Past performance is a terrible predictor of future performance. Ssd prices dropped a lot since the pandemic since demand dropped and the factories are still there. As usual this normally means that new factories will be delayed and prices will be relatively higher going forward for a while. Now the longterm trend still favors ssd but 2022 Is a shitty year to base your price projections on
HDDs have hit a wall of physics, not of engineering. Well technically it still is engineering but the issues are ones that require new better understanding of physics to solve.
Me I am hype for the LTO price crashing on the next few years.
Yeah no shit. HDDs have been at the price floor for twenty or thirty years. Mechanical complexity dictates minimum cost. What keeps them relevant is expanding capacity. Finer control - even for the same components! - can significantly increase reliable data density. Plus, you can add more platters and only duplicate a few other moving parts.
On a good day, hard drives can offer fifteen-ish terabytes for $200.
By the time SSDs can match that, HDDs will probably be 40+ TB for the same price.
Even if those curves meet - what’s really going to squelch the hard drive market is that laptops and smartphones won’t touch them. Why in the name of god would you put a spinning disk in a moving object, after 2020? If your device needs as much storage as money can buy - not even a fat gaming laptop will fit 3.5" drives, and all that space comes from disk area. SSDs are going to push out HDDs in much the same way LCDs pushed out other flat-screen tech. It’s a virtuous circle of sales encouraging research that improves products and results in more sales. there’s probably gonna be a point where 1TB SD cards cost five bucks… and actually hold 1TB.
It’s probably because of a physical limitation, kinda like what happened to magnetic tape back in the day. Give it a couple decades, the same thing would probably happen to ssds
It’s probably because of a physical limitation, kinda like what happened to magnetic tape back in the day. Give it a couple decades, the same thing would probably happen to ssds
Maybe not as dramatic of a price change but the prices for HDD are dropping. You couldn’t get an 18TB hard drive for under $280 last year. Now they’re on sale for $200.
Maybe not as dramatic of a price change but the prices for HDD are dropping. You couldn’t get an 18TB hard drive for under $280 last year. Now they’re on sale for $200.
Look at Seagate share price… hasn’t tank
It’s when a cheap substitute clears the low end of the market and only the expensive top remains profitable to make. Similar to iGPUs. You won’t find a RTX 4010-4030 for $100, because the gpu built-in the cpu is just good enough for non-gamers.
I’d assume there really isn’t much room for HDD prices to come down in contrast to SSDs since the latter always fetched a premium until the technology started becoming more commonplace.
I think it’s simply a matter of physical limitations, we basically reached the physical limit of how hard disk work storing while ssd relie on microchips and we are becoming capable of making more and more circuitry in the same amount of silicon which makes it cheaper
they’ve barely moved in 4+ years though
I’ve got a Samsung 970 evo 1tb for 99 EUR in 2020. Last week (2023) I’ve a Kingston KC 3000 2TB for the same price.
This is not what I call “barely moved”.
depends on your area
I’ve bought a used Crucial MX500 250GB for 30€ in 2019.
Last week I got a Crucial MX500 1TB for 45€.
I can get a 2TB for below double-price but I only need 1 TB and I read that it has a different build with lower speed (lower TLC, smaller DRAM or something, I don’t know).
Exactly 4 years and certainly not barely moved.
they’re near 100€ here, but sure, 250gb was 100€ 10 years ago.
It’s cute how OP is comparing enterprise-grade HDDs with 5y warranty, with the trashiest consumer-grade SSDs with 2y warranty, some of which are QLC garbage that cannot be reliably used for long-term storage.
My thoughts exactly… and in Euro’s as well.
Compare them to US prices and WD Red’s and the picture looks a lot different.
My thoughts exactly… and in Euro’s as well.
Compare them to US prices and WD Red’s and the picture looks a lot different.
€1 = $1.09
So you are contending a $200 18TB WD Red/Easystore is 183 Euro? Where are you buying these Easystores for $183 Euro? I’m sure a lot of Europeans would love to know.
Fuck do euros have anything to do with it?
Uhh?? Because the drives are fucking more expensive in Europe? The same 18TB drive in the is $200 and by your stupid fucking logic, it’s 183 Euro. Does that sound right to you? Fuck no, get a fucking clue. Euro drive prices do not track reality of drive prices, which is one of the reasons this chart is complete shit. Euro drive prices are basically random amounts disconnected from the actual price paid in the US.
That has been the case since the hard drive crisis from the end of 2011. Well, SSDs stagnated or even went a little up over a 1-2 years period a few years back but now they’re back in full swing. If this continues (which isn’t a given, I’d say it’s 50/50 chances) it’ll be hard to justify spinning rust (all the “but but but unpowered SSDs can lose data in as little as X time” aside).
If they ever stop producing hard drives, I’ll have to start burning archival discs or something.
I don’t think hard drives are going away anytime soon. Seagate just releases their dual actuator drives to market recently so not only are hdds not going away but they’re still actively being innovated and improved upon.
Again, cherry picking by only using mid sized HDDs against low capacity SSDs.
12tb is mid size now? shame that this hobby got expensive so quick with larger drives costing way more than the usual midpoint
The trick is to get the lightly used 12TB drives from the people who just upgraded to 20TB drives.
But even if you buy new it’s not really expensive per se, the issue is more when expenses happen all at once. If you expect that $350 18TB drive in the post to last about 5 years, that’s $350/5/12 = $6/month, which really isn’t that bad (rough estimate assuming the value will drop to 0, and ignoring opportunity cost; also energy is free)
it’s still a big clump sum unfortunately. paying 400-500€ for one 18tb drive and needing two, that’s way too much money. i used to buy two drives for 500€ at most