Price of SSDs "in a free fall" says report

[boothy02]

For most people its not going to be necessary to have a 16TB SSD people are more likely going to want 1-2TB perhaps 4TB. It would be nice to see faster SSD's rather than larger ones.

[cjs150]

For most people its not going to be necessary to have a 16TB SSD people are more likely going to want 1-2TB perhaps 4TB. It would be nice to see faster SSD's rather than larger ones.

They are already blisteringly fast, but faster is always nice except when you have to update motherboard to benefit.

Capacity is the interesting issue. How much will people need? I use 6-7TB for a large Blu-ray collection, will people really need more?

[crossy]

Does anyone other than Seagate offer SSHDs yet? I've had such a terrible track record with them I won't even consider using one of their drives anymore.

Sorry to hear that (although I don't work for Seagate so what do I care?!). If you don't mind using 2.5" drives rather than 3.5" and you don't need more than a terabyte then Toshiba's out there. Although strangely enough they SSHD a 5400rpm drive - I'd have expected a "performance" drive to be a 7200rpm one. If you patronise Scan then Toshiba MQ02ABD100H Quiet 1TB 2.5 inch Mobile Hybrid SSHD is where you'd need to look.

For most people its not going to be necessary to have a 16TB SSD people are more likely going to want 1-2TB perhaps 4TB. It would be nice to see faster SSD's rather than larger ones.

I refer you to the comments made above - what "most people" would like to see is an affordable drive, rather than one of huge capacity. As you say, "mainstream" large "spinny rust" drives seem to be clustered around the 2-4TB mark, so there's no real need for larger SSD's for consumers. If you were a wierdo who needs a 16TB SSD then either you'll have deep enough pockets for an enterprise one, or be able to RAID.

As to faster SSD's, no thanks - we're already having to invent new interfaces to keep up with the ones we've got now. If I got my wish then - apart from the more cost effective ones - I'd like to see some either longer lived or more reliable units. Yes, I know you can go for the low end "enterprise" ones and get 5 year claims, just wish that was the norm.

[jag272]

Sorry to hear that (although I don't work for Seagate so what do I care?!). If you don't mind using 2.5" drives rather than 3.5" and you don't need more than a terabyte then Toshiba's out there. Although strangely enough they SSHD a 5400rpm drive - I'd have expected a "performance" drive to be a 7200rpm one. If you patronise Scan then Toshiba MQ02ABD100H Quiet 1TB 2.5 inch Mobile Hybrid SSHD is where you'd need to look.

Ahh thanks, I'll have to keep that in mind in future. I can probably work around it being 2.5", the drive trays in my case have support for 2.5" drives. Would be interesting to see if the hybrid capability is powerful enough to keep the OS going strong even while the drive may be a bit slower. That said I don't exactly go high speed anyway, I'm sitting on WD Blues rather than the Blacks most people seem to recommend. That may change in the future but frankly if SSDs are getting cheaper I'll skip Blacks and go straight to SSD when theyre affordable.

I also agree on the speed point. More capacity at a more affordable price would be my goal. I currently have a 1TB WD Blue only in my PC and thats only half filled. I then have 2 WD Passports, 1x1TB for Media and 1x2TB for Games and backups (I'm on capped internet but its unmetered 12-8am so if I buy a game I download it then, make a steam backup and transfer to the 2TB passport to play later) and I believe my 1TB passport is about 50% full while the 2TB is only about 25% and thats including GTA V. I'll likely get round to using it for system backups at some point too.

So realistically speaking, I could get away with 1TB, if I wanted to keep everything internal I'd be looking at 2/3TB, 4TB would be nice for expansion and then keep the passports as pure backup drives. The speed is already getting a bit ridiculous, more speed is always good but I think we need to come up with a solid new interface on the motherboards themselves. I'm all for using PCIe if theres space on the board, but that depends heavily on the board, quite a lot of SSD users I imagine are still limited by SATA3 speeds.

[Percy1983]

Saw a good deal on the Seagate 1TB SSHD and thought "I'll give this a go". Glad I did - darn thing really moves (for me at least - ymmv).

I have been thinking about the 2.5 drives for a netbook I have to give it a good kick but may just go full SSD with lessor storage.

The hybrid drives do make sense but I have found using a separate drive for caching better due to the larger cache but of of course this takes up more space/SATA ports.

[The Hand]

Do 2.5 inch 2TB SSHDs exist yet? I could do with one for my laptop and maybe PS4!

[DemonHighwayman]

Good question @ The Hand. I searched amazon for one 6 months ago, received it, installed it then discovered it was only a 2tb hdd. Talk about misleading! & when I rechecked amazon it only said in the details that it was a regular hdd, and to rub it in, the drive clicks when it's being written to so i'm pretty sure I was sold a second hand drive

[Plasmastorm]

Only reason I have a mechanical drive myself now is that I have 2x2tb in a mirror for storage. I could shift them to a NAS but no real need since the pc can house them just fine.

If 4+tb SSD's come along for a reasonable price I'll happily jump on the wagon.

[The Hand]

Good question @ The Hand. I searched amazon for one 6 months ago, received it, installed it then discovered it was only a 2tb hdd. Talk about misleading! & when I rechecked amazon it only said in the details that it was a regular hdd, and to rub it in, the drive clicks when it's being written to so i'm pretty sure I was sold a second hand drive

Was it the Samsung M9T by any chance? Because that is what pops up when I google sshd 2.5 inch 2TB etc. I was close to buying, but realised it was HD and removed it from my basket!

[aniilv]

Good question @ The Hand. I searched amazon for one 6 months ago, received it, installed it then discovered it was only a 2tb hdd. Talk about misleading! & when I rechecked amazon it only said in the details that it was a regular hdd, and to rub it in, the drive clicks when it's being written to so i'm pretty sure I was sold a second hand drive

Thats why i like ebay, at least you can view the original posting. So if it had been misleading you can return it even if used. Not to mention amazon descriptions are a joke, sometimes when an item would have multiple versions you might not even know what you are buying since sometimes they don't even show model numbers.

[GuidoLS]

So I read the article... and the guy is still quoting the same $300/tb for SSD's as most of us were discussing 6+ months ago. This, to me, does not denote free fall... while nowhere near as fast, for that same $300, I can easily purchase 3x3tb hdd's, with change enough left over to probably buy a 1tb hdd. So no, for the average user, SSD's still aren't approaching a nominal price for mass storage. If those prices fall by 1/2 by Christmas, then my attention will be piqued. Otherwise, it's close to clickbait.

[DemonHighwayman]

Was it the Samsung M9T by any chance? Because that is what pops up when I google sshd 2.5 inch 2TB etc. I was close to buying, but realised it was HD and removed it from my basket!

No it was a Toshiba, a chubby little 2.5" drive which I actually use for my steam games because I need the storage space, so bring on the cheap multi TB SSD's I say lol.

@ aniilv, Yes i'd have to agree, i've been burned on both but on ebay it's happened less often and on ebay i've always got my money back. On Amazon they still owe me a refund for a faulty PSU I bought and returned. I guess it all comes down to image, even knowing ebay IS better in the back of my mind I guess Amazon has a cleaner image.

[ed^chigliak]

64GB SSD in ultra portables to be banned. Choose entry level 1TB and up to 8TB Surface Pro. Yay... only it won't happen any time soon.

[worldmaker]

I'm concerned about this issue: http://hexus.net/tech/news/storage/83035-unpowered-days-ssds-can-begin-lose-data/

Perhaps if this is resolved for long term off-power storage then I'd switch. Often I'm swapping machines, storage and backups around with some machines in storage for month, what would happen if the SSD lost everything?

I'll try with hybrids and wait a few years to see how this and other reliability issues are addressed or a new backup format comes to handle the volume of data.

[crossy]

Do 2.5 inch 2TB SSHDs exist yet? I could do with one for my laptop and maybe PS4!

Had a look last night (at the usual suspects) and the answer seems to be "no" unfortunately. Actually there doesn't seem to be many people actually making 2.5" 2TB drives ... period.

Then again, a 1TB SSHD (available) is already twice the "stock" storage for a PS4, so maybe that'd be a good halfway house?

[crossy]

64GB SSD in ultra portables to be banned. Choose entry level 1TB and up to 8TB Surface Pro. Yay... only it won't happen any time soon.

Confused the heck out of me. I thought that the 64GB SSDs in the ultra (and tablets) was because it was eMMC (i.e. soldered onto the motherboard) rather than a discrete drive. After all that's what you get for wanting something razor thin and paper light - you have to make compromises. Ultra's that can take discrete drives seem to come with 500GB+ anyway.