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SSD Prices in a Free Fall

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Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#241

Post by yen223 »

nivla wrote: post #141
discardorama wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Now you are just cherry picking to prove a point. In a similar tone checkout the huge drop in prices for the Kingston Digital 240GB SSDNow[1]. It has dropped from about $400 to a mind blowing $78!! I have been tracking the prices of HDD's for a while now. Although I do agree that HDDs are currently substantially cheaper than SSDs, HDDs have had much less drop in price or increase in capacity compared to the pre flood…

"The bigger problem facing HDDs now is that almost all major manufactures are bought up by WD and Seagate and this is starting to show the ill effects of a duopoly. So it remains in their best interest to keep the prices high [2]."

It's not in the HDD manufacturers best interest to keep prices inflated, considering price is one of the 2 big competitive edge HDDs have over SSDs.

What happened during the floods was that WD[0] got lucky - data consumption remained high as ever, and SSDs simply weren't cheap enough at that point to fill the void that the floods left behind.

[0] And to a greater extent, Seagate. From what I remembered their facilities weren't directly affected by the flood, but their supply chains were disrupted.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#242

Post by peteretep »

samch wrote: post #233
andybak wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most national ISPs Which nation are you talking about? I suppose I'd guess US but it would help if you said. I'm still getting uncapped broadband (albeit with vague TOS provisions) in the UK. I think the rest of Europe is probably similar. For the record - I'd like to move towards metered billing - but with a realistically low price per GB - not a punitive one based on profiting from people that don't have the know…

I'd be curious to know why you would prefer a metered approach when, as you say, for that same price you get uncapped. It seems to me that most people, in the US anyway, would rather not have caps. I can honestly say this is the first time I've heard anybody say they would, for the same price, prefer a cap. For the record, 20Mbps for £20 is roughly similar to what our local cable monopoly offers in NC.

Because at the moment s/he is bearing the cost of abusive users.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#243

Post by ghshephard »

jldugger wrote: post #189
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.

Data! http://www.jcmit.com/flash2015.htm You can see there's about a 10x difference between the two on the logarithmic scale chart. The trend is slightly faster for SSD, but a quick straightedge-on-monitor projection suggests the intercept is closer to 2015, if ever.

Is that a typo? Did you mean "2025" (i.e. 10 years out?) - I looked at the graph, and that's what it looked like to me based on historical projections.

The author, Jim O'Reilly, is not basing his article on historical analysis, but on an understanding of the impact of 3D NAND + his communication with the major flash providers - some of whom are committing to 8 TB and 16 TB SSD drives in the next 18 months. That, in conjunction with massively more efficient utilization of existing Fabs (both by dropping back a few process generations to increase Yield, plus stacking the NANDs in the Z direction) is going to create a huge disruption in the next 18 months.

Now - the question up for debate - does this disruption result in lower prices, does it result in large and expensive drives, or are the Fabs supply constrained such that they will be able to serve new markets, but not have sufficient capacity to drive down prices on high volume?

Regardless - 2015/2016 are going to be huge years for SSD storage.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#245

Post by NeutronBoy »

vectorjohn wrote: post #93
Bill_Dimm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because that's a plausible, common use case.

Uh, where do you store your backups? Because having them in a safe deposit box is a very common option (amongst those people who actually do backups)

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#246

Post by ksec »

They are talking as if 3D NAND is free. The maximum of 64 layers is not yet production ready AFAIK. Even the 32 is too expensive, we are talking about 8 or 16 layers coming soon , which when you include two nodes step back you are talking about 2x to 4x improvement. 3D NAND isn't free to manufacture either. When you add up the cost, 3D NAND will be no more then a continuation of SSD falling prices according to its current tends in the coming years.

P.S - It just means it will prolongs the life of NAND and SSD will continue to get faster, higher capacity and cheaper before hitting its limits.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#247

Post by gregsq »

jobjh797878 wrote: post #227
coldtea wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or have Creative Suite installed. Or any modern sample library (which can get to 80GB for a single piano). Or any video editing projects and/or templates. Just some examples of professional stuff (for graphic designers, musicians/producers and videographers) that take huge space.

There's no reason to put a sample library on an SSD.

There would be for me if the price of SSD's come down enough. With my 2011 MBP and RME Babyface taxing the computer a bit too much with USB 2.0 context switching, my 120gig of samples streamed from disk would help while running this all at 96K.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#248

Post by runamok »

pyrocat wrote: post #137
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…

I agree to a large extent but I think 80GB is an extreme on the low end. Many modern games (especially MMOs) are 20GB+. Windows 7 alone requires a huge amount of storage. I have a 120GB partition at home (just for OS+programs, not data) and I'm constantly uninstalling steam games in order to install others. If you want a modicum of breathing room, I'd say minimum 200GB.

I recently discovered a large portion of my windows 7 partition was due to space set aside for system restore. Then there is the swap space and hibernation image which if you have a lot of ram is enormous.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#249

Post by mirimir »

simplexion wrote: post #228
mmebane wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least with SSDs, there's much less worry about your RAID 5/6 array self-destructing while it's failing over to a hot spare. With hard drives of that size, I'd only feel comfortable with full mirroring.

Who in their right mind still uses RAID5 with spinning disks in a production system? That is like not wearing a seatbelt and driving above speed limits constantly.

Nobody?

But RAID6 is still popular, among crazier folk.

And RAID6 with SSDs screams. And rebuilds fast.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#250

Post by segmondy »

pyrocat wrote: post #137
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…

I agree to a large extent but I think 80GB is an extreme on the low end. Many modern games (especially MMOs) are 20GB+. Windows 7 alone requires a huge amount of storage. I have a 120GB partition at home (just for OS+programs, not data) and I'm constantly uninstalling steam games in order to install others. If you want a modicum of breathing room, I'd say minimum 200GB.

I use a chromebook with 16gb, I also have linux on it. I do fine and have had it for 2 years. :)
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