4 ms·

I find it interesting how stable HDDs are in terms of price. I just cross-checked with german "Geizhals"[1], and the 4 TB Seagate IronWolf (ST4000VN008) starte

I find it interesting how stable HDDs are in terms of price. I just cross-checked with german "Geizhals"[1], and the 4 TB Seagate IronWolf (ST4000VN008) started at ~160€ in Sep. 2016, quickly fell to 140€ a few days later, and then slowly descended to 105€ in Jan. 2018 - and that's the region it's been sitting there for two years now. The UK price chart looks almost the same.[2] [1]: https://geizhals.de/seagate-ironwolf-nas-hdd-4tb-st4000vn008-a1504505.html https://geizhals.de/seagate-ironwolf-nas-hdd-4tb-st4000vn008... [2]: https://skinflint.co.uk/seagate-ironwolf-nas-hdd-4tb-st4000vn008-a1504505.html https://skinflint.co.uk/seagate-ironwolf-nas-hdd-4tb-st4000v...

londons_explore 7y ago
Nobody puts any R&D into new drive technologies. If demand drops, factories close since they are producing at near zero margin. All R&D costs are already amortized or written off. End result: Static prices. The only time prices will change is when only one manufacturer is left and they jack the prices as a monopoly on antique tech that a few big companies still need. We're a long way from that tho.
- rasz 7y ago
  >producing at near zero margin :)) https://ycharts.com/companies/STX/gross_profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/STX/gross_profit_margin SSDs are unsuitable for long term storage, technology is simply incapable (cells losing charge, normal usage physically degrading medium, limited number or charges per cell). We dont have anything better than spinning magnetic medium at the moment, and nothing viable on the horizon.
  - willis936 7y ago
    Then we don’t have anything at all. Hard drives are only acceptable at long term storage if they’re unplugged, and even then there is a significant risk that the data won’t be accessible in 50 years. If 5 years is considered long term, then SSDs are acceptable. If 20 years is considered long term, well, make sure you have a robust RAID.
    - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
      I wish holographic discs would finally hit the market, but it seems stuck in R&D at that one british university.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    > cells losing charge Leave it powered up and let the controller re-write the data every year or so automatically. >normal usage physically degrading medium For 'read-only' data that is rewritten once per year to compensate for cells loosing charge, you can expect a lifetime over 10,000 years. Sure, some SSD's available today wont handle the above cases properly and data will be lost, but it is not a theoretically unsolvable issue.
    - rasz 7y ago
      1 more like every 30 days https://www.anandtech.com/show/8617/samsung-releases-firmware-update-to-fix-the-ssd-840-evo-read-performance-bug https://www.anandtech.com/show/8617/samsung-releases-firmwar... 2 No such thing as read only SSD. Just like in ram, SSDs experience read disturbance (rowhammer) https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~omutlu/pub/flash-read-disturb-errors_dsn15.pdf https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~omutlu/pub/flash-read-disturb-err... "A key contributor to this reduced reliability is read disturb, where a read to one row of cells impacts the threshold voltages of unread flash cells in different rows of the same block. Such disturbances may shift the threshold voltages of these unread cells to different logical states than originally programmed, leading to read errors that hurt endurance" The very best SSDs today promise to go into read only mode in case of a failure, and in tests almost none are. Intel server family of drives famously brick itself despite stating "read only" in documentation.
    - Shivetya 7y ago
      enterprise class SSDs, our system runs 480 370g and we have had drives flagged within two years. granted we have a heavy processing model but we have never loaded the system beyond 60% so far (it is 90tb mirrored protection). I used to think we would never see a failure compared to other systems we have spinning 15k drives on but alas that is not true. as to the failure rates being similar, too early to tell, but to be up front the sheer performance gain even compared to heavily cached systems is amazing.
Aengeuad 7y ago
In 2011 I bought a 2TB WD for around £50[0], and barring some pricing oddities on that particular drive as it went out of production you can still buy 2TB drives for around £50-60[1] with £60 being where the price should be with the rate of inflation. Higher capacity drives are nice for convenience but it is a bit of a shame that the price per gigabyte hasn't really come down much[2], especially as now a single disk failure can cause 3-4 times as much data loss as it would have done around a decade ago. [0] https://skinflint.co.uk/?phist=486924&age=9999 https://skinflint.co.uk/?phist=486924&age=9999 [1] https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=price&A=2000000000000&t=5400,7200&page=1 https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#so... [2] https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#t=5400,7200&sort=ppgb&page=1 https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#t=...

londons_explore 7y ago

Nobody puts any R&D into new drive technologies. If demand drops, factories close since they are producing at near zero margin. All R&D costs are already amortized or written off. End result: Static prices. The only time prices will change is when only one manufacturer is left and they jack the prices as a monopoly on antique tech that a few big companies still need. We're a long way from that tho.

rasz 7y ago
>producing at near zero margin :)) https://ycharts.com/companies/STX/gross_profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/STX/gross_profit_margin SSDs are unsuitable for long term storage, technology is simply incapable (cells losing charge, normal usage physically degrading medium, limited number or charges per cell). We dont have anything better than spinning magnetic medium at the moment, and nothing viable on the horizon.
- willis936 7y ago
  Then we don’t have anything at all. Hard drives are only acceptable at long term storage if they’re unplugged, and even then there is a significant risk that the data won’t be accessible in 50 years. If 5 years is considered long term, then SSDs are acceptable. If 20 years is considered long term, well, make sure you have a robust RAID.
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    I wish holographic discs would finally hit the market, but it seems stuck in R&D at that one british university.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  > cells losing charge Leave it powered up and let the controller re-write the data every year or so automatically. >normal usage physically degrading medium For 'read-only' data that is rewritten once per year to compensate for cells loosing charge, you can expect a lifetime over 10,000 years. Sure, some SSD's available today wont handle the above cases properly and data will be lost, but it is not a theoretically unsolvable issue.
  - rasz 7y ago
    1 more like every 30 days https://www.anandtech.com/show/8617/samsung-releases-firmware-update-to-fix-the-ssd-840-evo-read-performance-bug https://www.anandtech.com/show/8617/samsung-releases-firmwar... 2 No such thing as read only SSD. Just like in ram, SSDs experience read disturbance (rowhammer) https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~omutlu/pub/flash-read-disturb-errors_dsn15.pdf https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~omutlu/pub/flash-read-disturb-err... "A key contributor to this reduced reliability is read disturb, where a read to one row of cells impacts the threshold voltages of unread flash cells in different rows of the same block. Such disturbances may shift the threshold voltages of these unread cells to different logical states than originally programmed, leading to read errors that hurt endurance" The very best SSDs today promise to go into read only mode in case of a failure, and in tests almost none are. Intel server family of drives famously brick itself despite stating "read only" in documentation.
  - Shivetya 7y ago
    enterprise class SSDs, our system runs 480 370g and we have had drives flagged within two years. granted we have a heavy processing model but we have never loaded the system beyond 60% so far (it is 90tb mirrored protection). I used to think we would never see a failure compared to other systems we have spinning 15k drives on but alas that is not true. as to the failure rates being similar, too early to tell, but to be up front the sheer performance gain even compared to heavily cached systems is amazing.

Aengeuad 7y ago

In 2011 I bought a 2TB WD for around £50[0], and barring some pricing oddities on that particular drive as it went out of production you can still buy 2TB drives for around £50-60[1] with £60 being where the price should be with the rate of inflation. Higher capacity drives are nice for convenience but it is a bit of a shame that the price per gigabyte hasn't really come down much[2], especially as now a single disk failure can cause 3-4 times as much data loss as it would have done around a decade ago. [0] https://skinflint.co.uk/?phist=486924&age=9999 https://skinflint.co.uk/?phist=486924&age=9999 [1] https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=price&A=2000000000000&t=5400,7200&page=1 https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#so... [2] https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#t=5400,7200&sort=ppgb&page=1 https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#t=...