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SSD Prices in a Free Fall

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Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#91

Post by vectorjohn »

snowwrestler wrote: post #6
forscha wrote: 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-...

So what if they have to be brought up once in a while? Who cares? They use so little power, that's really not an issue to bring the drive online, even frequently.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#92

Post by artmageddon »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #82
gwern wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And in the meantimg HDDs would have gotten cheaper Don't be sure about that. Remember that the Thai floods setback HDD prices and made them more expensive for years; they still haven't returned to the pre-flood trendline last I checked. With SSDs dropping, that might deter much more investment into HDDs (and with less demand from HDDs in the first place, there will be fewer of the economies of scale & learning curv…

> they still haven't returned to the pre-flood trendline last I checked. They have. I remember buying 2TB drives a year before (2010). I paid about $200 each. Last year (2014), I bought 4TB drives for $130 each. That's about 3x improvement over 4 years, right?

The prices may not be falling at the same rate as they were before the floods, though.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#93

Post by vectorjohn »

Bill_Dimm wrote: post #29
trose wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty plausible that we could create an SSD that would power up on a timer then couldn't we? Am I missing something?

Backup drives stored in a vault probably don't have access to electricity.

Because that's a plausible, common use case.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#94

Post by BinaryIdiot »

discardorama wrote: post #63
philjohn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author commented that they've seen a 50% drop in price over the last 8 months (from 20x HDD to 10x HDD), so it's not outside the realms of probability with the increased yields of 3D NAND.

I doubt the 50% figure. Just as a test: I looked at the price history for a random 256GB SSD (from Crucial). The highest price in the last year? $115. The current price? $99. Not nearly a 50% drop. Link: http://camelcamelcamel.com/Crucial-MX100-2-5-Inch-Internal-C...

While I suspect your original comment is closer to the truth than the article's (as far as price parity goes), picking a single data point doesn't make the point. It's rare for a drive to suddenly drop in price so significantly without manufacturing changes (thusly a new version of the drive). So while you're unlikely to see the same exact drive for 50% less after a year it's entirely plausible to see a different model, similar or more capacity, drop in price.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#95

Post by jlarocco »

peter303 wrote: post #58

HP is working on a memrister based SSD with density of Flash and the speed of transistors http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/536786/machine... .

Haven't various companies been hyping memristers for years now?

Sounds cool, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#96

Post by otisfunkmeyer »

jegutman wrote: post #81
discardorama wrote: post #36

Cheapest 1 TB SSD on Amazon: $350 Cheapest 1 TB HDD on Amazon: $40 Expecting a 10x drop in prices in 1 year is ludicrous. Even if the prices follow a pseudo Moore's law and fall by half every 18 months, you're looking at at least 5 years before they reach parity. And in the meantimg HDDs would have gotten cheaper; so expect even more time for parity. In other words: ain't happenin' in 2016.

Ah zeno's paradox. When the SSD matches the HDD price, in 28.5 months, the HDD will have moved, and so on and so on. Although at some point they'll probably just make many many fewer HDDs so the price will stop moving much. For any storage experts, will HDD still be preferable for long-term cold storage or are those even currently an unacceptable solution? Seems like cold storage might end up being more important ove…

if im not mistaken, amazon glacier is $10 per TB per month at 0.01 per GB per month stated price. please correct me if something has changed!

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#97

Post by rpcope1 »

dragontamer wrote: post #78
hayksaakian wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there technical limits to hard drive capacity? Is there a point at which they simply cannot get cheaper?

Yes and no? Those new "shingled" Hard Drives are 8TB and pretty cheap. However, the hard drives have severe reductions in speed and are really only for archival purposes. IIRC, there's a path for 10TB, 16TB and beyond if you're willing to put up with the weaknesses of shingled hard drives. Granted, SSDs are moving from MLC(2-bits per cell) to TLC (3-bits per cell) which reduce speed significantly without actually sel…

HAMR may also manifest at some point soon and push HDD densities way up while getting rid of the problems associated with SMR. HAMR will likely be expensive just like Helium is but it will certainly unlock a lot of super high density materials when it comes about (which may be in the next several years).

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#98

Post by yuhong »

cjensen wrote: post #45
toomuchtodo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experim...

True, and I've done it! I accidentally used a consumer grade (Crucial M500) in an application where endurance would be reached in less than a month. In fairness to Micron/Crucial, the drives did not lose any data.... but the write bandwidth degraded down to 10MB/s which counts as a failure for most apps. That's the catch in the report you cite: the bandwidth of a used-up drive is so poor that it's hard to actually wr…

I wonder how fast it would be to boot Windows with a SSD like this.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#99

Post by BinaryIdiot »

STRiDEX wrote: post #33
wmf wrote: post #7

The article predicts that SSD prices will fall from 30c/GB to under 5c/GB in 18 months. This seems like a case of citation needed.

Can you cite predictions?

I mean you can cite predictions but unless there is trend data to back them up I'm not exactly sure how useful they are.

I think wmf is looking for citations of things like trend data and maybe even plans from SSD manufacturers that shows "hey we're working on this cool tech that should help us lower costs by next year!" types of things.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#100

Post by rgbrenner »

gwern wrote: post #74
discardorama wrote: post #36

Cheapest 1 TB SSD on Amazon: $350 Cheapest 1 TB HDD on Amazon: $40 Expecting a 10x drop in prices in 1 year is ludicrous. Even if the prices follow a pseudo Moore's law and fall by half every 18 months, you're looking at at least 5 years before they reach parity. And in the meantimg HDDs would have gotten cheaper; so expect even more time for parity. In other words: ain't happenin' in 2016.

> And in the meantimg HDDs would have gotten cheaper Don't be sure about that. Remember that the Thai floods setback HDD prices and made them more expensive for years; they still haven't returned to the pre-flood trendline last I checked. With SSDs dropping, that might deter much more investment into HDDs (and with less demand from HDDs in the first place, there will be fewer of the economies of scale & learning curv…

backblaze (who uses desktop hdds) says they paid $0.044/gb in sept 2011: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/farming-hard-drives-2-years-a...

Today on newegg it's about $0.03/gb.

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