SSD Prices in a Free Fall • Hacker News Board

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#191

Post by yohui » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:06 PM UTC

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.

That's not the best Price/GB ratio for an SSD. And unlike the SSD, the HDD on Pricewatch is a generic white label drive.

For example, this 240GB OCZ ARC 100 is $70 ($0.292/GB) after promo code and mail-in rebate:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1682022...

Or not counting mail-in rebates, this 480GB PNY CS111 is $152 ($0.317/GB):

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00TIJMEV2/

Found via PCPartPicker: https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/internal-hard-drive/

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#192

Post by rorykoehler » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:07 PM UTC

lbruder wrote: post #135

rorykoehler wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to remember SSD manufacturers rolling out similar perks in their marketing spiel years ago. It would be great if this is for real. The drives I have had issues with have been high write drives and I knew they wouldn't last for ever but they lasted an incredibly short time even when taking this into consideration.

Did they fail as in "some/all data lost", or did they switch to RO and you could at least get your data off them? Thinking of replacing my current home server HDs with SSD but worried about robustness...

The last one I could secure some but not all of the data before it completely failed. It failed gradually over the course of the day of me trying to rescue it. It was strange. Can't remember the previous ssd but the phone was flat out dead.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#193

Post by kibibu » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:23 PM UTC

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…

> Although at some point they'll probably just make many many fewer HDDs so the price will stop moving much

At this point prices will go up again.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#194

Post by andybak » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:23 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #149

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 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. How sustainable is this for the average consumer with most national ISPs moving towards bandwidth caps? I had to switch to business service because Netflix alone w…

> 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 knowledge to estimate their usage.

Give me 20-40 GB at a good speed for £20/month with prices scaling linearly from there and I'll be fairly happy and no-one will get burnt.

(just checked and most providers are offering uncapped at around 20Mb/s for £20/month)

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#195

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:24 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #149

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 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. How sustainable is this for the average consumer with most national ISPs moving towards bandwidth caps? I had to switch to business service because Netflix alone w…

I could imagine, at some point if ISPs became militant about caps and municipal broadband and Google Fiber weren't making inroads fast enough, Netflix creating appliances similar to their OpenConnect appliance [+] for users, but with the content encrypted with a key tied to your user account. Netflix would then cache the majority of the content you consume locally.

[+] https://openconnect.netflix.com/hardware/

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#196

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:30 PM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #168

WalterBright wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a good pattern, one I use too. But that's not what the article was about - it was making the case that SSD would soon reach similar capacities as spinning HDs, and at similar prices. I'm skeptical too. I believe we are already at the point where SSDs are large enough and cheap enough for the majority of use cases. It's only going to get better. There has always seemed to be a price floor for hard disks, where…

I use spinning disks for archival backups. It's been reported that SSDs aren't reliable for that. Hard disks also are questionable for long term storage, which means I rotate them often, but still.

Anecdotally, USB sticks I throw in a drawer tend to go bad after a few years.

I'd still love to replace all the spinning disks with SSDs, though. Faster, smaller, less power, less fragile, silent, what's not to like? Hope the longevity issue gets better.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#197

Post by flashman » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:35 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #149

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 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. How sustainable is this for the average consumer with most national ISPs moving towards bandwidth caps? I had to switch to business service because Netflix alone w…

Here in Australia, where data caps have been the norm for, oh, forever, it's pretty sustainable (for now). Music streaming is notionally the same cost as reading an image-heavy website: negligible, in the scheme of things. Video streaming is again not that bad, because I can only watch so many videos... they take real time to consume. YMMV depending on your chosen resolution.

Games are the main problem. When one of those 60GB bastards comes out, that's nearly one third of my monthly bandwidth, so I have to think carefully about scheduling it. But I regularly re-install 4-8GB from the cloud because it's a marginal impact compared to the entertainment it will bring.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#198

Post by rconti » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:44 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #149

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 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. How sustainable is this for the average consumer with most national ISPs moving towards bandwidth caps? I had to switch to business service because Netflix alone w…

Are they moving towards bandwidth caps? Comcast in the SF Bay Area has claimed a "suspended" 250GB cap for years and years. I get the impression that we're moving away from bandwidth caps.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#199

Post by deevus » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:44 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #181

ChristianBundy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, get a Flickr account which can host your 1TB of pics for free (money for nothin')... and you wont consume space on your local box with pics. Just make sure you understand the privacy repercussions of hosting your data on Flickr.

Just realize that to transfer 1TB of data at typical ISP speeds will take many days.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. In Australia this is so important to consider.

Re: SSD Prices in a Free Fall

#200

Post by Rexxar » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 11:51 PM UTC

chaud wrote: post #148

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...

I have been (unscientifically) tracking the prices of consumer level SSDs that are on sale for a few years now, there isn't any massive drop: http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2015/may/ssdgraph....

A logarithmic scale would give a better image of the situation.