• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

What do the "traditional" HDD makers have planned?

I

imported_Lothar

Diamond Member
Everyone knows the story of SSD's now so there's no need to repeat it...

Given the glowing reviews everywhere on the internet attributing SSD's as the best thing that's ever happened to computing since sliced bread, what do the "tradtional" HDD makers have planned? How do they plan to compete with SSD's?

Do they plan on offering their own SSD's brands?
Do they plan on remaining mechanical and just keep increasing "space" going from 1 terabyte to petabytes and yetabytes?
Will they go bankrupt in the next 10 years?

Can SSD's compete/catch up with mechanical drives in the "space" arena?
When do you forsee an SSD reaching 1TB?
 
Interesting point - I think they'll have to adapt some of the SSD technology (eg say Seagate brands the vertex with their name and resells them) in some way or another to keep losing their desktop business altogether. I think right now the high amounts of storage available, especially with 2TB not far at 5X less GB/$ will keep them alive. Not to mention some of the manufacturers have other things they sell anyways, like Seagate has 15K SCSI/SAS/FC drives and Hitachi has high end disk/SAN systems.

I'm a bit surprised though by their total absence in the SSD side of things entirely - it's probably the fastest growing thing in their business on the consumer side anyways, and probably on the server side down the road as well.
 
Hard disks are fine for the time being. As long as HDDs outpace SSDs for price-per-GB while maintaining reasonable performance, reliability, and price, they are in no danger.

SSDs are by no means ubiquitous and they have just begun to take root in the consumer market for enthusiasts. Try convincing an average Joe to buy into a 30GB "hard drive" that costs $100. Not gonna happen as long as SSDs still have their low data density and very high cost of ownership.

Not to mention, overwhelmingly the majority of the data on the Internet, if not on the world, is stored on platter-based hard disk drives. Can you see SSDs threatening this position? Not really. It's kind of analogous to the Apple vs. Microsoft battle.

FYI, there are already 1TB SSDs announced by OCZ; one of them is based on PCIe x8 and the other one is SATA II 3/0Gbps. Guess how much those cost? Hehehe....
 
Recently intel and jmicron announced 3 bit cells (MLC is 2 bit cells, SLC is 1 bit cells), which means 50% increase in space for same production cost (at a yet unkown performance cost).

SSD density can go WAY up, considering sizes... the only reason we don't have 1+TB 3.5 inch SSD is because of price.

The CEO of seagate said ALL SSDs as a technology infringe on their patents (aka, storage device... abstract patents)... however it has been a long time and they still haven't sued anyone AFAIK, also he is probably full of it.

WD aquired silicone image in march of this year to enter the SSD market for 65 million dollars: http://www.engadget.com/2009/0...siliconsystems-acquis/

The bottom line is... HDD companies are either gonna enter the SSD market, or they will be bankrupt in 10 years.
 
Originally posted by: DukeN
I'm a bit surprised though by their total absence in the SSD side of things entirely - it's probably the fastest growing thing in their business on the consumer side anyways, and probably on the server side down the road as well.
Click to expand...

Name one automobile company that exists today which was previously a horse buggy/drawn-carriage manufacturer in the late 1800's...disruptive technology is intentionally named as such so as to precisely communicate what it does to the existing hegemony of business establishments.

IBM managed to make the transition from a manual typewriter company into a computerized accounting provider into a software and business analysis provider. They are somewhat unique.

Of what I have seen of the spindle-drive manufacturers only Western Digital appears to have what it takes to make it thru the SSD transition, not because of their $65m acquisition (although thats just proof they are already making moves) but because of the existence of the same management that sought to create the 10krpm enthusiast raptor drive segment.

The fact that no one else followed suit, and yet WD iterated the product line multiple times, speaks to who is capable of making their business nimble and flexible versus those who need someone else to establish the roadmap so they can sheepishly attempt to draft behind the real risk-takers in the industry.
 
Originally posted by: taltamir
Recently intel and jmicron announced 3 bit cells (MLC is 2 bit cells, SLC is 1 bit cells), which means 50% increase in space for same production cost (at a yet unkown performance cost).
Click to expand...

Sandisk and Toshiba had announced earlier this year to, Jan timeframe. Unfortunately its not a clean 50% increase for same cost as the actual bit-cell itself increases in size by about 20% in order to accommodate the necessary electrical attributes for handling the additional charge levels.

This might be improved upon in time, at the expense of cell lifetime though, so don't count on this being the panacea of low-cost flash chips in the coming years. If this falls out as a net 20% cost reducer I'd be impressed.
 
prediction:

Intel G4 640GB Q4 2010 - Q1 2011 at $450

around the same time:

OCZ some_new_brand 500 at $200 (512GB)

the Intel drive will be about twice as performant as the OCZ version overall (though the OCZ will have a much higher sequential write speed).

At that time the OCZ drive will be > an order of magnitude faster than the HDDs on the market but will cost 3.5x. Intel will drop the price of the 320GB G3 to be 2.5x comparable HDDs (around $120-$180). There will still be no SSDs from any contemporary HDD maker except Samsung unless it is rebranded from someone else (there will be rumblings of WD drives coming soon).

Seagate/WD will be offering hybrid drives with 1-8GB ram that backs up to a flash disk in the event of an outage via a capacitor to offer 2TB drives with 5ms seek times which auto-defrag during idle time. These drives will be marketed with some kind of "turbo-access" moniker that advertises the available specs if only the ram is used (nanosecond seeks, maxed out throughput on SATA 2). Some of them may also include smallish flash drives that are used for frequently accessed files (32GB or so). WD might market a 500GB one of these as its new raptor model (it would be around the same price as the 128GB SSDs and for some things it would feel just as fast but when you fell outside of those usages it would drop down to speeds around the Velociraptor).
 
Originally posted by: taltamir
Recently intel and jmicron announced 3 bit cells (MLC is 2 bit cells, SLC is 1 bit cells), which means 50% increase in space for same production cost (at a yet unkown performance cost).

SSD density can go WAY up, considering sizes... the only reason we don't have 1+TB 3.5 inch SSD is because of price.

The CEO of seagate said ALL SSDs as a technology infringe on their patents (aka, storage device... abstract patents)... however it has been a long time and they still haven't sued anyone AFAIK, also he is probably full of it.

WD aquired silicone image in march of this year to enter the SSD market for 65 million dollars: http://www.engadget.com/2009/0...siliconsystems-acquis/

The bottom line is... HDD companies are either gonna enter the SSD market, or they will be bankrupt in 10 years.
Click to expand...

I cringe anytime I hear that name...

Interesting. Any link?
Maybe they're waiting 5 years after all the $$$ has been made to bring a lawsuit, then sue ala Rambus.
 
Originally posted by: Idontcare
Originally posted by: DukeN
I'm a bit surprised though by their total absence in the SSD side of things entirely - it's probably the fastest growing thing in their business on the consumer side anyways, and probably on the server side down the road as well.
Click to expand...

Name one automobile company that exists today which was previously a horse buggy/drawn-carriage manufacturer in the late 1800's...disruptive technology is intentionally named as such so as to precisely communicate what it does to the existing hegemony of business establishments.

IBM managed to make the transition from a manual typewriter company into a computerized accounting provider into a software and business analysis provider. They are somewhat unique.

Of what I have seen of the spindle-drive manufacturers only Western Digital appears to have what it takes to make it thru the SSD transition, not because of their $65m acquisition (although thats just proof they are already making moves) but because of the existence of the same management that sought to create the 10krpm enthusiast raptor drive segment.

The fact that no one else followed suit, and yet WD iterated the product line multiple times, speaks to who is capable of making their business nimble and flexible versus those who need someone else to establish the roadmap so they can sheepishly attempt to draft behind the real risk-takers in the industry.
Click to expand...

Don't SCSI drives outperform Raptors?
If it's performance I'm shooting for, I'd get a 15k Atlas/Cheetah SCSI drive over a Raptor.
Otherwise, common sense dictates I put the extra $100-$150 premium I'd be paying for a Raptor towards getting a better processor.

You state that the other manufacturers didn't follow WD with the Raptor, but you're claiming that they wait for someone else to establish a roadmap so they can copy?
 
If performance were a concern, I'd get an SSD. SCSI/SAS drives have additional costs on top of it (not to mention the drive costs themselves) in the form of controllers that would work and not bottleneck the drives. Those don't come cheap.
 
The fact that no one else followed suit, and yet WD iterated the product line multiple times,
Click to expand...

I never understood why other manfgs. didn't cash-in on the 10,000 rpm drive craze.

Was WD the only one with deep R&D pockets?
 
Originally posted by: Old Hippie
The fact that no one else followed suit, and yet WD iterated the product line multiple times,
Click to expand...

I never understood why other manfgs. didn't cash-in on the 10,000 rpm drive craze.

Was WD the only one with deep R&D pockets?
Click to expand...

Building 10krpm enthusiast drives is a bit different than building 10krpm (or 15krpm) enterprise drives.

For starters your projected ASP and gross margins are substantially higher with the enterprise drives, so you have quite a bit more elbow room to resource the development team and product teams with.

The budget mentality that goes into a project manager's approach to developing a Ferrari is a little different from that of a Corvette, even if they have similar HP goals.

For starters the WD folks had to figure out how they were going to engineer a 10krpm drive such that it maintained the necessary lifetime from mechanical failure while at the same time being cheap (enough) to enable a low enough pricepoint as to attract volume buyers in that segment.

Its not just a matter of having deep pockets such that the program could be funded (although that is one of the things that does matter)...its also a matter of risk-taking by the executive decision makers who had to make the call as to whether or not WD was going to fund the creation of a product that resided outside the traditional product segments.

IMO that no one else has followed suite in the last five years is not for lack of R&D funding but for lack of perceived ROI for those R&D dollars from today's vantage point of how to invest the company's budget in the creation of products that won't be available for sale for 2-3yrs from now. It's risky to make the decision that you are not going to fund "safe" project xyz that your VP is pushing you to authorize versus going with the "risky" project that involves creating a product which doesn't exactly have a market at the moment (as was the case with 10krpm enthusiast drives years back).

That WD's decision makers are inclined to take risks, as evidenced by the raptor product line, to me is all the proof I need to see to conclude they are just as likely to take risks and transition to SSD before the other spindle-drive makers. That the other spindle-drive makers never transitioned to creating a 10krpm enthusiast drive is all the proof I need to conclude their decision makers are entirely traditional (conservative) in their risk vs. reward decision matrices and they will be the stereotypical businesses swept aside by yet another disruptive technology.

(caveat: Samsung is special here IMO by virtue of their sheer size, >3x sales of Intel, and their selling SSD's is to be expected given their inhouse NAND flash and DSP controller development business units)
 
Originally posted by: Old Hippie
The fact that no one else followed suit, and yet WD iterated the product line multiple times,
Click to expand...

I never understood why other manfgs. didn't cash-in on the 10,000 rpm drive craze.

Was WD the only one with deep R&D pockets?
Click to expand...

If there was enough profit to be made in developing/manufacturing/selling 10k rpm consumer drives, the other players(Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, and Fujitsu) would have jumped on the bandwagon a long time ago to please their stock holders.
Efficient market theory hypothesis.
 
The HDD companies will still be around. They will adapt just like they did in the past. Slowly phase in one product for another. They may not have the technology for producing SSD but they do have the money to buy companies that do. They also have the brand name recognition which can be worth a lot. Who would you buy from ? A company like Seagate who you know for storage, or a company you never heard of selling drives .

The two things keeping me from going to SSD are cost and unknown factors. HDD may be slower but we know the tech, we know what to expect. SSD is still new and has lots of little bugs.

 
Originally posted by: Lothar
If there was enough profit to be made in developing/manufacturing/selling 10k rpm consumer drives, the other players(Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, and Fujitsu) would have jumped on the bandwagon a long time ago to please their stock holders.
Click to expand...

Assuming the decision makers in those other companies did not perceive there to be higher ROI opportunities for investing their non-infinite R&D resources.

Originally posted by: Lothar
Efficient market theory hypothesis.
Click to expand...

What does Efficient-market hypothesis, which relates to pricing fungibles through exchanges, have to do with asset and resource management at am executive decision maker level in an org chart?

In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) asserts that financial markets are "informationally efficient", or that prices on traded assets (e.g., stocks, bonds, or property) already reflect all known information, and instantly change to reflect new information. Therefore, according to theory, it is impossible to consistently outperform the market by using any information that the market already knows, except through luck. Information or news in the EMH is defined as anything that may affect prices that is unknowable in the present and thus appears randomly in the future. The hypothesis has been attacked lately by critics who blame belief in rational markets for much of the current financial crisis,[1][2] with noted financial journalist Roger Lowenstein recently declaring "The upside of the current Great Recession is that it could drive a stake through the heart of the academic nostrum known as the efficient-market hypothesis."[3]
Click to expand...
 
Originally posted by: Syntax Error
Hard disks are fine for the time being. As long as HDDs outpace SSDs for price-per-GB while maintaining reasonable performance, reliability, and price, they are in no danger.

SSDs are by no means ubiquitous and they have just begun to take root in the consumer market for enthusiasts. Try convincing an average Joe to buy into a 30GB "hard drive" that costs $100. Not gonna happen as long as SSDs still have their low data density and very high cost of ownership.

Not to mention, overwhelmingly the majority of the data on the Internet, if not on the world, is stored on platter-based hard disk drives. Can you see SSDs threatening this position? Not really. It's kind of analogous to the Apple vs. Microsoft battle.

FYI, there are already 1TB SSDs announced by OCZ; one of them is based on PCIe x8 and the other one is SATA II 3/0Gbps. Guess how much those cost? Hehehe....
Click to expand...
Yup, I'd imagine it will be a while before SSDs can catch up to traditional disks in $/GB. They're worth the price premium as an OS/apps drive, but for storing movies/music/whatever, they're totally unnecessary; traditional disks rotating at 5400RPM offer more than adequate performance.
 
For starters the WD folks had to figure out how they were going to engineer a 10krpm drive such that it maintained the necessary lifetime from mechanical failure while at the same time being cheap (enough) to enable a low enough pricepoint as to attract volume buyers in that segment.
Click to expand...

I just thought after WD did all the major "leg work", another manfg. would do a little creative "reverse engineering" and market a clone.

Maybe the small market couldn't even support more than one manfg.
 
Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Originally posted by: taltamir
WD aquired silicone image in march of this year to enter the SSD market for 65 million dollars: http://www.engadget.com/2009/0...siliconsystems-acquis/

The bottom line is... HDD companies are either gonna enter the SSD market, or they will be bankrupt in 10 years.
Click to expand...

Silicon Image, or Silicon Systems? Your post says one thing, but the linked article says another. Those are two different companies.
Click to expand...

oops... they sound similar

Originally posted by: Eeqmcsq
I cringe anytime I hear that name...
Click to expand...

Haha, well fortunately, it was Micron (not JMicron) who worked with Intel on those 3-bit cells.
Click to expand...

Double oops, they ALSO sound similar 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Old Hippie
The fact that no one else followed suit, and yet WD iterated the product line multiple times,
Click to expand...

I never understood why other manfgs. didn't cash-in on the 10,000 rpm drive craze.

Was WD the only one with deep R&D pockets?
Click to expand...

it is EXTREMELY simple... some management have the approach of "it is not my job"; they just take their money and focus on what the company is already doing. They feel that creating anything is something they should only do for companies they own, and since they don't own it, don't create anything.

Anyone who is a shaker and mover is soon stifled in such companies, and either leaves or is or disillusioned.

Other companies have management which is nimble and creative, and a structure that encourages employees to suggest new ideas and follow them, those are companies like google and intel and IBM which not only succeed, but adapt to a changing world instead of dying off by pretending it is just a fad (like blockbuster, RIAA, seagate, etc - probably AMD too in the future)
 
Originally posted by: Idontcare
Originally posted by: Lothar
If there was enough profit to be made in developing/manufacturing/selling 10k rpm consumer drives, the other players(Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, and Fujitsu) would have jumped on the bandwagon a long time ago to please their stock holders.
Click to expand...

Assuming the decision makers in those other companies did not perceive there to be higher ROI opportunities for investing their non-infinite R&D resources.

Originally posted by: Lothar
Efficient market theory hypothesis.
Click to expand...

What does Efficient-market hypothesis, which relates to pricing fungibles through exchanges, have to do with asset and resource management at am executive decision maker level in an org chart?

In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) asserts that financial markets are "informationally efficient", or that prices on traded assets (e.g., stocks, bonds, or property) already reflect all known information, and instantly change to reflect new information. Therefore, according to theory, it is impossible to consistently outperform the market by using any information that the market already knows, except through luck. Information or news in the EMH is defined as anything that may affect prices that is unknowable in the present and thus appears randomly in the future. The hypothesis has been attacked lately by critics who blame belief in rational markets for much of the current financial crisis,[1][2] with noted financial journalist Roger Lowenstein recently declaring "The upside of the current Great Recession is that it could drive a stake through the heart of the academic nostrum known as the efficient-market hypothesis."[3]
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

It doesn't. I'm was only using that as an off shoot.
You can call it "Herding mentality" if that works better.

Assuming management of those companies are rational, one can assume that if the gross margins were so high in the 10k RPM consumer market, the other companies would have followed suit by now to please their stockholders.

But then again...The management of all those companies *could* be irrational, but that's pretty rare.
 
Originally posted by: taltamir
Originally posted by: Old Hippie
The fact that no one else followed suit, and yet WD iterated the product line multiple times,
Click to expand...

I never understood why other manfgs. didn't cash-in on the 10,000 rpm drive craze.

Was WD the only one with deep R&D pockets?
Click to expand...

it is EXTREMELY simple... some management have the approach of "it is not my job"; they just take their money and focus on what the company is already doing. They feel that creating anything is something they should only do for companies they own, and since they don't own it, don't create anything.

Anyone who is a shaker and mover is soon stifled in such companies, and either leaves or is or disillusioned.

Other companies have management which is nimble and creative, and a structure that encourages employees to suggest new ideas and follow them, those are companies like google and intel and IBM which not only succeed, but adapt to a changing world instead of dying off by pretending it is just a fad (like blockbuster, RIAA, seagate, etc - probably AMD too in the future)
Click to expand...

I just looked at their financials.
The "unusual" expense of $2.5 billion on their income statement doesn't seem too good...I wonder what it's from?
Were they hit with a fine? Did they buy another company after Maxtor recently, or are they still busy digesting the Maxtor acquisition from 4+ years ago?

They carry an unusually large debt load for a company.
Their gross margin, quick ratio, debt/equity ratio, and book value/share metrics are ridiculous.
I expect them to be bankrupt within the next 10-15 years unless they have a complete new technology hidden under their wings.

What happened to Seagate? It seems most of the company's problems seems to have stemmed from Bill Watkins, the straight-talk, all hip former CEO. The "Bush" of Seagate.

I remember when I built my 1st and only computer in Summer 2002 for college.
Seagate was the drive to own back then. Excellent performance, industry leading 5 yrs warranty(able to do this b/c they had one of the lowest failure rates, all other companies were dragging their feet on the 5yrs warranty for years and some still are today).
Maxtor drives had excellent performance as well but were LOUD and had one of the highest failure rates.
Samsung drives were the most quiet, but also the hottest to touch. Ouch.
Western Digital was the jack of all trades, master of none. They had a failure rate higher than all the others except Maxtor.
 
Don't forget Barracuda IV, the quietest drive back then, if not of all times. I think I actually still have two of those. The only other drives as quiet as BarraIV are 5400 RPM drive such as Western Digital Green series or Samsung EcoGreen drives. You simply cannot find 7200RPM drive as quiet as BarraIV. Of course they are so outdated that current 5400RPM drives run circles around them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top