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There's a clear regime shift in the slope pre/post Thai floods. It's not a surprise that the floods set back Kryder's law by years, but does anyone have any ins

by gwern 9y ago

There's a clear regime shift in the slope pre/post Thai floods. It's not a surprise that the floods set back Kryder's law by years, but does anyone have any insight in why it would affect the rate of progress and switch hard drives to a much slower rate of improvement? Surely the floods wouldn't still affect investment or R&D? Or is the timing merely a coincidence and reflect consumer demand being saturated, switches to SSD etc?

briffle 9y ago
There was also some consolidation at that same time. For example, Western Digital purchased Hitachi in 2012. At around the same time, Fujitsu, Lacie, and Samsung also were acquired. http://www.itcandor.com/hard-disk-suppliers/ http://www.itcandor.com/hard-disk-suppliers/
- rb808 9y ago
  Yeah I had to buy a new HD recently and was a little shocked that there are only really 2 manufacturers + Toshiba. No wonder prices aren't great.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    Yep, the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manu... has an excellent "consolidation diagram": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manufacturers#/media/File:Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Drive_Manufacturer_Consolidation.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manu...
  - fnj 9y ago
    Why do you phrase it "2 manufacturers + Toshiba"? Why not just "3 manufacturers"?
    - rb808 9y ago
      Agreed its a little weird, but if you look at best sellers the first Toshiba is on the 3rd page. https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Internal-Hard-Drives/zgbs/electronics/1254762011 https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Internal-Har...
    - antisthenes 9y ago
      AFAIK Toshiba is the smallest one of the 3, it is not their primary business, and there's a high likelihood of their HDD business being sold off to one of the 2 big ones in the near future.
- chx 9y ago
  Lacie, as far as I am aware, never manufactured their own hard drives. Look here for example in 2006 http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,85231,85262 http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,85231,85262 > Thank you for your email. We use a few different manufacturers, so we would not be able to tell you which drives go to which item (except the 500GB drives which are Hitachi). In general we do use Western Digital, Seagate, and we did use Maxtor before they were bought by Western Digital. For DVDs, we use Samsung. Wikipedia says , much earlier: > As a subsidiary of Quantum, La Cie was licensed as the exclusive manufacturer of Apple-branded external SCSI hard drives, using Quantum hard disks.
  - Theodores 9y ago
    This confirms what I remember. A 3D modeller I worked with was deeply upset when Maxtor took over Quantum as the 2Gb SCSI disks that were carried around at the time were LaCie, apparently with Quantum disks which were allegedly the best for replaying video frames. At the time I did not know LaCie was owned by Quantum. Back then there wasn't the internet to quickly Google brands so you only had marketing information to go on.
    - chx 9y ago
      o_O Maxtor purchased Quantum in October 2000. This is the same month when Adwords left beta. What the heck are you talk of? By 2000 home broadband is beginnning to spread, dial up Internet is everyday in most of the so called developed world.
  - giobox 9y ago
    I'd always assumed La Cie's storage business model the past however many decades was to take stock drives from other manufacturers and put them in nicely designed enclosures. The premium on their stuff has always seemed to correlate to the nicer materials and design on the cases, not the drives themselves. I guess occasionally they also seem to tap the early adopter market when a new storage interconnect comes out (FireWire 800, Thunderbolt etc). They often seem to be one of the first out of the gate with support when Apple add a new port.
codemac 9y ago
A LOT happened in the ~2011 -> ~2013 timeframe, including the largest consolidation in hard drive manufacturing history (outside of maybe ~1992). Toshiba acquired Fujitsu's HDD business in 2010. Seagate acquired Samsung's HDD business in 2011 (remember they acquired Maxtor in 2006 as well). Western Digital acquired the HGST group in 2012 (makers of the best damned 2TiB drive I've ever seen in my life) You're left with 3 hard drive manufacturers, of which two are major SSD vendors for enterprise. This reduction to 3 vendors has a lot more to do with pricing than almost anything related to consumers's HDD purchases (who's growth since 2010 is something like 8%, it'd be better to invest in S&P 500 then run an entire consumer hard drive business)
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  How many people were buying Fujitsu, Samsung and HGST drives before the acquisitions? My impression was that most people were buying Seagate and WD drives for a long time, and the rest were bit players. So I'm not sure how much the aquisition actually changed in the market. It effectively wasn't very competitive to begin with. Much like the CPU market, where Intel and AMD are the only two big players. Or the desktop operating system market, divided mainly between Microsoft and Apple.
  - jrnichols 9y ago
    > How many people were buying Fujitsu, Samsung and HGST drives before the acquisitions? People? Not sure. But I was seeing a ton of Fujitsu and HGST drives in Dell and Apple stuff.
  - codemac 9y ago
    > How many people were buying Fujitsu, Samsung and HGST drives before the acquisitions? Many many many. But the purchasers weren't consumers or even businesses, but other storage vendors higher up the value chain (see: emc, netapp, etc).
Analemma_ 9y ago
I think it's a "perfect storm" of all of the above. All around the same time, there were the floods, consolidation in the market reducing competition, and the large consumer shift to SSDs (and probably consumers "topping out" and deciding 4 TB drives are enough). IMO the last effect is the largest. In any technology, the continuous cost decreases we're used to rely critically on a constant stream of consumer dollars, especially as the low-hanging fruit is plucked and you have to work harder to get further improvements. HDD companies know the writing is on the wall and that huge investments in R&D are going to take longer to pay back as the consumer market dries up.
frik 9y ago
Is it just the flood? Or is it cloud providers and big data corps were buying all HDDs they could get - and the consumer market got the remaining rest
magila 9y ago
What happened at about the same time as the Thai floods is that areal density hit a brick wall. The timing is just a coincidence. The reason that 4TB remains the cheapest capacity is that it turns out 4TB is the most you can store using a conventional four platter drive, which is the most efficient configuration to manufacture. AFAIK all 6TB drives have five platters which of course costs more to make. 8TB drives are either six platters in a helium filled case or five platters with shingled recording, the former being expensive and the latter having significant performance implications. Fortunately for Backblaze, their use case is relatively well suited for singled drives which is what makes 8TB drives economical for them.

by gwern 9y ago

briffle 9y ago

There was also some consolidation at that same time. For example, Western Digital purchased Hitachi in 2012. At around the same time, Fujitsu, Lacie, and Samsung also were acquired. http://www.itcandor.com/hard-disk-suppliers/ http://www.itcandor.com/hard-disk-suppliers/

rb808 9y ago
Yeah I had to buy a new HD recently and was a little shocked that there are only really 2 manufacturers + Toshiba. No wonder prices aren't great.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  Yep, the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manu... has an excellent "consolidation diagram": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manufacturers#/media/File:Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Drive_Manufacturer_Consolidation.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manu...
- fnj 9y ago
  Why do you phrase it "2 manufacturers + Toshiba"? Why not just "3 manufacturers"?
  - rb808 9y ago
    Agreed its a little weird, but if you look at best sellers the first Toshiba is on the 3rd page. https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Internal-Hard-Drives/zgbs/electronics/1254762011 https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Internal-Har...
  - antisthenes 9y ago
    AFAIK Toshiba is the smallest one of the 3, it is not their primary business, and there's a high likelihood of their HDD business being sold off to one of the 2 big ones in the near future.
chx 9y ago
Lacie, as far as I am aware, never manufactured their own hard drives. Look here for example in 2006 http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,85231,85262 http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,85231,85262 > Thank you for your email. We use a few different manufacturers, so we would not be able to tell you which drives go to which item (except the 500GB drives which are Hitachi). In general we do use Western Digital, Seagate, and we did use Maxtor before they were bought by Western Digital. For DVDs, we use Samsung. Wikipedia says , much earlier: > As a subsidiary of Quantum, La Cie was licensed as the exclusive manufacturer of Apple-branded external SCSI hard drives, using Quantum hard disks.
- Theodores 9y ago
  This confirms what I remember. A 3D modeller I worked with was deeply upset when Maxtor took over Quantum as the 2Gb SCSI disks that were carried around at the time were LaCie, apparently with Quantum disks which were allegedly the best for replaying video frames. At the time I did not know LaCie was owned by Quantum. Back then there wasn't the internet to quickly Google brands so you only had marketing information to go on.
  - chx 9y ago
    o_O Maxtor purchased Quantum in October 2000. This is the same month when Adwords left beta. What the heck are you talk of? By 2000 home broadband is beginnning to spread, dial up Internet is everyday in most of the so called developed world.
- giobox 9y ago
  I'd always assumed La Cie's storage business model the past however many decades was to take stock drives from other manufacturers and put them in nicely designed enclosures. The premium on their stuff has always seemed to correlate to the nicer materials and design on the cases, not the drives themselves. I guess occasionally they also seem to tap the early adopter market when a new storage interconnect comes out (FireWire 800, Thunderbolt etc). They often seem to be one of the first out of the gate with support when Apple add a new port.

codemac 9y ago

A LOT happened in the ~2011 -> ~2013 timeframe, including the largest consolidation in hard drive manufacturing history (outside of maybe ~1992). Toshiba acquired Fujitsu's HDD business in 2010. Seagate acquired Samsung's HDD business in 2011 (remember they acquired Maxtor in 2006 as well). Western Digital acquired the HGST group in 2012 (makers of the best damned 2TiB drive I've ever seen in my life) You're left with 3 hard drive manufacturers, of which two are major SSD vendors for enterprise. This reduction to 3 vendors has a lot more to do with pricing than almost anything related to consumers's HDD purchases (who's growth since 2010 is something like 8%, it'd be better to invest in S&P 500 then run an entire consumer hard drive business)

pmoriarty 9y ago
How many people were buying Fujitsu, Samsung and HGST drives before the acquisitions? My impression was that most people were buying Seagate and WD drives for a long time, and the rest were bit players. So I'm not sure how much the aquisition actually changed in the market. It effectively wasn't very competitive to begin with. Much like the CPU market, where Intel and AMD are the only two big players. Or the desktop operating system market, divided mainly between Microsoft and Apple.
- jrnichols 9y ago
  > How many people were buying Fujitsu, Samsung and HGST drives before the acquisitions? People? Not sure. But I was seeing a ton of Fujitsu and HGST drives in Dell and Apple stuff.
- codemac 9y ago
  > How many people were buying Fujitsu, Samsung and HGST drives before the acquisitions? Many many many. But the purchasers weren't consumers or even businesses, but other storage vendors higher up the value chain (see: emc, netapp, etc).

Analemma_ 9y ago

I think it's a "perfect storm" of all of the above. All around the same time, there were the floods, consolidation in the market reducing competition, and the large consumer shift to SSDs (and probably consumers "topping out" and deciding 4 TB drives are enough). IMO the last effect is the largest. In any technology, the continuous cost decreases we're used to rely critically on a constant stream of consumer dollars, especially as the low-hanging fruit is plucked and you have to work harder to get further improvements. HDD companies know the writing is on the wall and that huge investments in R&D are going to take longer to pay back as the consumer market dries up.

frik 9y ago

Is it just the flood? Or is it cloud providers and big data corps were buying all HDDs they could get - and the consumer market got the remaining rest

magila 9y ago

What happened at about the same time as the Thai floods is that areal density hit a brick wall. The timing is just a coincidence. The reason that 4TB remains the cheapest capacity is that it turns out 4TB is the most you can store using a conventional four platter drive, which is the most efficient configuration to manufacture. AFAIK all 6TB drives have five platters which of course costs more to make. 8TB drives are either six platters in a helium filled case or five platters with shingled recording, the former being expensive and the latter having significant performance implications. Fortunately for Backblaze, their use case is relatively well suited for singled drives which is what makes 8TB drives economical for them.