Projections for when the raw price per TB crosses over to favor SSDs are in the mid 2020's.
SSDs have already won for anything IO limited and for power limited cases (eg laptops), but even with data center pricing built in spinning rust is still cheaper for bulk near/offline storage (eg the farcebook posts you made a year ago that only a stalker will be looking at and various other forms of backup/archival data).
The crossover isn't a single threshold. We're already at the point where a 120GB SSD is cheaper than a 120GB hard drive. That capacity point is on the rise, and in a few years SSDs will have displaced hard drives over the entire capacity range that makes sense for local storage in consumer machines.
Another way of looking at it: a basic 240gb SSD costs slightly more than a 500gb desktop hard disk, or less for laptop drives. *But*, if you only need 200gb of storage, then for essentially the same amount of money, you are *far* better off buying the SSD, even though it's more expensive per GB. If all those cheap gigabytes on the hard drive will never get filled, then buy the SSD instead.
In my case, I ran out of room on a 250gb hard drive a decade ago, but I've never needed to upgrade past 500gb of storage in all the time since then. When I had the chance to buy a 500gb SSD, I took it, and sold my data drive.
I'd like to have 2TB of storage because with games running at 10GB each, I could leave my Steam stuff installed. At that capacity, the gulf between SSD and HDD pricing is enormous. Using a small SSD and large HDD is a bit pointless because I'd then have a fast bootup time (when I only reboot about once per month) and slow game load times, which happen more frequently.
As it stands, I'll probably migrate from a 1TB HDD to a 1TB SSD, with no increase in storage capacity over almost a decade.
Most game load times don't benefit a lot from SSD storage. OS and application load times, on the other hand, really really do - especially with Windows 10.
Given how steam works now I just run as many games as possible on an average-sized SSD and archive older games to slower drives.
It's not just about loading one level. People look at "game loading" as this monolithic, one-time event, but in reality many games stream assets over time and can be very I/O intensive at any time in-game. MMOs are a particular standout in this regard, where many CPU cycles are busy communicating with the server and hard drive latency compounds problems like lag spikes and textures/assets not loading. Open world games often fall victim to HDD access times as well, the same is true of crafting/collection games with large item/consumable menus. The CPU hangs while waiting for the HDD to catch up. Even with 32GB of RAM in my machine, playing games off my SSD makes a dramatic difference when playing Rift, Destiny 2, Borderlands 2, etc. Shower With Your Dad Simulator, not so much.
Even today most of the spinning rust is in the cloud, the vast majority of new conventional hard disks are being sold into the cloud providers with an ever smaller percentage directly in machines and a small remaining percentage in back up type usb drives. I think there will still be a market for the massive usb backup drives, particularly with spinning rust topping out at 12tb and soon to be 18tb or more for a 3.5. But I do agree that the embedded drives in the computer are all going to be NAND very soon. Most cases designed in the last year or two don't even include drive slots for either 3.5 or 5 1/4. Most only have a few mounts for 2.5".
True. It's not a single point, but comparing capacities where one side is well below the minimum economical threshold doesn't say anything about long term trends in the rest of the market.
120GB SSDs being price competitive with minimum commercial price HDDs is significant only in that it's the first capacity large enough to be reasonable as a sole drive for large numbers of laptop users (32 is problematic from a Windows update perspective, and 64 doesn't leave much room to use more than a browser before ending up in the same danger zone).
It's impact over the last 2-3 years has been to take a big bite out of the volume of HDD manufacturing. It's impact on the industries financial health as a whole is a lot more muted because the profit margins in those drives have always been minuscule.
There is no logically reason for using hard disk now - unless you want to used existing storage - or need extreme amount store that SSD would be too expensive.
I am not sure you can get hard drive as large as 20T
To be fair, you can't get an SSD as large as 20TB either; this is an announcement of an enterprise product without a confirmed launch date. It'll also be a while before this kind of thing hits the consumer level. You can get a 12TB HDD today, if you like.
Two 4TB HDDs in a RAID-1 cost about 15% as much as a 4TB SSD. I don't know if I'd call 4TB "extreme"...
There is a 15TB 2.5" 15mm SSD from Samsung and there are build-to-order manufacturers of SSDs that will supply you with tens of TB of SSD space on one SSD, though that is usually a PCIe arrangetment. :) I think for the time being I will still add a 5TB HDD or two to my file server before I'll make the switch to SSDs (in maybe 5 or 10 years I'd guess?). :D
It's not sustained performance that makes SSDs better over traditional hard drives, it's the random I/O that makes SSD superior. The ability to go to any NAND chip and grab random bits of data is what makes SSD so much better and is what makes boot your system so much faster.
price-capacity-performance-durability(endurance) I personally would <3 to see 500-1TB SSD priced max (include ship and tax) in Canada for $150-$200 instead of the current ~$235-$380 range (plus ship and tax usually)
I like the sata format as it is plenty fast enough for my needs, compared to spinning rust, am sure NVME is "good" in its own way, but, not all MOBO can use these as "plug and play" and of course potential throttle from heat issues etc, standard sata SSD may not be jet fighter speed, but hell it is still race car level (at a reasonable price currently compared to NVME m.2/u.2 or whatever)
give me a 1tb $200 (ship and tax) with say 560+540+ read/write 300+ TBW (endurance) with decently quick latency numbers. ^.^ (crucial MX500 is CLOSE but not quite there ~$100 less and would be magic ticket)
QLC might make it "lower cost to produce" but potential data retention/corruption, latency and other issues may not be a good thing........am sure we shall see soon enough how the "rubber meets the road" instead of just being marking BS o.O
If a motherboard has M.2 slots connected by PCIe, it nearly always supports NVME out of the box. And there is also M.2 SATA if you want just the small package. Throttling also only happens after tons of writes (tens to hundreds of gigabytes continuously) and even then it is still faster than SATA speeds, so I don't know why you care about that? That's like asking for a bike because sometimes the car has to slow down when it turns a corner. ;) What is your use case for the endurance? I've had my 500GB 840 SSD for 6 years now and have only written 37.8TB to it. It is my main System drive that I try to keep at below 90% full (wear leveling), but I install new games regularly and have probably installed a new version of windows on it on average twice a year, with all programs and drivers needed. Considering 1TB SSDs here in Germany are already at or below 200€ and I just bought a 300€ 960Evo 1TB, your issue may just be a weak Canadian Dollar? I've heard some of my youtubers complain about that. I'm looking forward to QLC not in my regular desktop, but to replace my backup / fileserver hard drives. Thought it will take several years before it gets economical enough for that. :D
M.2 doesn't guarantee NVME or PCIe unfortunately. There are still a large number of M.2 slots that are wired for SATA operation and that doesn't even count the difference on NVME between 2 lane and 4 lane drive operation. You have to be a very careful purchaser these days or you won't get what you thought you bought.
Honestly, for most consumers, the difference is academic. The speed difference between SATA and NVMe SSds is negligeable compared to HDD to SSD. Most consumers couldn't tell the difference in usage. (you need stressful scenarios, like database or multiple video stream access to see the difference)
I never said that M.2 = NVMe / PCIe, please read my post very carefully. :) Unless you show me cases where M.2 slots connected by PCIe do not support NVME, then you'd have a point (which is different from the point you made here). :P
They are very well priced, indeed! I nearly would have bought one for 330€ 2TB version a while ago, but I wanted to go cable less for the next build because I'm a snob who like tidy small cases. :D Paid 300€ for a 1TB 960 Evo M.2 as my System / Steam drive. And will get a 1TB M.2 SATA (Crucial MX500 are well priced) or PCIe (Kingston A1000 for cheap x2 NVME) for my regular data stuff (pictures, current shows I watch, programs and documents, music, books etc. rest is on my file server). :D Currently running a 500GB 840 Samsung (original TLC baby!) and a 750 GB 2.5" Toshiba drive I pulled from an external enclosure.
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The Chill Blueberry - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
R.I.P HDDsDanNeely - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
Projections for when the raw price per TB crosses over to favor SSDs are in the mid 2020's.SSDs have already won for anything IO limited and for power limited cases (eg laptops), but even with data center pricing built in spinning rust is still cheaper for bulk near/offline storage (eg the farcebook posts you made a year ago that only a stalker will be looking at and various other forms of backup/archival data).
Billy Tallis - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
The crossover isn't a single threshold. We're already at the point where a 120GB SSD is cheaper than a 120GB hard drive. That capacity point is on the rise, and in a few years SSDs will have displaced hard drives over the entire capacity range that makes sense for local storage in consumer machines.Glaurung - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
Does anybody make 120gb hard drives anymore?Another way of looking at it: a basic 240gb SSD costs slightly more than a 500gb desktop hard disk, or less for laptop drives. *But*, if you only need 200gb of storage, then for essentially the same amount of money, you are *far* better off buying the SSD, even though it's more expensive per GB. If all those cheap gigabytes on the hard drive will never get filled, then buy the SSD instead.
In my case, I ran out of room on a 250gb hard drive a decade ago, but I've never needed to upgrade past 500gb of storage in all the time since then. When I had the chance to buy a 500gb SSD, I took it, and sold my data drive.
boozed - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
"a basic 240gb SSD costs slightly more than a 500gb desktop hard disk"Blimey. In my neck of the woods, the crossover's between 1 and 2TB HDDs.
stephenbrooks - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
I'd like to have 2TB of storage because with games running at 10GB each, I could leave my Steam stuff installed. At that capacity, the gulf between SSD and HDD pricing is enormous. Using a small SSD and large HDD is a bit pointless because I'd then have a fast bootup time (when I only reboot about once per month) and slow game load times, which happen more frequently.As it stands, I'll probably migrate from a 1TB HDD to a 1TB SSD, with no increase in storage capacity over almost a decade.
Spunjji - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
Most game load times don't benefit a lot from SSD storage. OS and application load times, on the other hand, really really do - especially with Windows 10.Given how steam works now I just run as many games as possible on an average-sized SSD and archive older games to slower drives.
nathanddrews - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
It's not just about loading one level. People look at "game loading" as this monolithic, one-time event, but in reality many games stream assets over time and can be very I/O intensive at any time in-game. MMOs are a particular standout in this regard, where many CPU cycles are busy communicating with the server and hard drive latency compounds problems like lag spikes and textures/assets not loading. Open world games often fall victim to HDD access times as well, the same is true of crafting/collection games with large item/consumable menus. The CPU hangs while waiting for the HDD to catch up. Even with 32GB of RAM in my machine, playing games off my SSD makes a dramatic difference when playing Rift, Destiny 2, Borderlands 2, etc. Shower With Your Dad Simulator, not so much.xTRICKYxx - Sunday, July 8, 2018 - link
Andrew gets it.rahvin - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
Even today most of the spinning rust is in the cloud, the vast majority of new conventional hard disks are being sold into the cloud providers with an ever smaller percentage directly in machines and a small remaining percentage in back up type usb drives. I think there will still be a market for the massive usb backup drives, particularly with spinning rust topping out at 12tb and soon to be 18tb or more for a 3.5. But I do agree that the embedded drives in the computer are all going to be NAND very soon. Most cases designed in the last year or two don't even include drive slots for either 3.5 or 5 1/4. Most only have a few mounts for 2.5".DanNeely - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
True. It's not a single point, but comparing capacities where one side is well below the minimum economical threshold doesn't say anything about long term trends in the rest of the market.120GB SSDs being price competitive with minimum commercial price HDDs is significant only in that it's the first capacity large enough to be reasonable as a sole drive for large numbers of laptop users (32 is problematic from a Windows update perspective, and 64 doesn't leave much room to use more than a browser before ending up in the same danger zone).
It's impact over the last 2-3 years has been to take a big bite out of the volume of HDD manufacturing. It's impact on the industries financial health as a whole is a lot more muted because the profit margins in those drives have always been minuscule.
MrSpadge - Saturday, June 2, 2018 - link
Really?Cheapest 120 GB SSD is at 27€:
https://geizhals.de/?cat=hdssd&xf=252_120&...
Cheapest HDD starting from 80 GB is a 160 GB one for 17€:
https://geizhals.de/?cat=hde7s&xf=958_80
Or 320 GB at 18€, 500 GB at 20€ or 1 TB at 30€.
The SSD is definitely not cheaper yet. What's true, though, is that both are pretty cheap and a small portion of the total system price.
xTRICKYxx - Sunday, July 8, 2018 - link
USA has far cheaper prices. :(HStewart - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
There is no logically reason for using hard disk now - unless you want to used existing storage - or need extreme amount store that SSD would be too expensive.I am not sure you can get hard drive as large as 20T
boozed - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
To be fair, you can't get an SSD as large as 20TB either; this is an announcement of an enterprise product without a confirmed launch date. It'll also be a while before this kind of thing hits the consumer level. You can get a 12TB HDD today, if you like.Two 4TB HDDs in a RAID-1 cost about 15% as much as a 4TB SSD. I don't know if I'd call 4TB "extreme"...
Death666Angel - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
There is a 15TB 2.5" 15mm SSD from Samsung and there are build-to-order manufacturers of SSDs that will supply you with tens of TB of SSD space on one SSD, though that is usually a PCIe arrangetment. :) I think for the time being I will still add a 5TB HDD or two to my file server before I'll make the switch to SSDs (in maybe 5 or 10 years I'd guess?). :DSamus - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
By the time this comes to market at a reasonable price we will have relatively inexpensive 40TB hard drives transferring sustained 1GB/sec.Spunjji - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
I'll take that bet!trparky - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
It's not sustained performance that makes SSDs better over traditional hard drives, it's the random I/O that makes SSD superior. The ability to go to any NAND chip and grab random bits of data is what makes SSD so much better and is what makes boot your system so much faster.Dragonstongue - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
price-capacity-performance-durability(endurance)I personally would <3 to see 500-1TB SSD priced max (include ship and tax) in Canada for $150-$200 instead of the current ~$235-$380 range (plus ship and tax usually)
I like the sata format as it is plenty fast enough for my needs, compared to spinning rust, am sure NVME is "good" in its own way, but, not all MOBO can use these as "plug and play" and of course potential throttle from heat issues etc, standard sata SSD may not be jet fighter speed, but hell it is still race car level (at a reasonable price currently compared to NVME m.2/u.2 or whatever)
give me a 1tb $200 (ship and tax) with say 560+540+ read/write 300+ TBW (endurance) with decently quick latency numbers. ^.^ (crucial MX500 is CLOSE but not quite there ~$100 less and would be magic ticket)
QLC might make it "lower cost to produce" but potential data retention/corruption, latency and other issues may not be a good thing........am sure we shall see soon enough how the "rubber meets the road" instead of just being marking BS o.O
Death666Angel - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
If a motherboard has M.2 slots connected by PCIe, it nearly always supports NVME out of the box. And there is also M.2 SATA if you want just the small package. Throttling also only happens after tons of writes (tens to hundreds of gigabytes continuously) and even then it is still faster than SATA speeds, so I don't know why you care about that? That's like asking for a bike because sometimes the car has to slow down when it turns a corner. ;)What is your use case for the endurance? I've had my 500GB 840 SSD for 6 years now and have only written 37.8TB to it. It is my main System drive that I try to keep at below 90% full (wear leveling), but I install new games regularly and have probably installed a new version of windows on it on average twice a year, with all programs and drivers needed.
Considering 1TB SSDs here in Germany are already at or below 200€ and I just bought a 300€ 960Evo 1TB, your issue may just be a weak Canadian Dollar? I've heard some of my youtubers complain about that. I'm looking forward to QLC not in my regular desktop, but to replace my backup / fileserver hard drives. Thought it will take several years before it gets economical enough for that. :D
rahvin - Wednesday, May 30, 2018 - link
M.2 doesn't guarantee NVME or PCIe unfortunately. There are still a large number of M.2 slots that are wired for SATA operation and that doesn't even count the difference on NVME between 2 lane and 4 lane drive operation. You have to be a very careful purchaser these days or you won't get what you thought you bought.frenchy_2001 - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
Honestly, for most consumers, the difference is academic.The speed difference between SATA and NVMe SSds is negligeable compared to HDD to SSD.
Most consumers couldn't tell the difference in usage.
(you need stressful scenarios, like database or multiple video stream access to see the difference)
Death666Angel - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
I never said that M.2 = NVMe / PCIe, please read my post very carefully. :) Unless you show me cases where M.2 slots connected by PCIe do not support NVME, then you'd have a point (which is different from the point you made here). :Pfrenchy_2001 - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
Have you looked at the micron 1100 SSD?2TB for ~300$ lately, a bit less when on sale.
Should fit most of your needs for a while.
https://www.google.com/search?q=micron+1100+ssd+2t...
Death666Angel - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
They are very well priced, indeed! I nearly would have bought one for 330€ 2TB version a while ago, but I wanted to go cable less for the next build because I'm a snob who like tidy small cases. :D Paid 300€ for a 1TB 960 Evo M.2 as my System / Steam drive. And will get a 1TB M.2 SATA (Crucial MX500 are well priced) or PCIe (Kingston A1000 for cheap x2 NVME) for my regular data stuff (pictures, current shows I watch, programs and documents, music, books etc. rest is on my file server). :D Currently running a 500GB 840 Samsung (original TLC baby!) and a 750 GB 2.5" Toshiba drive I pulled from an external enclosure.iwod - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
The future Intel and Micron wants, QLC NAND, may be even 200 Layers plus, to replace HDD. And HDD replaces Tapes. Optane / Xpoint to replace SSD.