Decline price per GB for HDDs comes to an end
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Emille
Maybe the halting of cheaper large capacity mechanical drives will drive the adoption of ssds. It would be nice to start moving that way. Samsung released a 4tb 750 evo or something about 18 months ago but it seems to be gone from the market now.
fry178
would like to see how much of that is actually caused making/selling drives, and the lower production of hdds after suppliers/plants got "hit" (tsunami/earthquakes etc).
intellimoo
Still have a looooong way to go on that front.
MisterGutsy
Its logical, you only ever need 1 or 2 (AT MOST) ssds to install your OS and/or games while you can have as many mechanical drives as you want for storage.
My PC have 7 mechanical drives (26Tb) and 1 ssd (samsung 850 evo 1tb). So unless ssd's come to the same price level of hdd and become LARGE enough that archiving data on it is feasible the price of hdds isn't going to go down much more (which i don't see happening in the next 15 or so years atleast).
nevcairiel
The 4TB 850 Evo is still around, but its quite expensive. More then double the price of the 2TB model for reasons.
One of the factors of SSD prices is the shortage of NAND chips right now. New factories are being build, but this takes time. Presumably in 2018 it should go back down a bit. In the meantime higher-density V-NAND is also being developed, which should help with bigger drives.
My main PC doesn't have any mechanical drives left at this point, however my storage server still has a dozen or so drives for media storage. But replacing those is very unlikely, as it doesn't need the performance anyway.
riot83
I remember reading about a year ago that the reason regular mechanical HDD's wont be getting cheaper is because the manufacturing costs of the mechanical parts etc. They'll be making no profit by selling them if they go alot cheaper.
For SSD's the prices can come down below the HDD's price/GB, because they're cheaper to manufacture, but the demand is high and NAND chips are going like hotcakes to everything now so theres no reason to drop the prices.
Humanoid_1
Makes sense to me.
When new bigger capacity HDDs launch they have a price premium which usually shaves off pretty quickly.
Leading up to 2TB that happened fast, as the mass market saw a need to own such HDDs. 4TB came along and that slowed due to less of the mass market seeing a need for such a huge drive.
With 6 and 8TB+ drives that effect has just increased the slow down of price drops.
Most people today consider such a big HDD a waste of time and money for their current needs.
People used to download their movies & TV shows whereas today they are Mostly streaming them legally or illegally, so they no longer need such big HDDs.
Me, I am a bigger user. Currrently have 5 HDDs (10.5TB) + a 512GB SSD in my PC and also a 4 bay NAS box currently outfitted with 1TB drives which are about to get upgraded.
I plan to buy a bunch of 6 to 8TB drives Soon to add to my setup, as 2nd hand (but new & unused) ebay prices have finally dropped with semi reasonable availability in the UK.
Guys in the US have Much better prices than we do, you're lucky.
SirDremor
Considering SSDs are not going to reach such price\GB ratio any time soon (especially with looming NAND shortage), HDDs have quite some more time of life. I would give it around 2 decades (if no other major disk technology arises during that time).
P.S. I do NOT talk about OS-drives - HDDs are already almost out of that market, now they primarily serve as massive data storage.
Jumbotron
It's been 5 years since I bought my 3TB WD RED drives. However, 3TB and 4TB units still are the best choice value-wise. Disappointing to say the least.
vbetts
Moderator
At least they're not expensive though.
RzrTrek
I wouldn't mind a 6TB HDD for $99, but even that would be pushing it to far (as in expensive) since it's a hassle with the vibrations (moving parts) and noise output.
schmidtbag
HDDs at higher capacities still have a significant price edge over SSDs. Whenever it comes where 2TB SSDs become the same price as HDDs, that's when HDDs will officially need to be retired.
JOHN30011887
Well im soon getting a wd 6tb black 7200rpm hdd for £230, thats a ok price for me
Ricepudding
I cannot wait to finally be rid of traditional HDD's, still this won't be for atleast another half a decade (more likely a decade) till the prices of SSD's drop to a level where they are finally at a reasonable price per/GB
schmidtbag
SATA SSDs below 1TB are a reasonable price/GB. M.2 drives seem to be a bit more expensive, but tests have shown over and over again that there is hardly any significant real-world performance gain when using them vs SATA. If you just want something to store your media on, HDDs are still plenty fast enough.
So basically what it comes down to is you can trade cash for "your dignity". Are you a real enthusiast if you don't have an M.2 drive, or do you not give a crap and just want the most practical purchase?
MegaFalloutFan
Well you can easily find 8Tb SeaGate drives for 170USD, I got 2.
Before that i got 100$ 5TB drives, maybe 2 years ago
fry178
@MisterGutsy
why? the only reason would be price and/or large storage at +1tb..
everything else the ssd does better.
i switched to all ssd's 2y ago and will not put another mech drive in any rig i will own.
even the fastest 7200 hdd will not get close to what i get even with the cheapest ssd.
not even talking about "noise"/temps/life.
i had 4 hdds "die" (in 12y of using hdds (about 30 drives) but not one ssd (20 drives over 9y), as they only tend to die from age (+3y)..
Ricepudding
What i plan to do in my new system when i finally get round to making it... SSD's just don't die unless they're DOA, HDD's on the other hand fail all the time, maybe i'm just unlucky but i've gone through my fair share of them over the years.
a system with pure SSD's/M.2 drives is just the way forward, more expensive but you cut out on all the noise they would make and they run 3-10+ times faster depending on the drive you're using!
slyphnier
not make sense manufacturing cost mechanical parts caused hdd wont getting cheaper
i believe most of the parts remains same/similar, only the magnetic platter that got increased size
with that in mind, then bigger capacity will be lower price, but not the case with current hdd pricing
so i am guessing its more hdd maker holding the prices until they can double the hdd size
the only thing i still concern about ssd is data rentetion ... for active system its not thing to concern, but if u thinking using ssd for archival do ssd hold data as good as hdd?
well for now i dont think there people archiving on ssd, but if ssd to complete replace hdd then it need to able hold data as long as hdd
when using back HDD that not used few years, afaik there almost no issue with data rentention, only in rare cases data turn bad
how about SSD ? last time there quite talk about it saying it only hold data few months, i still need to read more about this though
Fender178
As far as big Hard drives go 3-4TB seems like the sweet spot as far as pricing goes. But if you want to pay $30 bucks more you could possibly get a 5TB HDD if the manufacturer makes one. I got a USB 3.0 5TB drive for around $140 bucks.
I wouldn't mind going all SSD's in my rig but wouldn't be financially possible.
The cheapest 2TB SSD drive I have seen is the Curcial mx300 but still that costs an arm and a leg.
