Global HDD sales drop another 12% to 77 million devices for Q1 2019

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For actual long time storage and backups i will still use HDDs, and that's not going to change.
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TheDeeGee:

For actual long time storage and backups i will still use HDDs, and that's not going to change.
But.. but... my magnetic tape πŸ˜€
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I expect this trend to continue for the next 5-10 years. Unless they come up with some new technology that improves performance. I can see hybrid drives becoming more popular as a stepping stone for people who want SSD-like performance but still want a lot of storage. SSD's will see the same decline soon as NVME becomes the new standard.
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But but, I just bought three hard-drives and it still declines? :O joking
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CPC_RedDawn:

I expect this trend to continue for the next 5-10 years. Unless they come up with some new technology that improves performance. I can see hybrid drives becoming more popular as a stepping stone for people who want SSD-like performance but still want a lot of storage. SSD's will see the same decline soon as NVME becomes the new standard.
Hybrid is in rather bad spot. You don’t need storage for movies and music. Most games and software can be fit in 500GB SSD. It always wiser to separate drives between usage. Unless there very specific use cases.
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CPC_RedDawn:

I expect this trend to continue for the next 5-10 years. Unless they come up with some new technology that improves performance. I can see hybrid drives becoming more popular as a stepping stone for people who want SSD-like performance but still want a lot of storage. SSD's will see the same decline soon as NVME becomes the new standard.
HDDs are steadily on their way out, not specifically because of performance, but because of value. The only reason they're retaining any interest is because they still offer a very compelling price:capacity ratio that pretty much nothing else can compete with. As soon as 1TB SSDs beat 1TB HDDs in price, I imagine that will officially be the end of consumer-grade HDDs; enterprise HDDs will still be made for a long while.
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Somewhere down the line (maybe not so far away) when ISP speeds + package prices eventually improve for the masses, including improved streaming (video/gaming/apps/etc) + online storage options, I can see things changing dramatically locally. There'll be a few eye-openers. I think a surprising number of folk don't realise the implications of their purchased digital content on providers such as Steam. If Steam were to go down permanently you've lost everything. Unless that risk were reduced to around zero, maybe things might turn around for local storage. Or, what about mitigating through parallel/multiple independent online storage options - a realistic idea for the future? We've come far, it'll be interesting to see how things develop.
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As long as people have storage needs above 2-5Tb, HDDs will be around. I dont think SSDs can offer that sort of capacity + cost per Tb any time soon.
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sverek:

Hybrid is in rather bad spot. You don’t need storage for movies and music. Most games and software can be fit in 500GB SSD. It always wiser to separate drives between usage. Unless there very specific use cases.
I do this exact thing, I have 500GB nvme drive for my OS, a 2TB SDD for games, and a 1TB HDD for media (pictures, movies, music, etc) and backups. Although, I would go and check out some of the tests done on the hybrid drives. The seagate firecuda drives are actually pretty damn good. Sure they only have an 8GB SSD cache system but it learns over time what files are more frequently used and caches them in that 8GB cache. Some tests on youtube show that the drive comes extremely close to SSD performance for load times. Granted you have to wait for the drive to learn what you open more often for it to really show what it can do. But once hybrid drives start coming out with 32GB or 64GB cache's things will start to kick off a lot for these devices. They can basically cache an entire game. Currently a 1TB firecuda is around Β£65 on amazon. Much cheaper than a 1TB SSD at around Β£110 and an NVME drive at Β£150+ Sure these hybrid drives won't take off as much as HDD's or SSD's its more of a stop gap than an upgrade.
schmidtbag:

HDDs are steadily on their way out, not specifically because of performance, but because of value. The only reason they're retaining any interest is because they still offer a very compelling price:capacity ratio that pretty much nothing else can compete with. As soon as 1TB SSDs beat 1TB HDDs in price, I imagine that will officially be the end of consumer-grade HDDs; enterprise HDDs will still be made for a long while.
Just look at seagates HAMR drives πŸ™‚ aslo I mean some data centers still use a form of floppy disk... kinda πŸ˜‰ [youtube=alxqpbSZorA]
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i notice 1tb ssd isnt far from reaching 1tb hdd prices at current rates, i wonder what happens when it becomes affordable to have several terabytes of ssd storage, hdd would have to quadruple in capacity at the same prices to stay relevant
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sverek:

Hybrid is in rather bad spot. You don’t need storage for movies and music. Most games and software can be fit in 500GB SSD. It always wiser to separate drives between usage. Unless there very specific use cases.
I guess most don't "need" storage for movies and music. Personally I do πŸ™‚
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Irenicus:

I guess most don't "need" storage for movies and music. Personally I do πŸ™‚
"Fast Storage"
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I've gone completely SSD's in my rig, M.2 SX8200 500gb boot etc. and an older 1TB Sandisk Extreme Pro MLC SSD (10yr warranty-this this is still a beast)). Silence is golden. Movies etc. I put on my 2tb wd black i put in an external enclosure. and I still use a 4TB external spinner for backups and more stuff. Spinning hard drives aren't the best for long term important storage. Burned Mdisc Blu-Rays are much better long term storage. In reality , I wish i had another TB or so of storage in my PC now, and may pick up a cheap 2TB SSD like the ADATA SU800 soon. But really. how many games do I need installed on my PC at once? I'm usually only 'into' less than a handful at a time.
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sverek:

"Fast Storage"
Sure, but an SSD isn't ideal for that in terms of durability... writing and erasing large files often. Ofcourse it depends how often you do that. If you're using it for System Backups like every 2 weeks it's not a big deal. But doing that daily is going to wear it out quickly.
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TheDeeGee:

Sure, but an SSD isn't ideal for that in terms of durability... writing and erasing large files often. Ofcourse it depends how often you do that. If you're using it for System Backups like every 2 weeks it's not a big deal. But doing that daily is going to wear it out quickly.
Ssd durability was an issue 10 years ago. Even QLC it's impossible to write too much, when using it normal πŸ™‚
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Rx4speed:

I've gone completely SSD's in my rig, M.2 SX8200 500gb boot etc. and an older 1TB Sandisk Extreme Pro MLC SSD (10yr warranty-this this is still a beast)). Silence is golden. Movies etc. I put on my 2tb wd black i put in an external enclosure. and I still use a 4TB external spinner for backups and more stuff. Spinning hard drives aren't the best for long term important storage. Burned Mdisc Blu-Rays are much better long term storage. In reality , I wish i had another TB or so of storage in my PC now, and may pick up a cheap 2TB SSD like the ADATA SU800 soon. But really. how many games do I need installed on my PC at once? I'm usually only 'into' less than a handful at a time.
for Blu-Rays, do u never heard disc-rot? imo for archival either hdd or disc(blu-rays) is about same
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for SSD, i dont think it can be used for archival storage i have yet to test it myself, how long SSD can retain data without powered on...but based report it depends on various things such as temperature etc. https://www.jedec.org/sites/default/files/Alvin_Cox%20%5BCompatibility%20Mode%5D_0.pdf based above : 1year on 30℃ while most pc using SSD as their main storage which like reported that hdd usage dropped but there also many people using NAS, not sure how many people fill their NAS with SSD but i think more people using HDD than SSD on their NAS... my NAS, tv recorder all using HDD another point for SSD, is that the trend with multi-level cells, with QLC 3D nand not only perform slower but also write edurance is much lower than previous gen (MLC,TLC) even now ssd maker most using SLC write cache etc. to reduce write amplification we will see how far they are pushing this i personaly dont really see this trend in good way, its more like making the SSD cheaper with cheaper quality products
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slyphnier:

for SSD, i dont think it can be used for archival storage i have yet to test it myself, how long SSD can retain data without powered on...but based report it depends on various things such as temperature etc. https://www.jedec.org/sites/default/files/Alvin_Cox [Compatibility Mode]_0.pdf based above : 1year on 30℃ while most pc using SSD as their main storage which like reported that hdd usage dropped but there also many people using NAS, not sure how many people fill their NAS with SSD but i think more people using HDD than SSD on their NAS... my NAS, tv recorder all using HDD another point for SSD, is that the trend with multi-level cells, with QLC 3D nand not only perform slower but also write edurance is much lower than previous gen (MLC,TLC) even now ssd maker most using SLC write cache etc. to reduce write amplification we will see how far they are pushing this i personaly dont really see this trend in good way, its more like making the SSD cheaper with cheaper quality products
Does the lower write endurance really matter for the average user? No, because you need to write an incredible amount of data every day (you have to delete data too), to use alle the "writes" of an QLC ssd. People said the same about TLC ssd's, that the endurance was too low. Noone is wirting and delete data 24/7, unless you are testing endurance spesific , or you are using it for enteprise. πŸ˜‰
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Why aren't they sell 256GB SSD/2TB HDD or 512GB SSD/4TB HDD? every games buys fast SSD for WIN + 1~4TB HDD for storage and AIO product is better for clean built and overall price could be beter then 2 separate products. I only see 8GB based SSHD- no point in them.
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Who would have throught only 25 years ago that the sci-fi futuristic marvel called the 700mb cdrom disc, would now look as ancient today as the wax cylinder is to todays digital music. lol