Say "Good Bye" to HDD.

[Singlebyte]

Sandisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year.

"We see reaching the 4TB mark as really just the beginning and expect to continue doubling the capacity every year or two, far outpacing the growth for traditional HDDs," Manuel Martull, SanDisk's product & solutions marketing director, stated in an email reply to Computerworld.


http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248070/SanDisk_announces_4TB_SSD_hopes_for_8TB_next_year

[Vod]

Sandisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year.

"We see reaching the 4TB mark as really just the beginning and expect to continue doubling the capacity every year or two, far outpacing the growth for traditional HDDs," Manuel Martull, SanDisk's product & solutions marketing director, stated in an email reply to Computerworld.


http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248070/SanDisk_announces_4TB_SSD_hopes_for_8TB_next_year

SSD prices are still too high to abandon HDD.

[hilariousandco]

Sandisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year.

"We see reaching the 4TB mark as really just the beginning and expect to continue doubling the capacity every year or two, far outpacing the growth for traditional HDDs," Manuel Martull, SanDisk's product & solutions marketing director, stated in an email reply to Computerworld.


http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248070/SanDisk_announces_4TB_SSD_hopes_for_8TB_next_year

SSD prices are still too high to abandon HDD.

Yeah, I imagine it'll be quite a while before these become affordable. Might as well just stick with a 3TB drive or 2 2 x 2TB ones. I'm looking forward to the next generation of storage disks like this though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc

[beetcoin]

too early to say good bye to HDDs. we are at least 2-3 years away i think.

[DeathAndTaxes]

SSD prices are still too high to abandon HDD.

Today maybe but the price per GB is also falling at a rate far faster than traditional magnetic storage.  The writing is on the wall.  Still HDD are probably not going away completely for a decade, but they are going to get pushed further and further into a niche over the next few years.

Flash already dominates small form factor devices (smartphones, tablets, consumer electronics, etc).  At one time HDD held in all those areas.  There were HDD in compact flash format, early mp3 players used small hdd, some video cameras recorded to DVD or HDD.  You can't find HDD based products in those areas any more.  

The next HDD market to be killed off is probably the laptop.  The form factor is smaller (2.5" vs 3.5") and the prices are higher ($0.10 to $0.20).  So it is an easier fight and the marginal cost increase isn't much relative to whole system cost.  Flash has the advantages of lower power consumption, less noise, higher reliability when it comes to shock.   The relentless march of Moores law will kill that market off too.

At the high end RAID using enterprise SSD is being considered more seriously in applications where IOPS are critical (like database servers).  A 2U server can mount 24 2.5" SSDs which is just an insane storage density


Of course hard drive companies aren't stupid, their strongest area is high capacity low performance applications (backups, nearline storage, archiving, etc) so HDD are going to get much bigger to stay competitive.   So it is win-win all around.  Still if I was WD I would be looking to buy a flash company.

[beetcoin]

i have a 128 GB ssd drive that i bought for $65 a year ago.. i don't think it has been worth it so far. i usually have anywhere between 45 to 53GB free, but i often end up deleting stuff or storing on my portable HDD.

[Singlebyte]

SSD prices are still too high to abandon HDD.

I think the horse buggy manufacturers said the same thing about new automobiles.   

The article didn't mention what prices will cost so who knows if they will be affordable or not.  And if you need a large capacity (and fast) drive then SSDs will be your only option.  As mass adoption comes into play I suspect the prices will fall significantly.  I don't see anyway for a mechanical hard disk to compete with a SSD in the next 2-3 years.  They are too slow, prone to mechanical failure, use more electricity, and will be limited on storage capacity.


Regarding new storage disks formats (DVD Format), How would you like to have one of these?:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/159245-new-optical-laser-can-increase-dvd-storage-up-to-one-petabyte

[DeathAndTaxes]

Yeah, I imagine it'll be quite a while before these become affordable. Might as well just stick with a 3TB drive or 2 2 x 2TB ones. I'm looking forward to the next generation of storage disks like this though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc

HVD is essentially dead.  It was an expensive concept in 2004 and both HDD and SSD have gotten significantly cheaper since then.  Lots of hype, lots of promises, lots of missed deadlines.  Silicon is an amazing thing.  A 1024 GB flash drive is essentially a 512 GB flash drive with chips that have double the density.  If you can make one you can eventually make the other.   Moore's law eventually means the larger one is cheaper than the smaller one use to be.  Look at memory (64K to 16GB) or CPU speed (1 Mhz to 8 cores @ 3.5 GHz) over 40 years.  Optical has never been able to match that kind of progress.

[hilariousandco]

Yeah, I imagine it'll be quite a while before these become affordable. Might as well just stick with a 3TB drive or 2 2 x 2TB ones. I'm looking forward to the next generation of storage disks like this though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc

HVD is essentially dead.  It was an expensive concept in 2004 and both HDD and SSD have gotten significantly cheaper since then.  Lots of hype, lots of promises, lots of missed deadlines.  Silicon is an amazing thing.  A 1024 GB flash drive is essentially a 512 GB flash drive with chips that have double the density.  If you can make one you can eventually make the other.   Moore's law eventually means the larger one is cheaper than the smaller one use to be.

Well, I just linked to that one as an example, but I know there's other types of discs currently in development or have been developed, I just couldn’t remember the names of them.

[forever21]

dont sleep for 2 weeks have an overtime in your job save money go in diet then you can buy that thing

[BurtW]

Both SSD and HDD technologies are at crossroads.

State of the art SSDs are using 8 or so electrons per bit.  Three more doublings of capacity and we will be at one electron per bit - if that is even possible to build.

State of the art HDD write head size is as small as physics allows (any smaller and they won't be able to write).  But, since read heads can be much smaller we are starting to lay down the tracks like the shingles on a roof.  We write a track (write head width) but instead of moving over one track width for the next track we only move over 1/2 a track.  We then write the new track on top of half of the previous track.  This leaves just enough signal in the remaining 1/2 width track to be able to recover your data from the noise with massive error correction on every sector.

BTW SSDs use even more error correction than HDDs to pull your data out of the noise at the 8 electron per bit level.

Theoretically, we might be able to push SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) to a 1:10 write/read width ratio.  In other words we would write a track and then just move over a little bit and write over 90% of the old track leaving only 10% of the previous track.  Just doing the 1/2 track shingle today is, by far, the hardest project I have worked on in my 25 years in the HDD industry.  Squeezing the tracks even more would require whole new multidimentional error correcting codes capable of recovering the data for a single track by reading and analyzing the data from two tracks on either side of the track of interest.  In other words we would read 5 of these tiny slivers of track, analyze the whole thing and be able to hopefully recover the data from the track in the middle.  The math and silicon to do this does not exist yet.

[jodybay]

awesome maybe someday i will buy one if have more btc to spend but as of now i will feel content at hdd

[Hazir]

I am happy that I have 60GB SSD and I bought it for like 1/3 of my monthly wage 2 years ago. I wonder how much will cost these 4TB SSD. I bet price will be total overkill for me.

[jodybay]

I am happy that I have 60GB SSD and I bought it for like 1/3 of my monthly wage 2 years ago. I wonder how much will cost these 4TB SSD. I bet price will be total overkill for me.

how much did you get your 60gb?

[mShz]

too early to say good bye to HDDs. we are at least 2-3 years away i think.

maybe even 4-5.

the prices of SSD are coming down, but still cost too much compared to HDD

[activebiz]

Im sure HDD will be around for another 10yrs, So how many years can a SSD hold its data

[bryant.coleman]

How much does a 4 TB SSD cost right now? I can get a Seagate HDD 4 TB Desktop Internal Hard Drive from the Amazon for just under $200. I don't think that the SDD will ever get this much cheap. The WD 4TB 3 1/2" Desktop Internal Hard Drive is even cheaper.

http://www.staples.com/WD-4TB-3-1-2-inch-Desktop-Internal-Hard-Drive-Green/product_IM1TA9583?externalize=certona

[DeathAndTaxes]

I don't think that the SDD will ever get this much cheap.

Never bet against silicon.  Due to Moore's law the cost of a CPU in terms of computing power per dollar has improved by a factor of nearly one billion.  This is something we kinda take for granted but this level of improvement doesn't occur in anything other than semiconductors.  Cars are better today than they were in the 1970s but they aren't a billion times cheaper in terms of performance per dollar.   Housing construction has been improved but the cost of a house in terms of $/sq foot hasn't been reduced by a factor of a billion.    

I am sure in 1980 someone said the same thing about CPUs, and they ended up being wrong by many many many orders of magnitude.  The same thing will happen with SSD.  It is only a matter of when.

[bitgeek]

I bought a 60GB SSD few years ago, just wanted to see if it's really better than HDD, and it is. Small, quiet, fast, stays cool, consumes less electricity. The only downside is it was overpriced as hell, You could buy a whole laptop for the cost of 3 of those.

[beetcoin]

I don't think that the SDD will ever get this much cheap.

Never bet against silicon.  Due to Moore's law the cost of a CPU in terms of computing power per dollar has improved by a factor of nearly one billion.   I am sure in 1980 someone said the same thing about CPUS and they are wrong by a many many many orders of magnitude.  The same thing will happen with SSD.  It is only a matter of when.

yeah pretty much. it's also economics - scale economies. in the mid 90's, a midrange computer would run you $2,000. it had windows 3.1 on it and couldn't even play compressed mp3 music.