Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SSD Prices in a Free Fall

networkcomputing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 336 posts

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#121

Post by brownbat »

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.

Great point, although we should also talk about the way storage use has shifted.

I used to have some massive programs installed, a lot of digital media and video games at one point. Now Steam / GOG / Blizzard "stores" my games when not in use. Google / Apple / Pandora / Spotify "stores" my music. Amazon or Netflix "stores" my movies.

When I ran an HDD, I wanted a TB. Now that I'm running SSDs, 80 GB seems to meet all my needs (thanks to changes in internet services).

Sure, it won't be true for everyone. (Editing TIFFs for GIS anyone?) I don't run a Chromebook, but its philosophy is not completely insane for a reason...

It's like storage has differentiated into at least two separate purposes. Main system drive for consumer PCs, formerly an HDD only component, is feasibly replaced by SSDs. At the sizes needed for that, the difference in price per GB is already under a factor of two.[1]

[1] Caviar Blue 80GB @ $0.375/GB; MyDigitalSSD 64GB @ $0.578; Kingston 90GB @ $0.658/GB... https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/internal-hard-drive/#sort=a7&...

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#122

Post by keithly »

Teckla wrote: post #70
ryanmarsh wrote: post #56

So does this mean Apple will finally stop shipping a 16GB iPhone as entry level?

So does this mean Apple will finally stop shipping a 16GB iPhone as entry level? Not to mention the iPad. The original iPad came out over 5 years ago with 16 GB of storage. Entry level iPads still have 16 GB of storage. Given that iOS has gotten bigger and retina iPads made a lot of apps bigger, entry level iPad storage has actually regressed considerably. Pretty confusing, given that flash prices have gone down cons…

They want to push customers to use iCloud for data storage.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#123

Post by smartician »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #56

So does this mean Apple will finally stop shipping a 16GB iPhone as entry level?

Not to mention the crazy price structure of MacBook Pros. The 13 inch model with a 128GB SSD is $1299, but if you want 256GB, you have to shell out $200 more. I don't think this price difference is justified just by SSD prices. Is this just Apple being stubborn with their price marketing? Is it to preserve the perceived resale value?

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#124

Post by slg »

white-flame wrote: post #77
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.

Let's look at the sweet spots, because that's really what many people will buy: Best $/GB HDD on pricewatch.com: $0.024/GB for 2TB at $48.95 Best $/GB SSD on pricewatch.com: $0.387/GB for 240GB at $92.95 That's a 16x price increase, not 10x.

I wonder if those sell simply because of their positions in the market. Is the average consumer knowledgeable to know whether they need 240 GB, 2 TB, or 6 TB? Or do they simply compare prices and sizes and choose whatever they think is the best value? A 2 TB drive might just be another example of the 2nd cheapest wine trick?

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#125

Post by curun1r »

Teckla wrote: post #70
ryanmarsh wrote: post #56

So does this mean Apple will finally stop shipping a 16GB iPhone as entry level?

So does this mean Apple will finally stop shipping a 16GB iPhone as entry level? Not to mention the iPad. The original iPad came out over 5 years ago with 16 GB of storage. Entry level iPads still have 16 GB of storage. Given that iOS has gotten bigger and retina iPads made a lot of apps bigger, entry level iPad storage has actually regressed considerably. Pretty confusing, given that flash prices have gone down cons…

Complaining about overpriced/limited storage options in the iPad/iPhone is like complaining about overpriced/limited food options at a sporting event, airport or any other venue where you've got no other option than to buy from an approved vendor.

With lock-in comes higher prices.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#126

Post by hueving »

keithly wrote: post #122
Teckla wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does this mean Apple will finally stop shipping a 16GB iPhone as entry level? Not to mention the iPad. The original iPad came out over 5 years ago with 16 GB of storage. Entry level iPads still have 16 GB of storage. Given that iOS has gotten bigger and retina iPads made a lot of apps bigger, entry level iPad storage has actually regressed considerably. Pretty confusing, given that flash prices have gone down cons…

They want to push customers to use iCloud for data storage.

No, they want to squeeze an extra $100 out of you for $5 of flash storage. Most people will pay it too because 16GB is pretty crippling.

It's like buying a new car that comes with a 5 gallon gas tank that costs $40,000 and having to pay $50,000 for the same model except with a 10 gallon tank. Everyone knows it's a rip off but the car is really cool otherwise and there is no way to change the tank yourself.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#127

Post by outworlder »

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…

> The firmware noticed that some cells were underused and moved the stable data off them so it could use up the endurance evenly.

It moved data off them, but had to move it somewhere. I would have just rewritten them outright if it had known they were actually free.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#128

Post by duaneb »

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.

The gap narrows exponentially with each order of magnitude drop in price. Under 256 gigs you'd be hard-pressed to need a hdd over a ssd.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#129

Post by kylorhall »

I bought my 180GB SSDs for < 50 cents per GB like 3 years ago and it's barely better than that right now. Storage in general has more to do with availability and demand than technology, there's plenty of times when they've gone up in price.
Post reply on HN