Seagate: 18 and 20 TB HDDs by next year, 50 TB drives in 2026
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schmidtbag
Haha Seagate sure doesn't want HDDs to die. But, as long as they can get capacities that otherwise can't be achieved with SSDs in the same amount of space, these drives will be relevant. This is especially true, now that we're got cameras that can capture raw 4K (or even 8K) footage, thousands of frames per second, or photos at 45MP+. I figure these drives aren't going to be too popular for mainframes, since the seek times will likely be terrible, and a mainframe usually has plenty of room to fit more small drives.
Kaarme
Whereas SSD prices have been steadily coming down, apart from some abnormal periods, HDD prices haven't moved anywhere for a long time. A regular drive (like 6TB, for example) today would cost as much as it did a few years ago. Thus, the bells will soon be tolling for HDDs below the massive drives, like the ones mentioned in the article.
wavetrex
What are you smoking ?
They have come down in price massively in the last 3 years.
I bought my first 8TB hard-disk in Q1 2017 for a "very cheap" 359 Euro (which was down from ~400+ the year before).
I bought my last 8TB hard-disk last month for 138 Euro.
That's 62% freekin' percent reduction !
Obviously outdated 1TB-2TB drives are still going to have a much higher price/capacity ratio, and don't come down in price much (they just tend to vanish from the market when they stop making sense)
p.s.
Prices in US are even lower.
insp1re2600
why 7 year till 50tb?
schmidtbag
I've found drives smaller than 1TB don't really change much at all in price, but, I figure that's just because with capacities that low, the only thing you're paying for are the materials and production costs.
Part of me wonders how any drives smaller than 0.5TB will ever be sold. The only way to sell them for a reasonable price is if the manufacturer takes a loss of them.
Venix
The 3 tb or lower their price does not change drastically higher capacities though do and fast!
Kaarme
Eh... I was looking at 6TB prices a few years ago when I was planning to set up a simple two slot NAS, so I became somewhat aware of the prices. Before posting in this thread, I again checked the prices from the same popular domestic store. The price wasn't much different from what I remembered. Based on your post, the prices just haven't changed in my miserable home country, but elsewhere they must have, then. Good for you.
Aekold
I'm sure those future 50 TB drives will be awesome in the right use-case and we need to be moving in this direction, but as Hilbert said, the thought of backing that much data from a single mechanical drive is... scary. That and losing 50 TB of data when one drive bites the dust. 😱
If it were me, I would probably use those 50 TB drives as the backup targets for large RAID arrays (or VM backups). They'd work well in large business clouds as well. Having them as primary storage in any other situation would be a risky business.
fellix
While the hard drive sizes skyrocket, the I/O performance is not going anywhere up at the same rate. Squeezing in and out so much data through the choke point means such large storage devices will mostly justified in large scalable RAID setups. AFAIK, the fastest 7200RPM SATA drives can sustain ~240MB/s sequential throughput and ~1500 IOPS for random writes.
AndyMutz
imagine a RAID rebuild with those 50TB disks 😱
-andy-
Astyanax
why imagine? 😎
TieSKey
Impressive.
Although I'm reluctant to call exponential to double capacity in 6 years. With a 200Mpbs connection (not yet your world avg speed but absolutely reasonable) we can download ~2Tb per day. Ofc nobody does that but suddenly 50Tb don't feel that big :P
wavetrex
Local stores are in most cases ripoffs.
I saw in my old country the same drive which I bought here for from Amazon @ ~140 .... as the equivalent of 270 when converting currency. FFFFFF that !
(it was a promo though, they are now 160, but still, massive difference)
If you have the ability to buy with regional or continental delivery (always check prices on stores like Amazon, Mediamarkt, Cyberport etc... and see if they deliver in your country).
Even with the delivery costs, there's a big chance you'll end up much cheaper.
Set this as your homepage:
https://geizhals.eu/
Digilator
My 4TB "secondary" suits me fine. Suppose ~20TB would be nice for those that want to install a bunch of games and/or have a lot of HQ media. Not sure if it is a thing, but that size could be used for a HTPC, for a bunch of BLU-RAY rips.
user1
They could increase the read/write speeds, but the main obstacle is reliability, 10k or 15k drives dont last as long, and increasing the number of heads, makes the drive more complicated/ likely to fail. Just not worth it , when the main reason they are still used is because of high capacity/long lifespan/data integrity, not performance.
rl66
It depend on your need:
64 G (128 G is better) of ram and Raid with a total of 20 To is a minimum for me to work...
16 G and 2 To is enough for me to play.
As SSD can't reach high volume at low price right now, HDD are still evolving.
Silva
For personal use it really is absurd if you need that much space. I don't see the average user storing more than 1TB a year worth of data.
For storing work files, specially 4k or even 8k video, these are a must.
heffeque
Amazon Spain prices:
WD Blue 3TB:
- 2015: 97 €
- Today: 86 €
WD Blue 4TB:
- 2015: 130 €
- Today: 107 €
WD Blue 6TB:
- 2015: 240 €
- Today: 180 €
Samsung 860 EVO 2TB:
- 2018: 480 €
- Today: 304 €
That's what he means.
I do remember when there was a year to year almost doubling of HDD capacity per year.
Obviously that's not the case anymore since going further gets harder and harder (and other non-technological reasons).
TieSKey
There, fixed it for u :P
slyphnier
should at least compare the price for same capacity between SSD and HDD
the common things with people mind just look at price drop but neglecting the capacity
not even consider the top-end capacity price difference
cheapest big-size ssd probably samsung 860 evo 4tb at around $580? vs 4tb hdd average price $120 ($180 for wd-black)
for storage-perspective hdd price worth 3x+ SSD...
in the end like some people already said
hdd and ssd will remain on different purpose of storage
ssd will be for performance ... while hdd storage for dumping all those data/archive
regarding hdd capacity, its similar to rest of tech...
there been times that seems the tech not making "real" progress
for hdd as hdd-maker moving to new-tech (such hamr/mamr) the capacity will starting to jump again
but looking back at hdd capacity increase history, imo hdd capacity been stable increasing..
120gb?->250gb-500gb-> 500gb-750gb-1tb -> 1tb-2tb-3tb -> current 3tb-4tb-8tb (*based what i think common-capacity people use in like last 10years+ span)
and then looking at high-end hdd which already reach 16~18tb, imo its just the price that holding back the consumer rather than lacking capacity increase
