WD selling 3.5" drive factories to Toshiba

[taltamir]

Poor analogy... a horse drawn cart is not practial, a $100 2TB HDD is...

In the earliest days of motor vehicles you saw horse drawn carts and engine driver vehicles side by side. This was because they were both practical and both had ups and downs.

I explicitly discussed the future. You said that SSDs will NEVER replace HDDs.
They will, it will take some years but eventually an HDD will be as impractical as a horse drawn cart. Worse because a horse drawn cart is at least visibly different and as such has use in historical recreations and the like.

 

[OlafSicky]

In the earliest days of motor vehicles you saw horse drawn carts and engine driver vehicles side by side. This was because they were both practical and both had ups and downs.

I explicitly discussed the future. You said that SSDs will NEVER replace HDDs.
They will, it will take some years but eventually an HDD will be as impractical as a horse drawn cart. Worse because a horse drawn cart is at least visibly different and as such has use in historical recreations and the like.

I'm making a prediction 6 years from now the HDD will be dead and SSD will be standard.

 

[Smoblikat]

I'm making a prediction 6 years from now the HDD will be dead and SSD will be standard.

That would be nice, but the only thing that would keep me from going SSD would be reliability. Much like cars, SSD's degrade over time and lose performance. unlike HDD (horses) which are much more resiliant to writes (rides).

 

[bryanW1995]

You need to do some more research. A good estimate of NAND life on a modern ssd under a somewhat high usage pattern is 100 years. Lots of other things will fail first...

 

[Charlie98]

There will always be a place for mechanical drives, but that market will only go so far when solid, reliable enterprise-rated SSD take hold, and I think the consumer market will dry up once SSD's get to 1TB, etc.

I explicitly discussed the future. You said that SSDs will NEVER replace HDDs.
They will, it will take some years but eventually an HDD will be as impractical as a horse drawn cart.

I never said that, please don't make a false statement. In fact, I state that as SSD's become more reliable and larger, they will pretty much eliminate the HDD consumer market. THAT's what I said; I have included an excerpt of my post for your review.

As HDD capacity continues to grow, there will still be a place for large, cost effective HDD's for storage purposes at least. I will agree with you than in the future, should the cost/capacity/reliability of SSD's at least equal that of HDD's... that would probably be the death knell for the HDD.

 

[BFG10K]

HDDs aren’t going away until SSDs match them in cost/per GB and storage size, and that’s not going to happen unless mechanical technology ceases development.

Everyone goes on about $1 per GB as if it’s some kind of magic number, but let’s think about this for a moment: who wants to spend $1000 on a 1 TB SSD? How about $4000 for a 4 TB SSD?

The street price of a 4 TB Hitachi is $370, which is 9.25 cents per GB. That’s dirt cheap, even with flood inflated prices. I doubt that even in 5 years we’ll have SSDs that can match that.

 

[Charlie98]

The street price of a 4 TB Hitachi is $370, which is 9.25 cents per GB. That’s dirt cheap, even with flood inflated prices. I doubt that even in 5 years we’ll have SSDs that can match that.

Actually, that's sort of a curious question. How big can a SSD go in it's current form factor? Think they will ever punch out the SSD to a 3.5" for more hardware space?

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Actually, that's sort of a curious question. How big can a SSD go in it's current form factor? Think they will ever punch out the SSD to a 3.5" for more hardware space?

I always wondered why they didn't make them in 3.5" in the first place.

 

[Charlie98]

I always wondered why they didn't make them in 3.5" in the first place.

One form factor and they cover desktops and laptops...

 

[BFG10K]

Actually, that's sort of a curious question. How big can a SSD go in it's current form factor? Think they will ever punch out the SSD to a 3.5" for more hardware space?

I don’t think the form factor is the issue; endurance decreases as they shrink NAND manufacturing. Also controller complexity goes up with more chips.

Of course such walls will undoubtedly be climbed, but the fact is that SSDS are a good 5-10 years behind HDDs on a cost per GB and total GB basis.

Horse & cart? Nope, more like a sports car against an 18 wheeler. Sure a Ferrari might be faster, but it would get squashed trying to carry a truck's load.

 

[VirtualLarry]

In the earliest days of motor vehicles you saw horse drawn carts and engine driver vehicles side by side. This was because they were both practical and both had ups and downs.

I explicitly discussed the future. You said that SSDs will NEVER replace HDDs.
They will, it will take some years but eventually an HDD will be as impractical as a horse drawn cart. Worse because a horse drawn cart is at least visibly different and as such has use in historical recreations and the like.

So? You still see horse-draw carts today, along with cars. One hasn't completely replaced the other. Granted, they are slightly rare. Hopefully that doesn't happen with HDDs, because then they will stay expensive (but will likely provide higher storage densities still than an SSD.)

 

[Charlie98]

Horse & cart? Nope, more like a sports car against an 18 wheeler.

That's probably a better analogy... but we'd have to soup it up a bit...

A $20K big truck vs a $100K sports car; that would put the cost and capacity in proper perspective.

 

[Smoblikat]

That's probably a better analogy... but we'd have to soup it up a bit...

A $20K big truck vs a $100K sports car; that would put the cost and capacity in proper perspective.

20K$ for a HDD? Thats pretty generous ith these kinda proces............its still 120 - 130$ for a 5400RPm 2TB.

 

[taltamir]

Actually, that's sort of a curious question. How big can a SSD go in it's current form factor? Think they will ever punch out the SSD to a 3.5" for more hardware space?

SSDs have greater physical density of data (last I calculated).
The reason you don't see a 3TB 3.5 inch drive is due to the obscene cost not due to it being not enough space to hold that much NAND.

Horse & cart? Nope, more like a sports car against an 18 wheeler

I disagree.
Sports car vs 18 wheeler would be for MLV vs SLC. Or short stroking drives vs 5 platter 3.5" drives.

HDD vs SSD is horse vs engine and we are currently in the unique situation where both have their pluses. But in 10-15 years it will be all engines (SSDs). You will have different types of SSD but nobody will be using horses anymore. Just like CRTs died.

 

[bryanW1995]

HDDs aren’t going away until SSDs match them in cost/per GB and storage size, and that’s not going to happen unless mechanical technology ceases development.

Everyone goes on about $1 per GB as if it’s some kind of magic number, but let’s think about this for a moment: who wants to spend $1000 on a 1 TB SSD? How about $4000 for a 4 TB SSD?

The street price of a 4 TB Hitachi is $370, which is 9.25 cents per GB. That’s dirt cheap, even with flood inflated prices. I doubt that even in 5 years we’ll have SSDs that can match that.

That's not really that cheap for hdds. Last spring I got a 2 tb wd20ears for $80. That's 4 cents/gb, and a lot of people bought them even cheaper than that. Hdd and ssd prices are just too far apart right now for the average user to look at an ssd for storage usage. Hopefully ssd prices will come down soon.

 

[taltamir]

the issue with SSD pricing is that demand for NAND keeps on going up.
Profits are very high, which results in the construction of new plants which in turns lowers costs but it takes time to build more plants and there currently just aren't enough players in the market; but eventually there will be.
However demand is also very high. the amount of NAND that goes for SSDs is less then 10% IIRC. the vast majority is gobbled up by other applications. You have cameras and phones and tablets and game consoles and so on and so forth.

 

[tangrisser]

Actually, that's sort of a curious question. How big can a SSD go in it's current form factor? Think they will ever punch out the SSD to a 3.5" for more hardware space?

Manufacturers would be more than willing to custom spec-design-manufacture as long as order is big enough. I've heard OCZ SSDs are mostly BTO anyways.

There are already 3.5" SSDs available.

 

[Pinecone-sw]

I'm old enough to know about tape drives...

800 or 1600 bpi?

 

[Pinecone-sw]

What about the 5" floppy?

Actually 5 1/4"

But how about 8" floppies before that?

 

[PandaBear]

SSD will be the norm in the future, because OS and program do not need that big capacity that HDD have to be made in.

HDD cannot reduce its cost to much lower than $40, but SSD can if you only need 64GB 2 years from now. So what would OEM do when they only need to put in 64GB for a low end system? They will pick a $20 SSD over a $40 HDD.

I think 2.5" HDD will go away in about 3 years, but 3.5" for server or enclosure (USB / ethernet / etc) will be around for years.

 

[taltamir]

SSD will be the norm in the future, because OS and program do not need that big capacity that HDD have to be made in.

HDD cannot reduce its cost to much lower than $40, but SSD can if you only need 64GB 2 years from now. So what would OEM do when they only need to put in 64GB for a low end system? They will pick a $20 SSD over a $40 HDD.

I think 2.5" HDD will go away in about 3 years, but 3.5" for server or enclosure (USB / ethernet / etc) will be around for years.

mostly right. but you should know that a lot of servers are moving from 3.5 drives to 2.5 HDDs.