RzrTrek:

I much rather pay five times as much for my SSD than have my 1TB HDD fail after less than 1 year of use.

any data that backing that most hdd fail after less than 1year of use ? afaik its like below 1% with most of them DOA depends on usage, but on average HDD last at least 2-3years blackblaze showing most of their hdd last over 3years, not sure how often they replace their hdd SSD isnt perfect anyway if SSD cost like 5x HDD, that mean u have 5x HDD to duplicate your data.... more fail-proof rather than 1SSD single drive by using 2 SSD -> then u can get 10x HDD u will say, it doesnt matter if HDD fail after a year, SSD is far worth, that indeed if its true but until now we been using hdd and do people been getting their hdd failing every year? dont think so

https://www.networkcomputing.com/storage/google-plans-use-intel-ssd-storage-servers/441893770 Just a quick google search, but here you go. While the cost per Gigabyte is still a lot higher vs mechanical HDD's, it's inevitable that mechanical HDD's will go away at some point. SSD's also come with the benefit of consuming less power, which I assume for a company that has thousands of drives if not more, is a significant cost saving. Not to mention the quicker transaction of data. The quicker data is processed, the quicker resources are freed up for the next task at hand. I have yet to see any HDD fail from the ones I have used over more than 20 years of PC usage. Though I can't say the same from what I see at work, I'm almost starting to think aftermarket HDD's are better batches than what is in laptops by default. I also noticed much bigger failure rates of WD Blue's vs WD Black's... then again, the more premium or business model laptops tend to use WD Black (when using WD), so that must hint at something.

schmidtbag:

Tapes are really only used for archiving purposes, and, in mainframes that still have one of those crazy expensive automated tape libraries. Otherwise, they're not really used anymore. To my understanding, the failure rate of SSDs hasn't been a problem since 2012. It was due to firmware and manufacturing issues that have long since been resolved in newer models. So putting exceptions aside, HDDs don't have a predictable lifespan like SSDs do. If you absolutely don't want to lose something, putting your trust in something that could die without notice is risky. Both HDDs and flash-storage devices (including USB drives) have places to recover data if some other part of the drive failed. Though, it definitely is easier to repair a dead HDD on your own (still risky and difficult, though).

well maybe having more experience with HDDs is clouding my judgement? you can check how many spare sectors you have left, how much noise it makes, R/W speeds over time and so on, plenty of warnings, an SSD at most will give you an estimated total write counter and it could fail well before that, my failed units are fairly new, sata3 from around 2015-16, funny how my first ever ssd a 30gb sata2 unit still works 24-7 as a NAS bootdrive only scenario where I would consider HDDs to not have a predictable lifespan would be inside a 13" college laptop, meanwhile on a desktop they tend to outlast every other component except the case

schmidtbag:

There are plenty of people who still prefer, or even need local storage (especially those who want higher-quality content). I'm not sure where you're from, but most rural areas don't have access to internet fast enough for streaming, or at least it isn't cheap. Countries like Romania are an odd exception.

Especially in the US. A recent survey by a local group trying to promote increased access in our area...in the 4 country area they surveyed, which are primarily rural, outside significant towns access speed averaged less than 2mb/sec for wired connections. The other options were Sat internet with caps or some scattered 3G service. There are areas like this all over the US.

goodnight, sweet prince of HDD's. Ive never had an ssd fail.

Khronikos:

My HDDs are in general very good. I keep them mostly on, they work a lot and at low temps, but they have last on average 5 years or so a piece. SSDs are just better in general though, and people will quickly move over to them as they get less in price. Nobody wants mechanical drives anymore including me. My last one is in my PC. A WD 7200 1TB drive. It will go until the end of the year when I replace it. I'll keep it as a backup.

It will take a while for high capacity SSDs to catch up to Mechanical drives are at plus the price being a little more expensive than 3+ times the amount of money (the price of the cheapest 2 TB SSD on Amazon or about 4.2 times the amount of the Cheapest 1TB SSD also based on Amazon pricing). Finally you don't speak for everyone how do you know that nobody wants mechanical drives? Gamers still want mechanical drives for the storage capacity and the same goes for people who do video editing. Yeah they will use the SSD drive for some of their applications to speed things up but at the end of the day Mechanical drives are still needed like it or not.

EspHack:

well maybe having more experience with HDDs is clouding my judgement? you can check how many spare sectors you have left, how much noise it makes, R/W speeds over time and so on, plenty of warnings, an SSD at most will give you an estimated total write counter and it could fail well before that, my failed units are fairly new, sata3 from around 2015-16, funny how my first ever ssd a 30gb sata2 unit still works 24-7 as a NAS bootdrive

I've had more experience with HDDs too. I have more HDDs in use than SSDs. But I think the problem is you're allowing your impression of anecdotes and early models cloud your judgment. I agree HDDs usually give you hints that failure is on the horizon, but many HDDs can fail before showing any of the signs you mentioned. I've had one that worked for months on end, but one day I shut down the PC, turned it back on, and the drive was defective. As for "my failed units are fairly new", the manufacture date and the controller is what matters, not the time you bought it. I think its important to keep the following things in mind: * HDDs are mechanical. All mechanical things will fail due to wear and tear. * Even if you're not reading or writing anything, an HDD can die just by leaving it powered on. Some poorly-made SSDs can have corrupt data when not utilized for several months, but the drive itself doesn't degrade just by leaving it on. Furthermore, power cycling has a hefty impact on the lifespan of mechanical parts, but it pretty negligible for ICs. * SSDs are based on old technology; they're basically just glorified flash drives. What makes them special are the controllers (which as I have alluded to before, is often what you should point fingers at when something goes wrong). So, unless you think USB flash drives are also unreliable (they're not, people just don't take care of them), an SSD inherently isn't any less reliable, either. I'm sure you know this, but just as a heads up - generally speaking, if you have sectors going bad, the whole drive should be replaced, even if there are no other signs of failure.

only scenario where I would consider HDDs to not have a predictable lifespan would be inside a 13" college laptop, meanwhile on a desktop they tend to outlast every other component except the case

I'm not sure what desktop PCs you use, but statistically, HDDs and fans are almost unanimously the first parts to die. Back in the early 2000s, motherboards were pretty failure-prone due to cheap construction, where capacitors would swell from heat. But that hasn't really been a problem for roughly a decade. The only non-mechanical modern hardware I see fail are passively cooled GPUs in poorly ventilated cases, and occasionally cheap RAM covered in dust. Non-overclocked CPUs will pretty much last indefinitely (they do have a lifespan, but it's longer than anyone would care to exploit).