SSD price-per-GB expected to fall under 10 cents

[Saracen999]

1TB drives are already 11p/GB, how low do you need?

How low do I want? Free in a packet of cornflakes?

Or more seriously, same per-GB as an HD would be nice.

And it's getting there. The gap is closing.

But "need"? Well, that's a complex question.

I don't need an SSD at all. An HD will do the job. Just slower. So do I need the extra speed? Ultimately .... no.

But it'd be nice.

Just like I didn't need leather seats or nicer-looking wheels on my car, but I upgraded anyway. For me, it was worth it.

For me, the SSD issue has, for most of my needs, not really been worth it at all. But there are one or two places where that speed would be more useful and just nicer, than most of my storage needs.

So while I've had a couple of small-ish SSDs for some years, by and large, the cost/GB ratio with HDs has kept me with HDs.

However, that narrowing gap, the narrowing price premium, means that, for me, we are now more or less at my tipping point.

Every extra little bit that that gap closes increases the likelyhood of me going SSD for new drives. But while I'm teetering, I'm certainly not yet over the edge.

I stress, though this is a personal evaluation of cost/benefit.

[mercyground]

Sigh its just a shame that the orange umpaloopa just rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbished everyone with 25% trade tariffs. So now we're going to pay more.

[DanceswithUnix]

I stress, though this is a personal evaluation of cost/benefit.

tldr; For Windows 7 and later I don't really see an SSD as an option any more.


I get that, and your tendancy to stay away from Windows 10 may be helping you there.

There is a fundamental shift in storage use, in old operating systems a lot of effort was placed in trying to minimize head movement as head thrashing slowed the machine down. With SSDs that has gone the other way, parallel things up (easy with multiple cores) and extract more performance from the SSD. So the storage queue depth has gone from performance enemy to friend, and I think that is reflected in how Windows is implemented. Or it may be laziness, just not bothering the consider batching up disk accesses because it no longer matters would have the same effect.

I used to feel very little performance benefit from an SSD when they were new tech, but the later patches of Windows 7 that I ran I seemed to spend a frustrating amount of time looking at a red activity LED rather than things actually changing on screen.

[spacein_vader]

Sigh its just a shame that the orange umpaloopa just rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbished everyone with 25% trade tariffs. So now we're going to pay more.

Only in the US. Not sure why it would affect us in blighty.

[Saracen999]

tldr; For Windows 7 and later I don't really see an SSD as an option any more.


I get that, and your tendancy to stay away from Windows 10 may be helping you there.

There is a fundamental shift in storage use, in old operating systems a lot of effort was placed in trying to minimize head movement as head thrashing slowed the machine down. With SSDs that has gone the other way, parallel things up (easy with multiple cores) and extract more performance from the SSD. So the storage queue depth has gone from performance enemy to friend, and I think that is reflected in how Windows is implemented. Or it may be laziness, just not bothering the consider batching up disk accesses because it no longer matters would have the same effect.

I used to feel very little performance benefit from an SSD when they were new tech, but the later patches of Windows 7 that I ran I seemed to spend a frustrating amount of time looking at a red activity LED rather than things actually changing on screen.

Interesting. The head-movement issue isn't one that had iccurred to me but that logic makes sense. It'd also make sense for new OSs to be designed with much more of an eye on SSD than HD, that undoubtedly being the future. Just like, in their day, 3.5" floppies buried 5.25", as indeed 5.25" had done to 8" floppies.

My personal issue isxa bit diferent though, and it's based on what I use "storage" for.

I'd break it down to two or three things, one of them being something that's .... evolving.

Use 1 - Boot drives. On desktop/under-desk PCs, booting ftom SSD in no doubt faster but I don't care, as the way I use my machines makes it almost 100% irrelevant.

Use 2 - Application and data storage. I do have what historically would be large storage needs (for home and home-office use) but it's largely either photo or document-imaging purposes and neither storage nor retrieval usage puts a high performance loading on the system. i.e. between SSD and HD, I don't much care. But while my "historical" usage is high, once you start to loojk at audio and especially video storage it is, IMHO, a whole different game. And that's partly where I'm looking to go. Sooner or later.

Use 3 - Specific purposes. In my case, this means new (to me) laptop. It's not a piwer beast, but is pretty modern and certainly enough for my purposes. It's a couple of years old Dell, Inspiron 5000 IIRC. And it has an HD boit drive and this is one area where an SSD will benefit me. It also has Win10 so I'm conflicted about leaving that on and castrating the bits I don't like, or just tracking down drivers and going Ubuntu again.



All of which is really just saying that my "needs" perhaps aren't market-typical, and I'm pretty mych certain my evaluation of how beneficual SSD speed is won't match most members here. There'scno right or wrong in that, but personal evaluations.

In that respect, I'm certainly a but of a maverick, even to the point of being somewhat contrarian. I know this will be a shock after all these years, but ....

I don't go with the flow, just because it's where the flow is going. I decide if the flow is going where I want, and if it isn't, I go my way and the flow goes it's way. I'm sure you can think of a few examples but obvious ones would be Win10 , and my stance on gaming. I'm not willing to concede to the requirements of Steam, for instance. I said years ago that I will not give in to that, and to date, still don't and never had had Steam account and that will not change. Ever. Unless Steam completely change the way that model works and I ain't holding my breath.

I am, however, at the point where for some of my needs, SSDs are starting to make sense in a cost/GB sense, and so will go that way. It's just what, and when?

[usered]

So hdds will pretty much dissapear.

[Ttaskmaster]

1TB drives are already 11p/GB, how low do you need?

I bought a decent brand 4TB HDD for £60.
If I get any more SSDs, they need to replace that kind of capacity.

[sinhaomar]

Pretty attractive prices. Especially for common users that dont want assamble anything))

[DanceswithUnix]

I bought a decent brand 4TB HDD for £60.
If I get any more SSDs, they need to replace that kind of capacity.

That is a very good price (I would have expected more like £100), and certainly SSDs aren't anywhere near that level. They are eating the hard disk market though, I read recently that hard drive sales halved last year. Given they are still going to be used in things like TV recording boxes, the PC sales must be really tanking. That takes the economies of scale away from rotating media, driving SSD prices further down and spinning rust prices up.

[peterb]

So hdds will pretty much dissapear.

I don’t think mfrs have managed to make them invisible yet

[spacein_vader]

Much like tape drives before them, HDDs aren't going anywhere but their use case will change. Anywhere were capacity is more important than access rates (near line backups, file storage,) or where read/write speeds above HDDs gives no benefit such as cctv or set top TV boxes where you don't operate faster than real time.

[Saracen999]

Much like tape drives before them, HDDs aren't going anywhere but their use case will change. Anywhere were capacity is more important than access rates (near line backups, file storage,) or where read/write speeds above HDDs gives no benefit such as cctv or set top TV boxes where you don't operate faster than real time.

Depends how much the price gap narrows. The basic cost of the drive, regardless of capacity, is lower for SSDs than HDs Think about case, motor, heads, etc Which is why there's a non-stop trend towards smaller drives just becomin uneconomic to produce,

As soon as you start comparing cost/GB of the actual storage, excluding case, rhen the usage case for HDs shrinks as the comparison narrows. We've already seen peicss if basic SSD drives drop a lot, and minimum capacity go up a lot, over the last few years. If we get anywhere near the point where there cost of the actual capacity of SSDs approaches that of HDs, then that usage case is likely to get very small, to the point where they're a niche product for special purposes. My bet is that that narrowing will happen.

And by cost/GB of "capacity", I don't mean the whole unit, just the bit needed to add capacity i.e. eithef extra discs with associated extra heads, or changes to technology permitting increased data density per platter, versus cost of memory chips, any extra controller circuitry, etc.

Don't forget it's a very cut-throat business. I remember talking to Feliz Conner (co-founder of Seagate, some years back and he pointed out that getting the caoacity point and price of each next generation was critically important. He said, get that wrong once and your company is in trouble. Get it wrong a second time on the trot and you're probably bankrupt.

I think SSD twchnology is still relatively early, compared to HDs, in the tech maturity cycle, and future improvements in eith cost or capacity will be slower than SSDs, and that leads (I think) inexorably to SSDs to all practical purposes more or less killing off HDs.

I don't mean next week, or next year but .... five or ten years? Very possibly.

Of course, we may also see some new development in either give a quantum change in that, and throw it all into a cocked hat. Or even something better, faster and cheaper that buries both SSD and HD. Again, I'd bet on tbat happening and the only questions are :-

1) When, and
2) Will I live long enough to see it happen, and
3) Will mankind have nuked or climate-changed itself into extincton first!

[mers]

I think it's fairly obvious that mechanical HD's days are numbered , just removed my 2nd drive ( 500 GB ) and replaced itwith an SSD of the same size. 3 benefits here are that file swops between the drives are quicker and also the second drive reads a lot quicker now when opening file explorer. Also because of diminutive size air flow in the case is slightly better. 2 things that annoy me are the costs , SSD's surely must be a damn sight cheaper to produce that mechanical drives , material costs , casing ,motors assembly etc. I firmly believe the prices are unrealistically hiked due to demand and the profit margin. All my mechanical drives when removed I fit into exterior cases now and use for external storage via a Sata to usb connector. One thing I think mechanical drives have over SDD's is normally sure signs they are wearing out where as I think an SDD can just die with no warning , thats worrying.

[peterb]

Much like tape drives before them, HDDs aren't going anywhere but their use case will change. Anywhere were capacity is more important than access rates (near line backups, file storage,) or where read/write speeds above HDDs gives no benefit such as cctv or set top TV boxes where you don't operate faster than real time.

I wouldn’t say tape isn’t going anywhere, the Ultrium series has gone from Ultrium 1 to Ultrium 8 in the last 15 years and is still the technology of choice where the volume and security of the data is more important than random access speeds.

[DanceswithUnix]

I wouldn’t say tape isn’t going anywhere, the Ultrium series has gone from Ultrium 1 to Ultrium 8 in the last 15 years and is still the technology of choice where the volume and security of the data is more important than random access speeds.

HDD and tape are now both servicing the same archival market though.

If you want to build a minimal PC client, basically a network centric office machine, then you can get a 120GB SSD for a boot drive for £17.
If you want performance, the cabinet full of drives required to match a single SSD will cost you a fortune.
If you want reliability, then enterprise HDDs were always expensive so enterprise SSD is already a cheaper option.

That really leaves HDD as archive devices. HDD is the new tape (as shown by the likes of Backblaze), I'm not sure where that leaves tape.

[Saracen999]

I think it's fairly obvious that mechanical HD's days are numbered , just removed my 2nd drive ( 500 GB ) and replaced itwith an SSD of the same size. 3 benefits here are that file swops between the drives are quicker and also the second drive reads a lot quicker now when opening file explorer. Also because of diminutive size air flow in the case is slightly better. 2 things that annoy me are the costs , SSD's surely must be a damn sight cheaper to produce that mechanical drives , material costs , casing ,motors assembly etc. I firmly believe the prices are unrealistically hiked due to demand and the profit margin. All my mechanical drives when removed I fit into exterior cases now and use for external storage via a Sata to usb connector. One thing I think mechanical drives have over SDD's is normally sure signs they are wearing out where as I think an SDD can just die with no warning , thats worrying.

But demand causing high prices isn't "unrealistic". It's the exact opposite - it recognises that demand > supply => prices going up, right until price reduces demand to equal supply.

Manufacturers, of almost anything, aren't in business to produce down to a cost, but to maximise profit .... though the definition of that can vary according to company strategy. For instance, minimising prices can drive comoetion out, increasing long term returns at the cost of short-tern profit. Or, and thus is typically for innovators creating markets ... keep profits down, reinvest all profits and grow. Fast. Or faster. Get it right and you end up dominant in the market. Examples of that would be most tecg giants, especially MS, Amazon, Google, etc.

Profit-making is not profiteering, but companies exist primarily to serve their owners .... though that doesn't need to be at the expense of customers.

And I'd bet almost everybody here does the same thing, or would if they could. When was the last time anyone here told their employer "Pay rise? No thanks. I can make do as I am. Keep the extra".

Certainly, as a sekf-employed person, I charge what the market will bear, not the minimum I can. And what it will bear depends on the buyer. But what I'm selling is my time and expertise, which by definition is almost fixed in supply. I have always worked a given number of hours and if someone wants me to exceed that, in a given week .... well, it'll cost 'em. Unless they meet my price, I don't increase supply by working overtime, and there comes a point at which I won't work longer no matter the price. There have also been times when I can do job A or job B but not both, and unless some other factor overrides it, the better-paying job gets done and the lower-paying one doesn't .... unless it'll wait until better-paying work eases off. I'm maximising profit.