although I'm not sure Amazon officially explained the technology, I heard (and read on Wikipedia) that they store data on conventional HDDs, that are however kept "offline". Has anyone here some more knowledge about that?

Yes please. I was also intrigued by this statement. I was under the impression that Amazon never told what the "secret sauce" was behind Glacier. Looking at Wikipedia now, it seems there are still multiple contending theories. Also, is it true that the service is not very popular? Are people here using it or similar?

I'm using it for incremental backups of my photo collection. If I ever need to restore my entire collection, its available on S3/Glacier.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#20
post #5

In a side-note in the article, the author mentions that Amazon Glacier runs on tape. Although I'm not sure Amazon officially explained the technology, I heard (and read on Wikipedia) that they store data on conventional HDDs, that are however kept "offline". Has anyone here some more knowledge about that?

Here's one theory: https://storagemojo.com/2014/04/25/amazons-glacier-secret-bd... and here's the HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647571

Facebook uses Blu-ray discs with a robotic storage system for its cold storage: http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/it-networks/robot-digs-thr...

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