9 ms·

As far as I can tell, this doesn't include SSDs. Spinning drive shipments are down -- I say GOOD RIDDANCE! I run a repair shop, and one of the top computer rep

As far as I can tell, this doesn't include SSDs. Spinning drive shipments are down -- I say GOOD RIDDANCE! I run a repair shop, and one of the top computer repairs we do is to upgrade a spinning disk to a SSD. A 240GB SSD runs $60-$65 these days, and is perfectly adequate for 99% of users. For that other 1% (which I include myself in) 512GB is adequate for 90% of those. HDD -> SSD is the single most cost-effective upgrade most people can do to breathe new life into an older computer. Going from a spindle drive to a SSD in most computers decreases boot time from ~4 minutes to ~30 seconds. Browsers load faster, videos don't stutter as much, the computer runs more silently. These are the issues most people care about. A SSD upgrade means a 2010 MacBook Pro now has another 2-3 years of life, which is awesome news to most of the people we serve (who are often college students just trying to make it through college without their computer dying on them.) I hope to see this chart go to 0 in the next few years as SSDs continue to decrease in price; this doesn't mean much bad news for the "PC industry", just ancient relics of a bygone age finally dying (and/or becoming super-niche for things like archiving where data transfer rates don't particularly matter.)

beachstartup 10y ago
i have a 2009 mac pro. first upgrade: more ram second upgrade: ssd third upgrade: video card and monitor. it's on track to give me 10 years of use now, if not more (i'll probably succumb to upgrade fever before then). knocking on wood. the ram and ssd were a given, but i was surprised at how much more 2d performance the video card delivered. i really just wanted 4k for the real estate, but the actual speed at which it renders everything jumped dramatically.
- avidwriter 10y ago
  2009 Mac Pro 2.66 quad here. just did a 3.46 hex cpu upgrade. 32GB 1333 RAM sm951 AHCI pcie m2 boot drive (700MB/700MB) nvidia 1080 when it comes out. bootcamp for games. 40" 4K Philips in os x for everything else.
  - ulfw 10y ago
    So what is "Mac Pro" in this now? The case and the power supply?
    - rangibaby 10y ago
      The ship of Theseus :-)
    - beachstartup 10y ago
      well the cpu, ram, storage, and video card were never made by apple anyway. the case, motherboard, and other various hard bits and (maybe most importantly) operating system are still apple.
  - frou_dh 10y ago
    If you want ultimate speed then take the RAM module out of Slot 4 because that CPU natively wants a triple-channel arrangement
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - avidwriter 10y ago
      good point, I can probably get by with 24GB.
- pcurve 10y ago
  2006 core 2 duo 6600 dell running just fine here. It's exactly 10 years old. running windows 7. Using HDD and graphic cards so weak it has no fan.
- m_eiman 10y ago
  I have a 2010 iMac that's unbearably slow at the moment, and since I suspect that the hdd is the reason I'm considering upgrading to a 1TB SSD (since I don't want less storage space).. But including installation, that's roughly $400. And spending $400 to prolong the life of an iMac with a fairly crappy GPU seems a lot. But on the other hand a new iMac (with a non-Intel GPU) is $2000 or more. Hard decision!
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Would that $400 investment increase your resale price somewhat (probably not 1:1, but you will get utility out of it). Alternatively, just buy whatever's on sale for small SSDs and do a fusion-drive on it.
    - m_eiman 10y ago
      I'll keep the iMac until it gives up the ghost completely, so resale value isn't a parameter. It's more a question of "will the $400 give it enough longer life to make more sense than buying a new one now". Perhaps I should go with a 500GB SSD and transfer the movies and whatever else is taking up space to the server. And then buy a new iMac once they put the next-gen GPUs in them.
      - Alphasite_ 10y ago
        Why not a hundred dollar ssd and a drive upgrade kit for $50, so you can keep your current drive as well? Or fit a new 3TB drive while you're at it.
    - imtringued 10y ago
      What 1TB SSD costs $400? The 512GB SSD I bought merely cost me $120. The 1TB Model costs a slightly more than twice that. So far I've been completly disappointed with my purchase. Compared to my 3TB HDD I've spent more money yet only see a 2x improvement in speed compared to my HDD for sequential loads. Sure it now boots much faster but that's hardly worth the money I've spent on it.
- Joeri 10y ago
  My 2009 core 2 duo is still running smoothly with maxed out ram and an ssd upgrade. Granted, it doesn't do games, and I wouldn't want to train a neural net on it, but even as a primary desktop it's still nice to use.
wtallis 10y ago
We won't be seeing these charts go to 0 in a few short years. Hard drives are at 2.7¢/GB while SSDs are at 21.9¢/GB, and that gap won't be closed with just one or two generations of NAND even if hard drives don't get any cheaper. We will increasingly see parts of the hard drive market killed off by SSDs, as the market for low-capacity 2.5" drives has been. Hard drives are shifting from being mainstream storage to archive storage, with things like shingled magnetic recording making hard drives inherently more tape-like. That's why Western Digital had to make a big SSD acquisition (SanDisk), and why Seagate needs to grow their SSD offerings by a lot.
- jstx 10y ago
  http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/samsungs-monstrous-15tb-ssd-is-now-shipping/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/samsun... Think again
  - tadfisher 10y ago
    An $8,000 drive only serves to prove this point.
    - danielbarla 10y ago
      That drive certainly is a bit strange. For one, I would imagine lot of the potential performance is wasted by a SAS connector. That said, it might be of interest to enterprises from a few different angles (largest drive available for that form factor, easier to manage, great performance, etc). Anything that widens adoption will serve to drive prices even lower. SSDs don't necessarily beat HDDs on price per GB, they just have to get close enough that enough people don't care anymore. And as the original poster pointed out, for many that's already the case.
      - creshal 10y ago
        > And as the original poster pointed out, for many that's already the case. Because we're seeing, at the same time, a drive away from owning media and instead streaming them, and/or storing data increasingly in The Cloud® and only having a small working set locally. All those off-loaded will have to be stored somewhere by someone, and that someone will most likely keep using spinning rust for its better price. And if you do want to keep all your data locally (e.g. because you're living in Nowhere Innawoods and ISPs struggle to get you 6 MBit/s), HDDs can't keep getting bigger and cheaper fast enough.
pcurve 10y ago
is SSD reliable? With no moving parts, it ssd should be more reliable, but that's not apparently the case. What's your experience? Also, have you seen case of SSD data loss due as result of not powering up for couple years?
- rodgerd 10y ago
  > is SSD reliable? We've returned 25% of the laptops of a particular model because the Kingston SSDs had failed. That's across a sample in the hundreds.
- rincebrain 10y ago
  Close to 100% of the SSD failures I've seen have not been from being left off for a few years, nor from actual flash media failure, but from firmware bugs or, occasionally, mechanical failure. (I've had very small sample size of SSDs not being powered up for a few years, but the few I have powered up after not powering on for years have had all their data retained. Ask me in another 15 years or so, though.)
  - executesorder66 10y ago
    > mechanical failure. How does that happen?
    - MichailP 10y ago
      Crushing the SSD disk or whole laptop :)
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      Connectors are the weak point?
    - mirimir 10y ago
      I had my first computer fire, last year. One of the contacts in an SSD power connector delaminated, causing a short. The SSD was toast. Or at least, the power connector had melted. The power supply was toast. But with a new power supply, the machine itself is fine :)
kdamken 10y ago
I recommend the SSD to all my friends with older macbooks. As a christmas gift I upgraded my girlfriends 2012 macbook to a 512 gb one, and the computer went from barely working/loading anything to feeling like a brand new machine.
- dhcar 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat. Write speed increased 8.5x. Before, apps would take forever to load and respond. Now, it's on par with my work computer - a 2015 MBP.

beachstartup 10y ago

i have a 2009 mac pro. first upgrade: more ram second upgrade: ssd third upgrade: video card and monitor. it's on track to give me 10 years of use now, if not more (i'll probably succumb to upgrade fever before then). knocking on wood. the ram and ssd were a given, but i was surprised at how much more 2d performance the video card delivered. i really just wanted 4k for the real estate, but the actual speed at which it renders everything jumped dramatically.

avidwriter 10y ago
2009 Mac Pro 2.66 quad here. just did a 3.46 hex cpu upgrade. 32GB 1333 RAM sm951 AHCI pcie m2 boot drive (700MB/700MB) nvidia 1080 when it comes out. bootcamp for games. 40" 4K Philips in os x for everything else.
- ulfw 10y ago
  So what is "Mac Pro" in this now? The case and the power supply?
  - rangibaby 10y ago
    The ship of Theseus :-)
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    well the cpu, ram, storage, and video card were never made by apple anyway. the case, motherboard, and other various hard bits and (maybe most importantly) operating system are still apple.
- frou_dh 10y ago
  If you want ultimate speed then take the RAM module out of Slot 4 because that CPU natively wants a triple-channel arrangement
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - avidwriter 10y ago
    good point, I can probably get by with 24GB.
pcurve 10y ago
2006 core 2 duo 6600 dell running just fine here. It's exactly 10 years old. running windows 7. Using HDD and graphic cards so weak it has no fan.
m_eiman 10y ago
I have a 2010 iMac that's unbearably slow at the moment, and since I suspect that the hdd is the reason I'm considering upgrading to a 1TB SSD (since I don't want less storage space).. But including installation, that's roughly $400. And spending $400 to prolong the life of an iMac with a fairly crappy GPU seems a lot. But on the other hand a new iMac (with a non-Intel GPU) is $2000 or more. Hard decision!
- r00fus 10y ago
  Would that $400 investment increase your resale price somewhat (probably not 1:1, but you will get utility out of it). Alternatively, just buy whatever's on sale for small SSDs and do a fusion-drive on it.
  - m_eiman 10y ago
    I'll keep the iMac until it gives up the ghost completely, so resale value isn't a parameter. It's more a question of "will the $400 give it enough longer life to make more sense than buying a new one now". Perhaps I should go with a 500GB SSD and transfer the movies and whatever else is taking up space to the server. And then buy a new iMac once they put the next-gen GPUs in them.
    - Alphasite_ 10y ago
      Why not a hundred dollar ssd and a drive upgrade kit for $50, so you can keep your current drive as well? Or fit a new 3TB drive while you're at it.
  - imtringued 10y ago
    What 1TB SSD costs $400? The 512GB SSD I bought merely cost me $120. The 1TB Model costs a slightly more than twice that. So far I've been completly disappointed with my purchase. Compared to my 3TB HDD I've spent more money yet only see a 2x improvement in speed compared to my HDD for sequential loads. Sure it now boots much faster but that's hardly worth the money I've spent on it.
Joeri 10y ago
My 2009 core 2 duo is still running smoothly with maxed out ram and an ssd upgrade. Granted, it doesn't do games, and I wouldn't want to train a neural net on it, but even as a primary desktop it's still nice to use.

wtallis 10y ago

We won't be seeing these charts go to 0 in a few short years. Hard drives are at 2.7¢/GB while SSDs are at 21.9¢/GB, and that gap won't be closed with just one or two generations of NAND even if hard drives don't get any cheaper. We will increasingly see parts of the hard drive market killed off by SSDs, as the market for low-capacity 2.5" drives has been. Hard drives are shifting from being mainstream storage to archive storage, with things like shingled magnetic recording making hard drives inherently more tape-like. That's why Western Digital had to make a big SSD acquisition (SanDisk), and why Seagate needs to grow their SSD offerings by a lot.

jstx 10y ago
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/samsungs-monstrous-15tb-ssd-is-now-shipping/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/samsun... Think again
- tadfisher 10y ago
  An $8,000 drive only serves to prove this point.
  - danielbarla 10y ago
    That drive certainly is a bit strange. For one, I would imagine lot of the potential performance is wasted by a SAS connector. That said, it might be of interest to enterprises from a few different angles (largest drive available for that form factor, easier to manage, great performance, etc). Anything that widens adoption will serve to drive prices even lower. SSDs don't necessarily beat HDDs on price per GB, they just have to get close enough that enough people don't care anymore. And as the original poster pointed out, for many that's already the case.
    - creshal 10y ago
      > And as the original poster pointed out, for many that's already the case. Because we're seeing, at the same time, a drive away from owning media and instead streaming them, and/or storing data increasingly in The Cloud® and only having a small working set locally. All those off-loaded will have to be stored somewhere by someone, and that someone will most likely keep using spinning rust for its better price. And if you do want to keep all your data locally (e.g. because you're living in Nowhere Innawoods and ISPs struggle to get you 6 MBit/s), HDDs can't keep getting bigger and cheaper fast enough.

pcurve 10y ago

is SSD reliable? With no moving parts, it ssd should be more reliable, but that's not apparently the case. What's your experience? Also, have you seen case of SSD data loss due as result of not powering up for couple years?

rodgerd 10y ago
> is SSD reliable? We've returned 25% of the laptops of a particular model because the Kingston SSDs had failed. That's across a sample in the hundreds.
rincebrain 10y ago
Close to 100% of the SSD failures I've seen have not been from being left off for a few years, nor from actual flash media failure, but from firmware bugs or, occasionally, mechanical failure. (I've had very small sample size of SSDs not being powered up for a few years, but the few I have powered up after not powering on for years have had all their data retained. Ask me in another 15 years or so, though.)
- executesorder66 10y ago
  > mechanical failure. How does that happen?
  - MichailP 10y ago
    Crushing the SSD disk or whole laptop :)
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Connectors are the weak point?
  - mirimir 10y ago
    I had my first computer fire, last year. One of the contacts in an SSD power connector delaminated, causing a short. The SSD was toast. Or at least, the power connector had melted. The power supply was toast. But with a new power supply, the machine itself is fine :)

kdamken 10y ago

I recommend the SSD to all my friends with older macbooks. As a christmas gift I upgraded my girlfriends 2012 macbook to a 512 gb one, and the computer went from barely working/loading anything to feeling like a brand new machine.

dhcar 10y ago
I'm in the same boat. Write speed increased 8.5x. Before, apps would take forever to load and respond. Now, it's on par with my work computer - a 2015 MBP.