8 ms·

I've been following the news and it's amazing how SSDs are still progressing, a bit slower but similar to Moore's Law. Prices for Samsung SSD 1TB external USB p

I've been following the news and it's amazing how SSDs are still progressing, a bit slower but similar to Moore's Law. Prices for Samsung SSD 1TB external USB products: - 2015 $600: Samsung T1 http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/samsung-portable-ssd-t1-review-1tb-price-speed-capacity-security/ http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/samsung-portable-ssd... - 2016 $430: Samsung T3 https://www.storagereview.com/samsung_portable_ssd_t3_review https://www.storagereview.com/samsung_portable_ssd_t3_review - 2018 $200: Samsung T5 https://www.androidheadlines.com/2018/12/samsung-t5-portable-ssd-1tb-198-amazon-holiday-deals-2018.html https://www.androidheadlines.com/2018/12/samsung-t5-portable... Another incredible exciting point is the amount of competition coming up, it's not just 2-3 large vendors anymore. If things continue at this pace it seems sensible to expect a 10TB SSD consumer drive for under $1000 within a couple of years. Note: not afiliated at all, just a happy consumer.

baroffoos 8y ago
I await the day I can fill my NAS with SSDs. Might save on power usage as well.
- elorant 8y ago
  Not sure if it's a good idea though. SSDs tend to fail without warning. I guess that's why we have RAID but still I wouldn't want my backup storage to be so volatile.
  - ggm 8y ago
    You think HDD can't fail without warning? OK, I get that SSD don't implement S.M.A.R.T but..
    - segfaultbuserr 8y ago
      > I get that SSD don't implement S.M.A.R.T Despite the S.M.A.R.T data is less predictive on SSDs, they do have it, at least for SATA disks...
      - ggm 8y ago
        In which case, even less reason to hate on SSD for home storage in RAID shells. I have a spun-down RAID farm as longterm. It's worrying me that the unit the disks are in is a SPARC based motherboard now over 10 years old. Those caps don't last forever.
        Fronzie 8y ago
        and the magnetized bits on an HDD have an expected livetime of 25 years. Unless read-and-rewritten every so many years
      - Unklejoe 8y ago
        NVMe drives have it as well, at least the Samsung ones. You can read it on Linux by running: "nvme smart-log /dev/nvmeX"
        wtallis 8y ago
        smartmontools can grab most of that info too, even on Windows.
    - MartijnBraam 8y ago
      SSDs do implement smart and usually do give an early warning. I've destroyed a few Samsung 840 Evo drives in a few servers and didn't lose a single byte. Failure condition was a very degraded read speed. It took a few hours to copy the 120GB to a fresh SSD
- glitchc 8y ago
  SSDs consume more, not less power, to comparable spinning HDs, especially in always-on scenarios. Once started, the amount of power required to keep a platter spinning is miniscule.
  - bufferoverflow 8y ago
    I don't think that's true https://techreport.com/r.x/wd-red-4tb/power-idle.gif https://techreport.com/r.x/wd-red-4tb/power-idle.gif
    - imtringued 8y ago
      Those HDDs have more than 10 times more capacity. This means you need more than 10 times as many SSDs. Even with the most efficient 0.5W SSD that means all 10 of them would consume 5W which HDDs still manage to beat. In reality that 0.5W SSD is an outlier and they consume 1W so in truth the power consumption is closer to 10W for the same amount of storage. That's above the least efficient HDD. Perhaps bigger SSDs enjoy similar "economies of scale" but what you linked tells a completely different story.
      - bufferoverflow 8y ago
        No. Actually the image I posted before is outdated. Modern 1TB/2TB SSDs consume a lot less. Milliwatts. https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9451/75923.png https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9451/75923.png Full article: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-evo-ssd-review/9 https://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-...
- gammateam 8y ago
  I had planned on doing this but even with gigabit wifi, and half gigabit transfer speeds for the SSD, NAS encryption algorithms seems to cap the transmission speeds to around 100 megabytes per second I have all the parts I just haven't formatted my SSDs to go into the NAS yet and I'm not sure if I will
  - oofabz 8y ago
    Even if the throughput is no better, SSDs will have much better latency and IOPS.
    - fro0116 8y ago
      Not to mention sheer storage density that has already far outpaced spinning disks (just not at an affordable price, yet): https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/2/20/17031256/worlds-largest-ssd-drive-samsung-30-terabyte-pm1643 https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/2/20/17031256/w... This thing is 30TB in 2.5" format, while the largest capacity HDD I can remember hearing about is 15TB, and that's in a 3.5" format, which is about double in physical volume and weight. I can't wait for the day when something like this becomes economical, so I can stick two of them in a compact portable NAS for 30TB of redundant storage that I can bring with me anywhere. Not to mention, SSDs on average seem to have more predictable failure modes that scale based mostly on usage, and tend to be overall more reliable than HDDs that can often suddenly die on you with no warning.
  - zamadatix 8y ago
    100 megabytes per second sounds more like the limit of a gigabit connection than an encryption algorithm. Most NAS boxes of the last 5 years should be doing encryption offload on the CPU via things like AES-NI instructions which should be hitting ~500 MB/s per core.
    - gammateam 8y ago
      Figured someone would say that I can get 400 megaBYTES per second on my iphone from external sources Inside my network I can get faster Dont want the NAS to be a bottleneck for my wireless convenience edit: still megabits
WaltPurvis 8y ago
I'm surprised how quickly prices are falling. I purchased a 500GB EVO 860 only 7 months ago for $139.99. Just checked and it's currently $82.99. For only $8 more than I paid for that 500GB SSD, I could now get a 1 TB SSD. (Naturally, I've barely used that drive, which was slated for secondary storage, and now I wish I had waited.)
- segfaultbuserr 8y ago
  In June 2015, I found the price of a 1 TB SSD was 400 USD, and in December, the price had fallen to 300 USD. In June 2017, I checked the price again and found it was 250 USD. I've put the numbers in my calculator to perform a curve-fitting using the exponential function, and it suggested that "I'll be able to purchase a 1 TB SSD for ~140 USD in 18 months", and I left the number a future note. Now, it turned out the regression analysis was almost correct (only for unnamed cheaper brands for now, I expect more reliable products are coming soon). The "Moore's Law" is really working.
  - wtallis 8y ago
    I'm seeing $135 for a Crucial MX500 1TB or WD Blue 1TB (and lower during the recent holiday sales), so we've already hit your target with name-brand drives from major retailers like Amazon and Newegg.
  - WaltPurvis 8y ago
    It's pretty much there —- the Samsung EVO 860 1 TB is $147 at Amazon.
- disishhsha 8y ago
  I wouldn’t worry about it. If you barely use it, what are the odds you’ll ever fill it up? And if you do fill it up, SSDs will be even cheaper then.
memco 8y ago
Meanwhile Apple is charging $1,200 for a 1 TB MacBook upgrade. Hoping this year we see a significant jump in consumer availability of these drives. I’ve been using a 512gb laptop since 2010 at least. Would be nice to start seeing multi-terrabyte drives in devices besides after market or external drives.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  What would consumer availability have to do with the $1000 apple tax? 1tb SSD are already significantly cheaper than what they are charging. They don't seem to base their pricing on cogs.
  - arcticbull 8y ago
    This is the new Apple RAM surcharge — remember back when Apple let you swap out DIMMs, they would charge 3-5x market rate betting you wouldn’t. Now they’re doing it on SSDs but you can’t get away :) If you follow the r/buildapcsales it’s pretty eats to get a 1TB 2.5” SSD from a top manufacturer for under $120, and M.2 for $20-30 more. I just got a Crucial MX500 1TB for $114 all in.
    - ganoushoreilly 8y ago
      I would counter that the SSD's aren't entirely the same. The most comparable consumer NVME M.2 would be the 960 pro and it's still around $300. Definitely cheaper than Apple, but it's also not in the $150 range for the same performance.
      - vehementi 8y ago
        99% of the time SSDs are a boolean: "Do you have a SSD? Yes/No" and performance between different SSDs is basically unnoticeable. Change my mind
        arcticbull 8y ago
        Definitely relative to a hard drive. Relative to each other what really matters are your 4K random read/write IOPS and some measure of reliability. Back in the day there were in fact huge differences between certain SSDs (Samsung controllers vs. Indilinx Barefoot [1] back in the early '10s). Today it's a non-issue. SSDs years ago saturated the SATA III bus with respect to peak transfers. We're talking an order of magnitude these days, with SATA capping out at 550-600MB/s burst (my MX500) vs NVMe's 3GB/sec (970 PRO). That doesn't paint the real picture to a large extent because 4K random IO is still <<100MB/s in either case. Large DRAM buffers vs. unbuffered can make a big difference too. Reliability these days from any of the big players is usually very good, since their NAND only comes from a handful of big players -- ditto for the controllers. I guess if you buy shady "Kingston" knockoff SSDs with recycled NAND that's a different matter. tl:dr; yep, you're right. Any modern SSD from a big player is a good bet, beyond that it's just gamesmanship.
woolvalley 8y ago
I wouldn't use external SSDs as the price benchmark, since they had a big price premium over an equivalent mSATA SSD back then. For example, I bought a 1TB samsung mSATA SSD in 2015 for about $320 and it's enclosure for $15. The equivalent SSD today is about $150. So instead of a 3x price decrease in the past 3 years, it's more like a 2x price decrease.
- bluedino 8y ago
  mSATA SSD's are so rare these days
  - wtallis 8y ago
    True, but Samsung is still making them. A 1TB mSATA 860 EVO is currently only $3 more than the M.2 SATA version of the same, so it's still a reasonable comparison against drives from several years ago. (However, both mSATA and M.2 SATA versions of the 860 EVO are more expensive than the 2.5" version that faces far more competition.)
- franciscop 8y ago
  I agree, there is more overhead. But since I'm interested mainly in external SSDs I'm tracking those :) Please feel free to create a similar list with 2.5", mSATA or m.2 drives, it probably is even more shocking. The other awesome thing about those 3 I linked is that the interface also has changed: Micro USB 3.0 => UBS-C Gen 1 => Thunderbolt.

baroffoos 8y ago

I await the day I can fill my NAS with SSDs. Might save on power usage as well.

elorant 8y ago
Not sure if it's a good idea though. SSDs tend to fail without warning. I guess that's why we have RAID but still I wouldn't want my backup storage to be so volatile.
- ggm 8y ago
  You think HDD can't fail without warning? OK, I get that SSD don't implement S.M.A.R.T but..
  - segfaultbuserr 8y ago
    > I get that SSD don't implement S.M.A.R.T Despite the S.M.A.R.T data is less predictive on SSDs, they do have it, at least for SATA disks...
    - ggm 8y ago
      In which case, even less reason to hate on SSD for home storage in RAID shells. I have a spun-down RAID farm as longterm. It's worrying me that the unit the disks are in is a SPARC based motherboard now over 10 years old. Those caps don't last forever.
      - Fronzie 8y ago
        and the magnetized bits on an HDD have an expected livetime of 25 years. Unless read-and-rewritten every so many years
    - Unklejoe 8y ago
      NVMe drives have it as well, at least the Samsung ones. You can read it on Linux by running: "nvme smart-log /dev/nvmeX"
      - wtallis 8y ago
        smartmontools can grab most of that info too, even on Windows.
  - MartijnBraam 8y ago
    SSDs do implement smart and usually do give an early warning. I've destroyed a few Samsung 840 Evo drives in a few servers and didn't lose a single byte. Failure condition was a very degraded read speed. It took a few hours to copy the 120GB to a fresh SSD
glitchc 8y ago
SSDs consume more, not less power, to comparable spinning HDs, especially in always-on scenarios. Once started, the amount of power required to keep a platter spinning is miniscule.
- bufferoverflow 8y ago
  I don't think that's true https://techreport.com/r.x/wd-red-4tb/power-idle.gif https://techreport.com/r.x/wd-red-4tb/power-idle.gif
  - imtringued 8y ago
    Those HDDs have more than 10 times more capacity. This means you need more than 10 times as many SSDs. Even with the most efficient 0.5W SSD that means all 10 of them would consume 5W which HDDs still manage to beat. In reality that 0.5W SSD is an outlier and they consume 1W so in truth the power consumption is closer to 10W for the same amount of storage. That's above the least efficient HDD. Perhaps bigger SSDs enjoy similar "economies of scale" but what you linked tells a completely different story.
    - bufferoverflow 8y ago
      No. Actually the image I posted before is outdated. Modern 1TB/2TB SSDs consume a lot less. Milliwatts. https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9451/75923.png https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9451/75923.png Full article: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-evo-ssd-review/9 https://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-...
gammateam 8y ago
I had planned on doing this but even with gigabit wifi, and half gigabit transfer speeds for the SSD, NAS encryption algorithms seems to cap the transmission speeds to around 100 megabytes per second I have all the parts I just haven't formatted my SSDs to go into the NAS yet and I'm not sure if I will
- oofabz 8y ago
  Even if the throughput is no better, SSDs will have much better latency and IOPS.
  - fro0116 8y ago
    Not to mention sheer storage density that has already far outpaced spinning disks (just not at an affordable price, yet): https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/2/20/17031256/worlds-largest-ssd-drive-samsung-30-terabyte-pm1643 https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/2/20/17031256/w... This thing is 30TB in 2.5" format, while the largest capacity HDD I can remember hearing about is 15TB, and that's in a 3.5" format, which is about double in physical volume and weight. I can't wait for the day when something like this becomes economical, so I can stick two of them in a compact portable NAS for 30TB of redundant storage that I can bring with me anywhere. Not to mention, SSDs on average seem to have more predictable failure modes that scale based mostly on usage, and tend to be overall more reliable than HDDs that can often suddenly die on you with no warning.
- zamadatix 8y ago
  100 megabytes per second sounds more like the limit of a gigabit connection than an encryption algorithm. Most NAS boxes of the last 5 years should be doing encryption offload on the CPU via things like AES-NI instructions which should be hitting ~500 MB/s per core.
  - gammateam 8y ago
    Figured someone would say that I can get 400 megaBYTES per second on my iphone from external sources Inside my network I can get faster Dont want the NAS to be a bottleneck for my wireless convenience edit: still megabits

WaltPurvis 8y ago

I'm surprised how quickly prices are falling. I purchased a 500GB EVO 860 only 7 months ago for $139.99. Just checked and it's currently $82.99. For only $8 more than I paid for that 500GB SSD, I could now get a 1 TB SSD. (Naturally, I've barely used that drive, which was slated for secondary storage, and now I wish I had waited.)

segfaultbuserr 8y ago
In June 2015, I found the price of a 1 TB SSD was 400 USD, and in December, the price had fallen to 300 USD. In June 2017, I checked the price again and found it was 250 USD. I've put the numbers in my calculator to perform a curve-fitting using the exponential function, and it suggested that "I'll be able to purchase a 1 TB SSD for ~140 USD in 18 months", and I left the number a future note. Now, it turned out the regression analysis was almost correct (only for unnamed cheaper brands for now, I expect more reliable products are coming soon). The "Moore's Law" is really working.
- wtallis 8y ago
  I'm seeing $135 for a Crucial MX500 1TB or WD Blue 1TB (and lower during the recent holiday sales), so we've already hit your target with name-brand drives from major retailers like Amazon and Newegg.
- WaltPurvis 8y ago
  It's pretty much there —- the Samsung EVO 860 1 TB is $147 at Amazon.
disishhsha 8y ago
I wouldn’t worry about it. If you barely use it, what are the odds you’ll ever fill it up? And if you do fill it up, SSDs will be even cheaper then.

memco 8y ago

Meanwhile Apple is charging $1,200 for a 1 TB MacBook upgrade. Hoping this year we see a significant jump in consumer availability of these drives. I’ve been using a 512gb laptop since 2010 at least. Would be nice to start seeing multi-terrabyte drives in devices besides after market or external drives.

jjeaff 8y ago
What would consumer availability have to do with the $1000 apple tax? 1tb SSD are already significantly cheaper than what they are charging. They don't seem to base their pricing on cogs.
- arcticbull 8y ago
  This is the new Apple RAM surcharge — remember back when Apple let you swap out DIMMs, they would charge 3-5x market rate betting you wouldn’t. Now they’re doing it on SSDs but you can’t get away :) If you follow the r/buildapcsales it’s pretty eats to get a 1TB 2.5” SSD from a top manufacturer for under $120, and M.2 for $20-30 more. I just got a Crucial MX500 1TB for $114 all in.
  - ganoushoreilly 8y ago
    I would counter that the SSD's aren't entirely the same. The most comparable consumer NVME M.2 would be the 960 pro and it's still around $300. Definitely cheaper than Apple, but it's also not in the $150 range for the same performance.
    - vehementi 8y ago
      99% of the time SSDs are a boolean: "Do you have a SSD? Yes/No" and performance between different SSDs is basically unnoticeable. Change my mind
      - arcticbull 8y ago
        Definitely relative to a hard drive. Relative to each other what really matters are your 4K random read/write IOPS and some measure of reliability. Back in the day there were in fact huge differences between certain SSDs (Samsung controllers vs. Indilinx Barefoot [1] back in the early '10s). Today it's a non-issue. SSDs years ago saturated the SATA III bus with respect to peak transfers. We're talking an order of magnitude these days, with SATA capping out at 550-600MB/s burst (my MX500) vs NVMe's 3GB/sec (970 PRO). That doesn't paint the real picture to a large extent because 4K random IO is still <<100MB/s in either case. Large DRAM buffers vs. unbuffered can make a big difference too. Reliability these days from any of the big players is usually very good, since their NAND only comes from a handful of big players -- ditto for the controllers. I guess if you buy shady "Kingston" knockoff SSDs with recycled NAND that's a different matter. tl:dr; yep, you're right. Any modern SSD from a big player is a good bet, beyond that it's just gamesmanship.

woolvalley 8y ago

I wouldn't use external SSDs as the price benchmark, since they had a big price premium over an equivalent mSATA SSD back then. For example, I bought a 1TB samsung mSATA SSD in 2015 for about $320 and it's enclosure for $15. The equivalent SSD today is about $150. So instead of a 3x price decrease in the past 3 years, it's more like a 2x price decrease.

bluedino 8y ago
mSATA SSD's are so rare these days
- wtallis 8y ago
  True, but Samsung is still making them. A 1TB mSATA 860 EVO is currently only $3 more than the M.2 SATA version of the same, so it's still a reasonable comparison against drives from several years ago. (However, both mSATA and M.2 SATA versions of the 860 EVO are more expensive than the 2.5" version that faces far more competition.)
franciscop 8y ago
I agree, there is more overhead. But since I'm interested mainly in external SSDs I'm tracking those :) Please feel free to create a similar list with 2.5", mSATA or m.2 drives, it probably is even more shocking. The other awesome thing about those 3 I linked is that the interface also has changed: Micro USB 3.0 => UBS-C Gen 1 => Thunderbolt.