New platter drive(Velociraptor... etc) in the future?

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
It is slightly absurd to think WD will release a 20K Raptor, or even a 15K Raptor any time soon when enterprise 2.5" drives just hit 15K a generation ago and the top capacity for current generation is 147 GB.

20K is absolutely ridiculous, 15K is slightly more reasonable but we aren't going to see the current 300 GB capacities.

Viper GTS

The "article" featuring the 20k raptor was bogus.

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: Rubycon

The "article" featuring the 20k raptor was bogus.

Of course. I just laughed when I saw it. Anybody with any exposure to the enterprise stuff knows that isn't going to happen.

Viper GTS

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Denithor
Actually, I don't know about that - with the move to smaller manufacturing the build costs will go down significantly so even with the same margins the prices should continue to drop.

That's covered in the article as well. It is seen as a move that will stabilize prices, not enable continued waves of losses at the manufacturers so that we consumers can see additional price cuts on our consumer devices.

For sure the general pricing trend is down, I'm just cautioning against the desire to take the slope of that downward trend (especially the recent portion of it) and project/extrapolate that to the future.

We got ahead of ourselves here with the recent price-cuts on SSD's. Our prices should not have been this low until Q4 timeframe if the markets were reducing prices in a sustainable fashion.

As such we really ought to expect a bit of a plateau here for a while as businesses scale back their operations so they stop bleeding cash. That means lowered supply as they try and find a supply/demand point that results in the $/GB being high enough that they can break-even at worse.

No different than the DRAM market really, same players too.

Just to add more data to the theme:

NAND flash capex to fall nearly 60%, says DRAMeXchange

Although the industry is slowing capacity additions at 300mm fabs, the overcapacity situation is expected to last through the first half of 2009.

Should measured supply/demand policies hold, improvements in NAND flash prices are expected in the second half of the year, DRAMeXchange said.

http://www.fabtech.org/news/_a..._60_says_dramexchange/

 

[taltamir]

maybe they will release 20K rp2m (rotations per 2 minutes). and rp2m must be better than rpm because it has a 2 in it

 

[TidusZ]

Originally posted by: taltamir
maybe they will release 20K rp2m (rotations per 2 minutes). and rp2m must be better than rpm because it has a 2 in it

Attach a hdd to a rheobus that controls platter speed and goes up to eleven and I'll buy two for raid. Mine goes to 22!

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: taltamir
i don't expect to see another velociraptor.

Why not? It would be easy for WD to crank out 500GB VelociRaptors using the platter density technology from the 2TB drive. Crank the RPMs a bit higher to get a bit more performance and reduce latencies a hair. Then, sell it for under $200. You'd have a drive at per-gigabyte price points that SSDs still can't touch, coupled with consistent performance.

About the only thing that a platter HDD can't touch with SSDs at this time is access times. For transfer rates*, HDDs are still competitive. For capacity, HDDs can't be touched.

*For the price of a top end SSD such as the Intel 80GB, you can buy two 150GB VelociRaptors for RAID0 and get almost as good transfer rate, three times the write speeds, four times the capacity and go home with $100 in your pocket.

I'm pretty sure that the newer SSDs are getting 240mb/s read speed. Can a Raptor really keep up with that?

I personally can't understand the people still interested in Raptors and 15K Cheetahs when SSDs are better all-around for similar cost. You can even pop one into a laptop which is fantastic.

because an SSD degrades over time, a platter based drive does not at least not in the same way.

 

[Zapper48]

I'm happy with my 300gb Velicoraptors in RAID0.I'll wait for SSD's to get all the issues worked out and price/gb to get competitive.

 

[TC91]

What do you guys think about the longevity of MLC ssds with their much lower write cycles compared to the SLC ssds or with mechanical drives? Is it something worth considering? I have no idea on this so I'm asking.

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: TC91
What do you guys think about the longevity of MLC ssds with their much lower write cycles compared to the SLC ssds or with mechanical drives? Is it something worth considering? I have no idea on this so I'm asking.

Good MLC is fine for desktop and workstation use. Unless you're doing massive amounts of writing you will upgrade/replace the drive long before you wear it out.

Viper GTS