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SSD Prices in a Free Fall

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Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#151

Post by fencepost »

I can't comprehend trusting data to a (single) 30TB SSD or even 10TB SSDs given the regularly reported failure modes of "It's not a drive anymore."

Perhaps it's because I'm not doing anything where massive storage is a requirement, but having data striped in RAID6 makes me happy. I'd be happy to use SSD for the underlying medium, but I want something that's less prone to single points of failure. Backups are all well and good, but what's the interface speed of a drive like that? How long to restore a 20+TB backup?

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#152

Post by toomuchtodo »

ars wrote: post #140
toomuchtodo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your LED point, I'm unaware of anyone not putting LED if cost of electricity or labor is of any importance. Consumers may not have gotten the message yet, but anyone running the numbers is going LED or nothing at all (small exceptions for grow operations or theater lightening).

LED fixtures are worth it, LED edison base bulbs (replacement bulbs) are not. So new installations get LED, but old ones are not retrofitted.

Citation? I've seen math that all LED bulbs provide a better return in saved energy costs over the S&P500.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#153

Post by Someone »

icebraining wrote: post #132
Someone wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're referring to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_storage_managem... . AFAIK, most systems work at the file level, but if you address space is large enough, you could implement this as a virtual memory system that swaps RAM to disk, disk to slower disk, slower disk to tape, tapes to tapes stored offline, etc. I don't know what Amazon uses, either, but I expect Glacier data to be pushed out to some laye…

if you address space is large enough, you could implement this as a virtual memory system that swaps RAM to disk, disk to slower disk, slower disk to tape, tapes to tapes stored offline, etc. Funny to imagine, - My program has been stuck copying a variable for over half an hour! - Yeah, there was a page fault and the tape loading guy still hasn't come from lunch

Yes, but the other side of the coin is "why are those pages of the program still on disk? They haven't been touched in years". But such systems tend to keep parts under human control.

You rarely ever need your fire extinguisher, but that doesn't mean the LRU replacement algorithm that keeps your house clean can move them to the back of your attic.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#154

Post by fencepost »

brownbat wrote: post #121
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…

Keep in mind that SSD performance tends to degrade as the drive approaches full utilization - even if the actual internal capacity includes margin, you're probably best off avoiding approaching the available capacity. Heck, for the 250GB SSD I put in my primary laptop this past spring I intentionally formatted it to ~80% of the available capacity - that gives me plenty of space (~100GB free after all software & data) but even if I end up with things chewing that capacity I should keep good performance due to the available space for the drive's own data shuffling.

Perhaps 8.1 and Windows 10 are better about what they save, but going with anything less than 128 for Windows + apps + data seems risky to me.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#155

Post by mapt »

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?

Appled to oranges. In 2010, you overpaid by more than 100%: http://slickdeals.net/expired/2495085-79-99-seagate-barracud...

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#156

Post by fencepost »

dean wrote: post #85
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.

Cheapest new 250 GB HDD on NewEgg: $34.95 Cheapest new 256 GB SSD on NewEgg: $82.99

The cheapest 250GB HDD isn't really a good measure - twice the capacity is what, $3-4 more?

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#157

Post by darkarmani »

trose wrote: post #21
snowwrestler wrote: post #6

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-...

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

> Likewise, DVD-type archive storage will need a magic trick or two to remain in the race. A terabyte of DVDs will cost more than a terabyte SSD and that isn’t including the DVD library unit.

The article thinks that SSDs will be used for archives.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#158

Post by hoprocker »

fencepost wrote: post #154
brownbat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Keep in mind that SSD performance tends to degrade as the drive approaches full utilization - even if the actual internal capacity includes margin, you're probably best off avoiding approaching the available capacity. Heck, for the 250GB SSD I put in my primary laptop this past spring I intentionally formatted it to ~80% of the available capacity - that gives me plenty of space (~100GB free after all software & data)…

Does the SSD actually use this unformatted space? I know that SSDs from the factory have a lower available space than their nominal space, to account for the eventual dimishing quanitty of functional floating gate transistors (ie 240GB is made available in a 256GB drive), and that OSes usually recommend keeping about 10% of the formatted drive free (for paging iirc). Didn't know that about unformatted space.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#159

Post by WalterBright »

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.

My need for SSD is rather modest. I have an SSD big enough for the OS and things I use often, and a huge spinning secondary drive for things I rarely access.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#160

Post by j1e »

smartician wrote: post #123
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?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
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