5 ms·

So why have hard drives stalled out for the last 3 years? An 850 evo is still the "premier" 2.5” drive and still goes on sale for the same lows it did years ago

by zanny 9y ago

So why have hard drives stalled out for the last 3 years? An 850 evo is still the "premier" 2.5” drive and still goes on sale for the same lows it did years ago - the best deals are around $240/TB. The new nvme drives are a markup from there. 3TB has had low prices of $50-70 for over four years now but 4+TB never creeps lower. About $20 a TB is the best mechanical storage you can get since like 2014. When are we going to see a $100 6TB drive? 8TB? It seems like density has just stopped on both fronts for practical purchases. 10 years ago a terabyte cost $200 - 2 years later it was $100, and 2 years after that $50. But now, the 8+TB drives just stay at that $200 price point. SSDs fell off a cliff in price from 2011 to 2015 and then just completely stopped. Its not a good feeling when it seems Moore's Law has come to a screeching halt across and kinds of components. RAM is 3x more expensive today than 2 years ago. CPUs might see 5% improvement year over year. There hasnt been a substantial new GPU series in almost 3 years. Go back and tell someone in 2006 that in 2016 the PC you build will he just as good as the one in 2018 while bring cheaper and they'd think its impossible progress could grind to such a halt do fast after 40 years of lockstep improvement.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pradn 9y ago
PC Part Picker has charts tracking hard drive prices from September 2016 til present: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/internal-hard-drive/ https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/internal-hard-drive/ The prices seem to have hardly changed in the past year and a half. Hell, the prices for 64 GB SSDs have gone up!
- pishpash 9y ago
  Has the price gone up in real (uninflated) terms?
pishpash 9y ago
There is still Moore's law in mobile devices and card-sized computers. I think we're just seeing a shift in supply-demand and the relevant economies of scale.
bb88 9y ago
I think it's maybe three things. 1. The industry is retooling from HDD To SDD, but they apparently can't keep up with demand for SSD's. So the prices are artificially high. 2. Demand for faster, denser, and lower power SSD's are coming from the cloud providers. So rather than incremental price decreases over time, we're seeing the prices are staying the same, and we're getting incremental technology improvements. The V-Nand technology is the hot new thing, enabling 2TB of storage on a single chip. 3. There's no more serious innovation on the HDD's since SSD's will likely eclipse HDD's in 2021.[1] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/285474/hdds-and-ssds-in-pcs-global-shipments-2012-2017/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/285474/hdds-and-ssds-in-...
- cm2187 9y ago
  Can we really use SSD for long term storage?
  - fleitz 9y ago
    Define long term? 20 years probably not but you probably don’t want to be running a 16GB 3.5in HDD from 1998 either Until you replace it? Definitely.
  - lev99 9y ago
    Long term storage (archive) of sequential data is still being done on tapes in many circumstances. Tapes are more reliable than hard drives, cheaper, and have a faster write speed. Sony announced their highest density tape at 201Gbit/in^2 last year.[0] You can use SSD for long-term storage assuming the data is stored on redundant drives and drive health is checked. It's really only cost effective if you need the data frequently or if you are only archiving a small (1pb or less) amount of data. [0] https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201708/17-070E/index.html https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201708/17-070E/inde...
    - Patient0 9y ago
      Just to clarify: you’re saying that 1pb - 1 petabyte - 1000 TB - is small?
bo1024 9y ago
In my understanding, the following factors are currently in play. * CPUs are a whole issue on their own and the reasons for slow progress are well known. * GPUs have been improving a fair amount, I think, but prices are very high now due to cryptocurrencies, and much of the improvement comes from the large amount of flash memory... * ...SSDs and RAM (flash memory) is staying expensive due to extremely high and growing demand. I have also heard suggestions of collusion among RAM manufacturers, but I don't know. Think about how much new RAM and disk space is added to servers for YouTube and Facebook alone each day. Furthermore, flash memory is in high demand for almost all other computational systems, particularly, phones. * HDDs seem to have, to some extent, hit a limit on how well the technology can perform, and demand for storage is very high (see above). Perhaps manufacturers are reluctant to invest further knowing that SSD technology is catching up?
tagrun 9y ago
Similar is true for HDD BTW. Consumer grade HDDs are stuck at 8TB since 2015, and their prices keep hovering at around $200. But it's not due to lack of technical progress. There are 10TB, 12TB, 14TB drives out there, but there is a huge gap in per-GB cost for them since they're marketed for enterprise users. It almost looks like they're trying to milk HDDs as much as possible for exorbitant prices when they still have some chance until at least SSD manufactures start lowering the prices to a competitive level (their excuse is manufacturing can't keep up with the demand, which also reads to me "why would we lower the prices when there's so strong demand").

by zanny 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pradn 9y ago

PC Part Picker has charts tracking hard drive prices from September 2016 til present: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/internal-hard-drive/ https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/internal-hard-drive/ The prices seem to have hardly changed in the past year and a half. Hell, the prices for 64 GB SSDs have gone up!

pishpash 9y ago
Has the price gone up in real (uninflated) terms?

pishpash 9y ago

There is still Moore's law in mobile devices and card-sized computers. I think we're just seeing a shift in supply-demand and the relevant economies of scale.

bb88 9y ago

I think it's maybe three things. 1. The industry is retooling from HDD To SDD, but they apparently can't keep up with demand for SSD's. So the prices are artificially high. 2. Demand for faster, denser, and lower power SSD's are coming from the cloud providers. So rather than incremental price decreases over time, we're seeing the prices are staying the same, and we're getting incremental technology improvements. The V-Nand technology is the hot new thing, enabling 2TB of storage on a single chip. 3. There's no more serious innovation on the HDD's since SSD's will likely eclipse HDD's in 2021.[1] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/285474/hdds-and-ssds-in-pcs-global-shipments-2012-2017/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/285474/hdds-and-ssds-in-...

cm2187 9y ago
Can we really use SSD for long term storage?
- fleitz 9y ago
  Define long term? 20 years probably not but you probably don’t want to be running a 16GB 3.5in HDD from 1998 either Until you replace it? Definitely.
- lev99 9y ago
  Long term storage (archive) of sequential data is still being done on tapes in many circumstances. Tapes are more reliable than hard drives, cheaper, and have a faster write speed. Sony announced their highest density tape at 201Gbit/in^2 last year.[0] You can use SSD for long-term storage assuming the data is stored on redundant drives and drive health is checked. It's really only cost effective if you need the data frequently or if you are only archiving a small (1pb or less) amount of data. [0] https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201708/17-070E/index.html https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201708/17-070E/inde...
  - Patient0 9y ago
    Just to clarify: you’re saying that 1pb - 1 petabyte - 1000 TB - is small?

bo1024 9y ago

In my understanding, the following factors are currently in play. * CPUs are a whole issue on their own and the reasons for slow progress are well known. * GPUs have been improving a fair amount, I think, but prices are very high now due to cryptocurrencies, and much of the improvement comes from the large amount of flash memory... * ...SSDs and RAM (flash memory) is staying expensive due to extremely high and growing demand. I have also heard suggestions of collusion among RAM manufacturers, but I don't know. Think about how much new RAM and disk space is added to servers for YouTube and Facebook alone each day. Furthermore, flash memory is in high demand for almost all other computational systems, particularly, phones. * HDDs seem to have, to some extent, hit a limit on how well the technology can perform, and demand for storage is very high (see above). Perhaps manufacturers are reluctant to invest further knowing that SSD technology is catching up?

tagrun 9y ago

Similar is true for HDD BTW. Consumer grade HDDs are stuck at 8TB since 2015, and their prices keep hovering at around $200. But it's not due to lack of technical progress. There are 10TB, 12TB, 14TB drives out there, but there is a huge gap in per-GB cost for them since they're marketed for enterprise users. It almost looks like they're trying to milk HDDs as much as possible for exorbitant prices when they still have some chance until at least SSD manufactures start lowering the prices to a competitive level (their excuse is manufacturing can't keep up with the demand, which also reads to me "why would we lower the prices when there's so strong demand").