Tracking SSD costs

[Phage]

Why are we here ?
What's it all about ?

42

[Taiko]

How much do they charge for delivery?

if you mean http://www.cclonline.com/ its free next day shipping.

[Hawks3k]

Are these prices any good?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Corsair-P256-2...item230580daf7

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Corsair-X256-2...item230572431f

[Hawks3k]

and this one:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...fvi%3D1&_rdc=1

[Shooty*]

Pass.

However, the 40gb Kingston boot drive that I got now appears to have been withdrawn from sale at most places, and the price where it IS available has gone up past £100.

Odd. I mean, I imagine it's been swallowed by the new model, but it really filled a hole in the market which has now apparently been left vacant again, and it seems like shops only had it for about 2 weeks before it sold out, so what was the point?

Just come into a little bit of money, and was looking for another drive, but can't find any at an attractive price at the moment. Not looked TOO hard, I have to say, but ebuyer stock didn't tickle my fancy, even with the free birthday shipping (HINT).

[Zhaoman]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHOOTY!!! woohoo! lol great hint btw have a good one

[Shooty*]

Thank you. I have had

[TooNice]

6 weeks since the last update:

G.Skill Falcon II from MemoryC (I've decided to shift my attention to the cheaper Falcon II because it's quite a bit cheaper without being significantly slower):
64GB £153.34 -> £151.82 (-£1.52)
128GB £261.20 -> £256.86 (-£4.34)
Original Falcon because I can't find the 'II' version of it:
256GB £474.82 -> £534.50 (+£59.68)

Intel G2 from Scan:
80GB: £197.17 -> £190.12 (-£7.05)
160GB: £328.96 -> £352.48 (+£23.52)

*Yawn*. Almost a year since this thread started, and I am ever more sceptical that we'll see SSD going mainstream soon.

To be fair, the new JMicron is finally bring price towards £1.50/GB, but I am not sure if I trust them at the moment.

Oh, BTW, the Corsair P256 is based on a Samsung controller but I am not sure how to differentiate them (I know that Anandtech wasn't too impressed when they made the massive comparison). The X256 is based an Indilinx controller and doesn't seem badly priced - if you are willing to pay £500.

[mikerr]

To include the smaller SSDs:

32GB Corsair X32 £108 (+£10)
40GB Intel £92.82 @ scan

Pity the £70 Kingston(intel) 40GB was so short lived...

[jim]

So, at optimum price points:

April 2009: £300 for 120GB, £2.50 per GB
February 2010: £260 for 128GB, £2 per GB

20% reduction over (almost) 12 months. If that reduction remains consistent, we're talking 2-3 years before the mythical £1/GB ratio is achieved... which seems fairly sensible to me.

[TooNice]

20% reduction over (almost) 12 months. If that reduction remains consistent, we're talking 2-3 years before the mythical £1/GB ratio is achieved... which seems fairly sensible to me.

Doesn't sound as unreasonable now, and will come across as more and more reasonable as we go on (keeping in mind that the latest JMicron is meant to retail at £1.50/GB) though I note that people have been predicting that for 1-2 years already. And the more daring predictions suggest the end of mechanical drive. I reckon that there is no way that is going happen even at £1/GB.

[jim]

And the more daring predictions suggest the end of mechanical drive. I reckon that there is no way that is going happen even at £1/GB.

No, definitely not. Consider that a lot of people have multi-TB storage servers - I myself have one.

Today, if I want a new hard drive, I can get a 2TB disk for £115 - £0.06 per GB. If SSDs came down to £1/GB, that drive would cost me £2000! No chance

Also, you've got to consider that for file storage purposes access times are nearly irrelevant and transfer speeds aren't a big deal, as proved by the popularity of 5400rpm "Green" drives. Besides, transfer speeds can be improved with a decent RAID array and high density drives.

Consequently, the big selling points for SSDs at the file storage level will be

Persistent data - even when an SSD runs out of write cycles, it will still be readable. Unlike a hard drive, which would comparably suffer a head crash or similar.
Better reliability - they can be dropped and so on without undergoing the same risks as platter-based disks.
Low power and heat - not a *huge* problem, especially as I suspect that hard drives will be making the transition over to 2.5" form factor over the next few years.

So what sort of a premium would people be willing to pay for those features in their file servers? Not that much, I would think. I would guess that at £0.10 per GB today nobody would want a mechanical disk any more, but hard drives will also be advancing at a fairly rapid rate. By the time SSDs reach £1/GB, mechanical drives will probably be at £0.03/GB with 1TB per platter drives on the market, so they'll always be playing catch-up.

A horrendously long time, I would imagine

[Shooty*]

Actually, I'm quite looking forward to having my bone marrow replaced by solid state storage once the price is low enough.

[TooNice]

@snootyjim: I think the argument is that a lot of people, including, but especially outside the enthusiasts circle only use about 250-500GB of HD space, and they outnumber enthusiasts by a lot. On that point I would say that there are also small businesses who need a lot of space, but can't afford TBs of SSD, and the fact that Average 'I don't know much, but I can at least compare number' Joe would find 2000GB more impressive than 250GB.

There is another thing I wonder though. Were an SSD to fail, would it be more difficult to recover data. I mean granted, data recovery is definitely not a fun thing to do with mechanical drive, and really we should all know better than to not keep backups but suppose it happens.

Actually, that's another reason why mechanical drive will be around for a good while: backup. £100 for a good 128GB (78p/GB) SSD would be incredibly hard to resist, I would not be willing to buy a second one just for backup. And no matter how reliable they are meant to be (I think the lack of maturity in the technology may offset the inherent advantage of the technology), I would not like to run it with no backup.

[jim]

@snootyjim: I think the argument is that a lot of people, including, but especially outside the enthusiasts circle only use about 250-500GB of HD space, and they outnumber enthusiasts by a lot. On that point I would say that there are also small businesses who need a lot of space, but can't afford TBs of SSD, and the fact that Average 'I don't know much, but I can at least compare number' Joe would find 2000GB more impressive than 250GB.

There is another thing I wonder though. Were an SSD to fail, would it be more difficult to recover data. I mean granted, data recovery is definitely not a fun thing to do with mechanical drive, and really we should all know better than to not keep backups but suppose it happens.

Actually, that's another reason why mechanical drive will be around for a good while: backup. £100 for a good 128GB (78p/GB) SSD would be incredibly hard to resist, I would not be willing to buy a second one just for backup. And no matter how reliable they are meant to be (I think the lack of maturity in the technology may offset the inherent advantage of the technology), I would not like to run it with no backup.

Well, I read "end of the mechanical hard drive" to mean that they weren't being produced anymore - SSDs only, which would mean that businesses and enthusiasts alike would need to find better value in SSDs than hard disks. I mean, think about Google - they use thousands of standard desktop hard drives every year... it would take a lot for them to abandon mechanical.

As for the failure theory, I'm tempted to say that an SSD should be easier. I mean, with an SSD, the controller might fail, or a certain block might completely fail, but the drive is made up of independent bits of flash. I can't see how they would all fail at the same time - and it would be fairly unlikely in the first place... for even just one to fail. And at the very basic level the flash chips could be removed and read from an external device.

With a hard drive, you've got a physical disk, which can be severely damaged by a head crash or environmental factors - and if that happens, there's no getting your data back. Yeah, things can be salvaged, but if your file is on the damaged area, you've had it. So I wouldn't say it's harder with an SSD - if anything it'll probably be easier. And the whole write-cycle thing will be good as well... when your SSD runs out of cycles at least you'll still have all your data. Just buy a new one (now at a fraction of the cost) and transfer the data over - job done.

I agree about backups, but then that's always been the case. The more points of failure you have, the better. I personally would like to have a triple system - a main disk, a backup disk, and long-term optical storage, possibly in a different location to the backup disk. SSDs are no different really - and this is where the whole file storage issue comes into play. Buy a 128GB SSD for £100 - fine. Then buy a 1TB hard drive for £30 or so (by the time SSDs are 80p/GB), and you've got ample room to store all of your backups on. Sorted.

[golwg]

I am of the same thinking. Going to wait to see if the prices fall to a more affordable level next year.