Have hard drives improved over the years?

[exdeath]

Average consumers are starting to realize that having 32 CPU cores a 10 GHz and 128 GB of RAM in their state of the art system doesn't make their system any faster than their 15 year old Compaq... why? Hard drives. I think that realization will go a long way to correcting some "data hoarding" habits and make people want SSDs even at the expense of reduced space. You don't need to save everything you download off the internet, you can download again as needed.

We need a "Hoarding: Burried Alive" digital edition show for people who cling to 100s of GB of junk that is all easily replaceable.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

You are looking at speed of doing a single data copy. I'm more interested in IOPS, where SSDs clean physical media's clock, nevermind the 500MB/s streams they can do otherwise. The real win is in random reads/writes, which is what most IO is if you're not moving big files around all day.

Hard drives are *terrible* at this, and they get even worse if you should want to do *two* of them at the same time, never mind three, or four, or five.

Who the hell was arguing over this anyway? It's well known that SSDs are much faster. What's stopping them for now from mainstream adoption is their storage capacity and price.

 

[dclive]

Average consumers are starting to realize that having 32 CPU cores a 10 GHz and 128 GB of RAM in their state of the art system doesn't make their system any faster than their 15 year old Compaq... why? Hard drives. I think that realization will go a long way to correcting some "data hoarding" habits and make people want SSDs even at the expense of reduced space. You don't need to save everything you download off the internet, you can download again as needed.

We need a "Hoarding: Burried Alive" digital edition show for people who cling to 100s of GB of junk that is all easily replaceable.

Bingo (top para) - I strongly agree. Adding an SSD to a Core 2 will make it feel faster than many people's newer machines; the SSD is a night and day difference.

 

[dclive]

Who the hell was arguing over this anyway? It's well known that SSDs are much faster. What's stopping them for now from mainstream adoption is their storage capacity and price.

But they are the awesome sauce.

 

[exdeath]

I'll buy an SSD when they're better priced, thank you very much.

And if you don't think that going from 20MB/s 30 years ago to now being at 145MB/s is an improvement, maybe there's something wrong with you. SSDs aren't as awesome sauce as you make them out to be as of now. They're a lot faster, but they have meager storage capacity.

By comparison, in the same time period, bus speeds have gone from 16 MB /sec to 30+ GB/sec and typical file sizes have grown from 10KB to 25+ GB. So yes, anything measured in MB/s is ancient 20th century technology. Not to mention IOPs and access time.

I've lived on Raptors and Cheetahs in RAID0 since the first generation 18GB Cheetah X15. I've never been much of a data hoarder that has to click and download and permenantly save everything he sees on the internet. I've never understood what anybody could possibly need or want 10s of TB of space for in their PC, or how or what they could possibly fill it up with besides porn and pirated movies.

With the 100x increased speed, I can uninstall and reinstall apps as needed and still be faster and have less time waiting on hourglasses and progress bars than the person that insists on keeping everything ever made installed all at once on their 100 TB but 90 MB/sec and 3 IOP HDD.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Average consumers are starting to realize that having 32 CPU cores a 10 GHz and 128 GB of RAM in their state of the art system doesn't make their system any faster than their 15 year old Compaq... why? Hard drives. I think that realization will go a long way to correcting some "data hoarding" habits and make people want SSDs even at the expense of reduced space. You don't need to save everything you download off the internet, you can download again as needed.

We need a "Hoarding: Burried Alive" digital edition show for people who cling to 100s of GB of junk that is all easily replaceable.

HDDs are fast enough for the average consumer, and like I've said multiple times, they offer a lot more storage capacity. Are you telling me that 64GB, which is right now the only thing anywhere near a price a mainstream consumer would pay, is enough?

When decent capacity SSDs become cheaper consumers will buy them more than HDDs. The argument for using the SSD as a boot drive and HDD as a storage drive won't jive with the average consumer, either. They want things to be easy, and they'll tell you: "what's the point of buying this if I won't be able to use it for anything more than the OS and some apps"?

 

[dclive]

HDDs are fast enough for the average consumer, and like I've said multiple times, they offer a lot more storage capacity. Are you telling me that 64GB, which is right now the only thing anywhere near a price a mainstream consumer would pay, is enough?

(imagining a new machine with a 'fast' HDD) - Fast enough compared to what, their old drive in their old system, riddled with viruses and other slowdowns? If more people understood the difference, I think some if not many would buy SSDs rather than computer upgrades.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Bingo (top para) - I strongly agree. Adding an SSD to a Core 2 will make it feel faster than many people's newer machines; the SSD is a night and day difference.

Yeah, here's the problem with that: you'll only notice the big difference in boot times and in the small amount of apps you'll be able to install into it. This is assuming a 64GB drive, obviously. The higher capacity SSDs are way out of the price range a mainstream consumer would pay, and the 64GB ones are probably already too expensive for most. A lot more people will be going SSD when they're able to be had in 120/128GB and 240/256GB capacities for $50-60. That's still not enough for most people, though, so I think SSDs will really become mainstream when the 512GB ones can be had for $50-60, which will probably be in some five years.

That's just my prediction. I never said it was a fact, but it's a very good prediction.

 

[dclive]

Yeah, here's the problem with that: you'll only notice the big difference in boot times and in the small amount of apps you'll be able to install into it. This is assuming a 64GB drive, obviously. The higher capacity SSDs are way out of the price range a mainstream consumer would pay, and the 64GB ones are probably already too expensive for most.

$200 gets a 120GB drive. For many that's fine, and far cheaper than a full computer upgrade. And the difference between that and a HDD is significant - people immediately notice this.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

$200 gets a 120GB drive. For many that's fine, and far cheaper than a full computer upgrade. And the difference between that and a HDD is significant - people immediately notice this.

For the average consumer it's not. If it were, they would be flocking to SSDs. The most the average consumer is willing to pay for these parts is $50-75. Anything more than that and they'll tell you it's too expensive. HDDs are "fast enough" for the average consumer, and they have great storage capacity. That's why they're still a lot more popular. That will change, but it will take time.

If you can't understand that, then perhaps you don't know the average consumer. We're not them; we're enthusiasts. It's worth it to some of us, but not to almost all of them.

 

[exdeath]

HDDs are fast enough for the average consumer, and like I've said multiple times, they offer a lot more storage capacity. Are you telling me that 64GB, which is right now the only thing anywhere near a price a mainstream consumer would pay, is enough?

When decent capacity SSDs become cheaper consumers will buy them more than HDDs. The argument for using the SSD as a boot drive and HDD as a storage drive won't jive with the average consumer, either. They want things to be easy, and they'll tell you: "what's the point of buying this if I won't be able to use it for anything more than the OS and some apps"?

Not according to the customers I work with on a daily basis. The common trend I'm noticing is that it's beginning to be understood that there is a SERIOUS bottleneck in their PCs that no amount of disabling processes and defragging can account for. I have to explain 5 times a day that it's their C: drive that is built with technology invented in the 1950s and there is nothing we can do about it while pointing at the HDD activity light and showing how the CPU is 99% idle while we are stuck waiting for something to load or install. Whether it's copying 20 GB of pictures or music or transcoding a media file to move to a portable device, or simply installing a 300 MB HP all in one printer package, shit is just taking FOREVER on their brand new PC and they can't do anything else while it's happening.

Last I checked a typical Windows 7 64 bit and Office installation with some other apps is around 30 GB. On a $200 120GB drive that leaves 90 GB for doing whatever you want with. A WoW install with Cataclysm is only 20-30 GB. What could possibly take up more space than that unless you insist on ripping all your BluRay disks or having every game made in the last 20 years installed simultaneously?

I tell everyone to keep all their pictures and data on a seperate external drive anyway, that way they can freely run restore disks and the like and repair their system from almost anything with ZERO worries about their personal data in about 15 mins.

 

[dclive]

For the average consumer it's not. If it were, they would be flocking to SSDs. The most the average consumer is willing to pay for these parts is $50-75. Anything more than that and they'll tell you it's too expensive. HDDs are "fast enough" for the average consumer, and they have great storage capacity. That's why they're still a lot more popular. That will change, but it will take time.

If you can't understand that, then perhaps you don't know the average consumer. We're not them; we're enthusiasts. It's worth it to some of us, but not to almost all of them.

Average consumers buy systems. They don't buy parts. I'm saying if one could engineer a system by which people bought SSDs rather than new computers, they'd spend less and get a better end result - apparent or noted speed, in most cases.

 

[dclive]

Not according to the customers I work with on a daily basis. It's beginning to be understood that there is a SERIOUS bottleneck in their PCs that no amount of disabling processes and defragging can account for. I have to explain 5 times a day that it's their C: drive that is built with technology invented in the 1950s and there is nothing we can do about it while pointing at the HDD activity light and showing how the CPU is 99% idle while we are stuck waiting for something to load or install.

Last I checked a typical Windows 7 64 bit and Office installation with some other apps is 30 GB. On a $200 120GB drive that leaves 90 GB for doing whatever you want with. A WoW install with Cataclysm is only 20-30 GB. What could possibly take up more space than that unless you insist on ripping all your BluRay disks or having every game made in the last 20 years installed simultaneously?

Once again, completely agreed.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Not according to the customers I work with on a daily basis. The common trend I'm noticing is that it's beginning to be understood that there is a SERIOUS bottleneck in their PCs that no amount of disabling processes and defragging can account for. I have to explain 5 times a day that it's their C: drive that is built with technology invented in the 1950s and there is nothing we can do about it while pointing at the HDD activity light and showing how the CPU is 99% idle while we are stuck waiting for something to load or install. Whether it's copying 20 GB of pictures or music or transcoding a media file to move to a portable device, or simply installing a 300 MB HP all in one printer package, shit is just taking FOREVER on their brand new PC.

Last I checked a typical Windows 7 64 bit and Office installation with some other apps is 30 GB. On a $200 120GB drive that leaves 90 GB for doing whatever you want with. A WoW install with Cataclysm is only 20-30 GB. What could possibly take up more space than that unless you insist on ripping all your BluRay disks or having every game made in the last 20 years installed simultaneously?

Hint: you're not working with average consumers.

Also, that'd be a very funny argument to make to the average folk. "Hey, limit yourself from downloading this and this and this and delete this and this and this and you'll be fine". They'll answer you: "what's the point of buying this, I won't be able to use it". The average consumer just cares about using his computer.

 

[dclive]

Hint: you're not working with average consumers.

I think his comments are fair - people are starting to understand the light on the hard drive staying on all the time is the real bottleneck, and the CPU is sitting there, most of the time, doing nothing.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Once again, completely agreed.

Pretty much the only "good" insight you can bring into this. At least exdeath can make a decent argument.

 

[dclive]

Also, that'd be a very funny argument to make to the average folk. "Hey, limit yourself from downloading this and this and this and delete this and this and this and you'll be fine". They'll answer you: "what's the point of buying this, I won't be able to use it". The average consumer just cares about using his computer.

Outside of the enthusiast videogamer and the video/music hounds, most people aren't out there consuming TB of space. This isn't the big adjustment you're painting it as.

 

[dclive]

Pretty much the only "good" insight you can bring into this. At least exdeath can make a decent argument.

...and the personal attacks keep coming.

I've never met anyone who calls 48% of Apple's notebook business a niche of a niche. Oh well; what does Apple know anyway.

 

[dclive]

Please define "failed", as you might have a different definition than mine, particularly given your 'firewire has failed' comment.

I eagerly await your response.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I think his comments are fair - people are starting to understand the light on the hard drive staying on all the time is the real bottleneck, and the CPU is sitting there, most of the time, doing nothing.

Hard Drives do that when the OS is paging. That means they don't have enough RAM and the OS is taking storage from the HDD for the system to use. Nothing else. As I'm writing this I have seven open applications and my HDD activity light barely comes on.

You can't really fault an HDD for a problem caused by not having enough RAM.

 

[exdeath]

Hint: you're not working with average consumers.

Hint: average consumers browse the web, check their email and ebay, and save a couple gigs of mp3s and pictures to their home PC, and play WoW. They don't require 100 TBs of space.

Just to clear something up, we ARE talking about their regular PC, not specialized applications like a home media server containing all their Blu Ray media. These are not "average consumers" either. Obviously I'd recommend a RAID5 with conventional HDDs for something like that and not suggest a 120GB SSD is enough. But these systems are special case and are not interacted with in a random fashion on a daily basis.

 

[dclive]

Hard Drives do that when the OS is paging. That means they don't have enough RAM and the OS is taking storage from the HDD for the system to use. Nothing else. As I'm writing this I have seven open applications and my HDD activity light barely comes on.

You can't really fault an HDD for a problem caused by not having enough RAM.

I think the problem is a touch deeper than that. Amongst other things, the SSD doesn't perform nearly as badly when paging is hitting it - it's that IOPS argument all over again.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I eagerly await your response.

I already gave it to you. Maybe instead of regurgitating the same crap again you should learn to read and learn the concept of "style versus substance" while you're at it. Sorry you're offended more than a little 5-year-old girl.

They both failed for the same reason: Apple expected them to become industry standards and therefore to be "the future", and failed. iMac did not make all-in-ones an industry standard, and FireWire failed by being adopted by only a very small amount of OEMs and therefore consumers.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I think the problem is a touch deeper than that. Amongst other things, the SSD doesn't perform nearly as badly when paging is hitting it - it's that IOPS argument all over again.

And here you go again blaming a Hard Drive for a problem it didn't cause.

If you have problems with a system being slow because of OS paging, then you should buy more RAM, which is incredibly cheap nowadays.

What you're offering as a solution is to hide the issue by buying an SSD instead of just buying more RAM and eliminating the problem of paging to begin with.

 

[dclive]

I already gave it to you. Maybe instead of regurgitating the same crap again you should learn to read and learn the concept of "style versus substance" while you're at it. Sorry you're offended more than a little 5-year-old girl.

They both failed for the same reason: Apple expected them to become industry standards and therefore to be "the future", and failed. iMac did not make all-in-ones an industry standard, and FireWire failed by being adopted by only a very small amount of OEMs and therefore consumers.

I see no firewire response whatsoever. Please point it out in your prior responses.

Firewire did become the industry standard for years - for those wanting to do video imports from camcorders, only recently being replaced with other standards; that's not a failure - it had a good life of about 10 years, which is eternity in computer time. Again, please define "failure" as perhaps you have a different definition than mine. Likewise the "All in One" - is failure "Every other machine in existance today isn't an All in One", or what, precisely, makes the AIO form factor a failure? Please exactly define "failure".