5 ms·

Like to hear everyone's guesstimate on when/if the $/TB of SSD will cross over the HDD.

by srcmap 8y ago

koala_man 8y ago
I don't know about $/TB, but SSDs are already cheaper for 128GB and below (i.e. for most non-HN people's personal needs)
- bluedino 8y ago
  What’s the smallest HD in production these days? 500GB?
  - koala_man 8y ago
    It's not a very rigorous answer, but I sorted HDDs on Newegg by price ascending, and the cheapest one was 1TB @ 44USD. There were several 128 and 120GB SSDs below that.
    - heavenlyblue 8y ago
      You can buy used multiples of 6TB SAS on ebay. I've seen 4x6TB/£450. If I were to build a home NAS - I'd probably use these. It's harder, by the way - to find proper cheaper SATA drives, on the other hand.
      - zeroisnowfour 8y ago
        There must be something wrong with them then. Everyone knows data can be recovered and or decrypted and sane practice is to physically destroy them when they fail/obsolete.
  - colejohnson66 8y ago
    I've seen 500GB on Amazon, but you can get a 1TB for only a few bucks more.
wmf 8y ago
Never, because if it did cross over suddenly flash demand would surge by 10x and then there'd be a massive shortage, pushing the price back up. https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/flash-vs-disk-again.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/flash-vs-disk-again.html
- tfha 8y ago
  No. If it costs less to produce, you'd just increase production until one passed the other. The demand surge might delay the inevitable for a year or two, but fabs would catch up and then the HDD would retire. dshr misses the mark a lot of the time.
  - ksec 8y ago
    >No. If it costs less to produce, The point is it doesn't, and not anytime soon.
    - tsenkov 8y ago
      It may never cost lower to produce in the environment in which both are massively available as manufacturing. But it may happen that manufacturers concentrate on flash storage (could be better profit margins, could be bigger demand from corporations or IAAS operators, could be many other things) and thus, in a cascading way make prices of disks higher for manufacturing, due to limited supply of materials, machines, trained workers for manufacturing of disks. The only way I see the current status quo to be static by definition is if there is indeed a (above-mentioned) shortage of some raw material that would prevent the switch. Can someone comment on what exactly that shortage would be? Edit: I read the linked post (didn't see this before, sorry). TL;DR - it's just lack of enough manufacturing and issues with building more fabs.
      - ksec 8y ago
        Fabs are expensive. The article already points out NAND is reaching its limits. What those fantasies about NAND stack that could do 1024 or 2048 layers may never appears. At least in the next 5 years. Basically we have used up all of the tricks. ( For now ) Assuming a 128 Layer yield is good enough and solvable within the next 3 - 4 years. Micron is only just started shipping 96 layers and may take another 2 - 3 years for it to be mainstream. QLC only brings 33% capacity improvement over TLC at the expense of much lower write cycles and slower latency. Node scaling are also much more expensive, we don't have the node scaling with density increase while per transistor is half anymore. Build more Fabs? Well China is pouring in $100B to brute force this problem. Nothing has come out of it just yet. And if it wasn't China, who has the incentive to build expensive Fabs, with little to no expertise in memory, patents, for a possible profits margin where its industry has a habit of cycles or long losses? I.e High Risk TSMC ex-CEO Morris mentioned it multiple times, their company will not produce DRAM or NAND. While the three DRAM and NAND manufacturer are well aware of what China is trying to do, and are milking the market for as long as they could. No where in the NAND 5 years roadmap points to it being technically feasible, and economically feasible that is could be cheaper then HDD in the 5 years AFTER the current 5 years roadmap. I.e Nothing is showing it could happen in the next 10 years. While the HDD camp, Western Digital has the roadmap and tech, that they can reach 40 to 80TB per HDD in the next 8 years. So I have no idea what I am getting downvoted. Not to mention one of the poster is correct about how cheaper NAND and higher demand will means prices go up higher. That is like those people who keeps talking about OLED replacing LCD, nothing in the roadmap, of all possibilities show OLED will even be the same price as LCD within the next 5 years. The most optimistic forecast has it being double the price of LCD within 5 years. That is including the printable OLED that Sharp is investing in.

Like to hear everyone's guesstimate on when/if the $/TB of SSD will cross over the HDD.

by srcmap 8y ago

Like to hear everyone's guesstimate on when/if the $/TB of SSD will cross over the HDD.

I don't know about $/TB, but SSDs are already cheaper for 128GB and below (i.e. for most non-HN people's personal needs)

bluedino 8y ago
What’s the smallest HD in production these days? 500GB?
- koala_man 8y ago
  It's not a very rigorous answer, but I sorted HDDs on Newegg by price ascending, and the cheapest one was 1TB @ 44USD. There were several 128 and 120GB SSDs below that.
  - heavenlyblue 8y ago
    You can buy used multiples of 6TB SAS on ebay. I've seen 4x6TB/£450. If I were to build a home NAS - I'd probably use these. It's harder, by the way - to find proper cheaper SATA drives, on the other hand.
    - zeroisnowfour 8y ago
      There must be something wrong with them then. Everyone knows data can be recovered and or decrypted and sane practice is to physically destroy them when they fail/obsolete.
- colejohnson66 8y ago
  I've seen 500GB on Amazon, but you can get a 1TB for only a few bucks more.

wmf 8y ago

Never, because if it did cross over suddenly flash demand would surge by 10x and then there'd be a massive shortage, pushing the price back up. https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/flash-vs-disk-again.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/flash-vs-disk-again.html

tfha 8y ago
No. If it costs less to produce, you'd just increase production until one passed the other. The demand surge might delay the inevitable for a year or two, but fabs would catch up and then the HDD would retire. dshr misses the mark a lot of the time.
- ksec 8y ago
  >No. If it costs less to produce, The point is it doesn't, and not anytime soon.
  - tsenkov 8y ago
    It may never cost lower to produce in the environment in which both are massively available as manufacturing. But it may happen that manufacturers concentrate on flash storage (could be better profit margins, could be bigger demand from corporations or IAAS operators, could be many other things) and thus, in a cascading way make prices of disks higher for manufacturing, due to limited supply of materials, machines, trained workers for manufacturing of disks. The only way I see the current status quo to be static by definition is if there is indeed a (above-mentioned) shortage of some raw material that would prevent the switch. Can someone comment on what exactly that shortage would be? Edit: I read the linked post (didn't see this before, sorry). TL;DR - it's just lack of enough manufacturing and issues with building more fabs.
    - ksec 8y ago
      Fabs are expensive. The article already points out NAND is reaching its limits. What those fantasies about NAND stack that could do 1024 or 2048 layers may never appears. At least in the next 5 years. Basically we have used up all of the tricks. ( For now ) Assuming a 128 Layer yield is good enough and solvable within the next 3 - 4 years. Micron is only just started shipping 96 layers and may take another 2 - 3 years for it to be mainstream. QLC only brings 33% capacity improvement over TLC at the expense of much lower write cycles and slower latency. Node scaling are also much more expensive, we don't have the node scaling with density increase while per transistor is half anymore. Build more Fabs? Well China is pouring in $100B to brute force this problem. Nothing has come out of it just yet. And if it wasn't China, who has the incentive to build expensive Fabs, with little to no expertise in memory, patents, for a possible profits margin where its industry has a habit of cycles or long losses? I.e High Risk TSMC ex-CEO Morris mentioned it multiple times, their company will not produce DRAM or NAND. While the three DRAM and NAND manufacturer are well aware of what China is trying to do, and are milking the market for as long as they could. No where in the NAND 5 years roadmap points to it being technically feasible, and economically feasible that is could be cheaper then HDD in the 5 years AFTER the current 5 years roadmap. I.e Nothing is showing it could happen in the next 10 years. While the HDD camp, Western Digital has the roadmap and tech, that they can reach 40 to 80TB per HDD in the next 8 years. So I have no idea what I am getting downvoted. Not to mention one of the poster is correct about how cheaper NAND and higher demand will means prices go up higher. That is like those people who keeps talking about OLED replacing LCD, nothing in the roadmap, of all possibilities show OLED will even be the same price as LCD within the next 5 years. The most optimistic forecast has it being double the price of LCD within 5 years. That is including the printable OLED that Sharp is investing in.