HDD drives are only needed for vids posted on youtube, facebook and similar sites. That's write once read many times operations where SMR makes sense. Basically every other HDD usage is getting replaced by flash...
similar sites to youtube and facebook? You are totally wrong. Any data center or large company requiring massive storage (especially secure storage) will continue to utilize platter based drives for years to come until a cheaper and better solution is available to cause migration of the standard.
It's not whether you can fill a server with SSDs, it's whether it makes financial sense to do so. "Enterprise SSDs" are at a premium to "Enterprise HDDs". If you're storing a significant amount of data, especially for a free-to-use service, you're probably still using HDDs.
This is liable to change, but we have not yet reached the tipping point.
That's fine. But almost by definition, since you have little data you probably aren't going to need lots of servers to store them. For people who do, it's generally because one server isn't big enough, so density of storage is at least a partial requirement - and therefore, many servers have had HDDs.
Have you heard the term "big data"? You're not considering things like transaction databases or all the vast data collected about users and their activity.
In general, I'd say that I agree. Still, today many laptops are shipped with 256GB SSD/NVMe, which is, frankly, ludicrous, when any decent camera (and I'm not even talking DSLR here), can generate 40-50GB of photos and videos during one holiday. No, you don't *have* to keep all your photos on your laptop, but add a few games, and you can't even dump one vacation worth of photos on your laptop. SSD needs to start at 1TB at a decent price, then we can talk about HDD being used only for Youtube stuff. We're not there yet. Not, by a large margin.
Flash has gotten cheaper through vertical integration. There are plans going over 200 layers (we're at 96 layers now), so density should keep going up. QLC is also coming. So, I would say that in the medium term (5~10 years), we should still see price pressure on NAND storage.
96 layers, up from 1 layer, originally. So, while a further doubling will be nice, it's just a factor of 2.
QLC-based products have already been on the market for more than half a year. Indeed, they are cheaper (and slower) than TLC.
Basically, NAND flash is now going to follow the same cost curve as DRAM. The bag of tricks for continuing to beat that curve is virtually empty. And what's happened 'till now has improved pricing, but at the cost of performance, endurance, and persistence.
1tb m.2 sata can be found for $120 on amazon, $150 for NVME. That's cheap enough they should be an option for mid-range general purpose laptops, and that it should completely replace the 256ssd + 1tb hdd combo common in many slightly above entry level gaming laptops, although the bigger total numbers to impress the ignorant segment might repeat the deal with 2tb hdds I suppose. (Although that at least is enough of a capacity bump that it wouldn't be totally unreasonable IMO.)
The consumer's price is "irrelevant". HP just announced new Envy laptops (https://www.anandtech.com/show/14103/hp-reveals-en... I, for one, am looking forward to get one with Ryzen 7 3700U. But 256GB for a 700/800usd laptop seems ridiculous. The problem is that I can buy another SSD (a decent one, no 660p, please!) for 200-250usd, BUT, this is still a significant adder to the laptop total cost, AND I will be stuck with a useless 256GB. I mean, high-end mobile phones these days have more RAM AND storage space than a mid-range laptop ...
I just paid $100 for a 1TB NVMe Intel 660P, and slightly over $200 for a 2TB one. Just how much cheaper do they need to be before you deign to ditch spinning rust?
Look at the announcement of HP's new Envy 360 (https://www.anandtech.com/show/14103/hp-reveals-en... Look at the disk size. And these are 700-800usd laptops: not entry level, for sure. The awful displays are still here, and I don't see these horrendous 256GB SSD be gone anytime soon.
I wish 2 TB NVME drives had been that inexpensive 2 years ago when I bought my 500 GB 960 EVO for $250-ish....; that you can get a 2 TB Intel SSD for that much now is amazing...
You don't have to take that many photos or video on holiday either. Remember no one wants to see them. Digital has not been a improvement in this area.
One roll of 36 35MM film per week was the deal back in the good old days. Some folks would even ask to look at them back then.
But that's not the point at all, is it? I can take a couple of 5 min videos and end up easily with 10GB. I can then edit it to my like, but still, till then, it will occupy a large portion of the SSD. My Windows folder clocks at 40GB, so out of 256GB you really get a bit over 200, once you install the basics. I find it unbelievable that 1/5th of your disk is not available from the get go.
Did you know that the cloud is used for more than just social networks? There's a lot of immutable or rarely-modified data in need of nearline storage.
No one is interested in +16TB of storage on a single drive. The "experts" said so already in regards to SSDs and we were plainly told that 8+TB on SATA is too slow to rebuild even on NAND so obviously doing the same with a mechanical drive is far worse so there is no market at all for more than 4TB of mechanical drive capacity.
Which drives? The SSDs in the previous article or the mechanical drives in this one? In either case, I think that it isn't possible to set limits on use by saying a particular storage device will or will not be used in an array. None of us are in a position to hover over ever data center's systems administration staff and slap their hand with a ruler when they start configuring RAID on a particular media type.
I've had my 4 TB drive for about two years, and, until I did a Clonezilla image backup two weeks ago rocketing my total to 300 GB used, I had less than 40-50 GB worth of data on it....(Most everything truly important is in multiple cloud storage accounts anyway....) I almost wish I needed more drives so I could find an excuse to build and/or buy a NAS...
The thing is, why the higher capacity drives are still expensive? I mean there's a big price gap when you go between 4TB, 6TB, 8TB & 10TB. And the worst thing is external drives are much less expensive than regular internal drives they makes it to look like internal and NAS drives are just overpriced drives.
I guess they're intentionally keeping the higher capacity drives that expensive because SSD's at those capacities are still not there yet, I mean maximum mainstream SSD's are just reached 4TB. So when you need more HDD's are the only option you have.
Within the last few weeks when I last checked typical Amazon prices on 4,6,8, and 10 TB drives, the price increases are fairly linear jumping from 4 TB (~$120) to 6 TB ($160-ish), and 8 TB (~$250); however, the prices go up quickly for each 2 TB jump beyond that point.
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brakdoo - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
HDD drives are only needed for vids posted on youtube, facebook and similar sites. That's write once read many times operations where SMR makes sense. Basically every other HDD usage is getting replaced by flash...Batmeat - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
similar sites to youtube and facebook? You are totally wrong. Any data center or large company requiring massive storage (especially secure storage) will continue to utilize platter based drives for years to come until a cheaper and better solution is available to cause migration of the standard.brakdoo - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Any large company requires massive storage? What kind of data do they generate where enterprise SSDs are not enough?GreenReaper - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
It's not whether you can fill a server with SSDs, it's whether it makes financial sense to do so. "Enterprise SSDs" are at a premium to "Enterprise HDDs". If you're storing a significant amount of data, especially for a free-to-use service, you're probably still using HDDs.This is liable to change, but we have not yet reached the tipping point.
jabber - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Hahaha been in business 10 years now.My business data? 236MB! I bet some here would try to sell me a $10000 server.
flyingpants265 - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Good for you, man!jabber - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Joking aside, it is great not having a data millstone round your neck!GreenReaper - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
That's fine. But almost by definition, since you have little data you probably aren't going to need lots of servers to store them. For people who do, it's generally because one server isn't big enough, so density of storage is at least a partial requirement - and therefore, many servers have had HDDs.mode_13h - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Clearly, you don't consider email part of your "business data".Samus - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link
I just checked my business folder and its around 10GB but thats due to pictures of projects and stuff.My invoice database is 700kb and my taxes (1099's, W2's, etc, PDF's and all) for the last 10 years only amount to 50MB.
Data is surprisingly small until you get into video.
mode_13h - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
Have you heard the term "big data"? You're not considering things like transaction databases or all the vast data collected about users and their activity.IoT can also generate vast amounts of data.
yankeeDDL - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
In general, I'd say that I agree. Still, today many laptops are shipped with 256GB SSD/NVMe, which is, frankly, ludicrous, when any decent camera (and I'm not even talking DSLR here), can generate 40-50GB of photos and videos during one holiday.No, you don't *have* to keep all your photos on your laptop, but add a few games, and you can't even dump one vacation worth of photos on your laptop.
SSD needs to start at 1TB at a decent price, then we can talk about HDD being used only for Youtube stuff. We're not there yet. Not, by a large margin.
brakdoo - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Yeah we are getting there. 512 GB is much ore common than 2 years ago and the prices for 1 TB are just ~20% higher than 256 GB about 18 months ago.mode_13h - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
So, I guess you think those trends will just continue, indefinitely? Did you ever actually think about why flash has gotten cheaper?Must be nice to be so naïve.
frenchy_2001 - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
Flash has gotten cheaper through vertical integration.There are plans going over 200 layers (we're at 96 layers now), so density should keep going up.
QLC is also coming.
So, I would say that in the medium term (5~10 years), we should still see price pressure on NAND storage.
mode_13h - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
96 layers, up from 1 layer, originally. So, while a further doubling will be nice, it's just a factor of 2.QLC-based products have already been on the market for more than half a year. Indeed, they are cheaper (and slower) than TLC.
Basically, NAND flash is now going to follow the same cost curve as DRAM. The bag of tricks for continuing to beat that curve is virtually empty. And what's happened 'till now has improved pricing, but at the cost of performance, endurance, and persistence.
DanNeely - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
1tb m.2 sata can be found for $120 on amazon, $150 for NVME. That's cheap enough they should be an option for mid-range general purpose laptops, and that it should completely replace the 256ssd + 1tb hdd combo common in many slightly above entry level gaming laptops, although the bigger total numbers to impress the ignorant segment might repeat the deal with 2tb hdds I suppose. (Although that at least is enough of a capacity bump that it wouldn't be totally unreasonable IMO.)flyingpants265 - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
It's $119 for the Intel 660p NVMe.yankeeDDL - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link
The consumer's price is "irrelevant". HP just announced new Envy laptops (https://www.anandtech.com/show/14103/hp-reveals-en... I, for one, am looking forward to get one with Ryzen 7 3700U. But 256GB for a 700/800usd laptop seems ridiculous. The problem is that I can buy another SSD (a decent one, no 660p, please!) for 200-250usd, BUT, this is still a significant adder to the laptop total cost, AND I will be stuck with a useless 256GB.I mean, high-end mobile phones these days have more RAM AND storage space than a mid-range laptop ...
zepi - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
High-end mobile phones also cost more.fazalmajid - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
I just paid $100 for a 1TB NVMe Intel 660P, and slightly over $200 for a 2TB one. Just how much cheaper do they need to be before you deign to ditch spinning rust?yankeeDDL - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link
Look at the announcement of HP's new Envy 360 (https://www.anandtech.com/show/14103/hp-reveals-en...Look at the disk size. And these are 700-800usd laptops: not entry level, for sure.
The awful displays are still here, and I don't see these horrendous 256GB SSD be gone anytime soon.
MDD1963 - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link
I wish 2 TB NVME drives had been that inexpensive 2 years ago when I bought my 500 GB 960 EVO for $250-ish....; that you can get a 2 TB Intel SSD for that much now is amazing...jabber - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link
You don't have to take that many photos or video on holiday either. Remember no one wants to see them. Digital has not been a improvement in this area.One roll of 36 35MM film per week was the deal back in the good old days. Some folks would even ask to look at them back then.
yankeeDDL - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
But that's not the point at all, is it? I can take a couple of 5 min videos and end up easily with 10GB. I can then edit it to my like, but still, till then, it will occupy a large portion of the SSD.My Windows folder clocks at 40GB, so out of 256GB you really get a bit over 200, once you install the basics. I find it unbelievable that 1/5th of your disk is not available from the get go.
mode_13h - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
What about backups?Did you know that the cloud is used for more than just social networks? There's a lot of immutable or rarely-modified data in need of nearline storage.
PeachNCream - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
No one is interested in +16TB of storage on a single drive. The "experts" said so already in regards to SSDs and we were plainly told that 8+TB on SATA is too slow to rebuild even on NAND so obviously doing the same with a mechanical drive is far worse so there is no market at all for more than 4TB of mechanical drive capacity.fazalmajid - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Those drives are not used as part of RAID arrays, but as part of cold-storage systems using erasure codes and the likePeachNCream - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link
Which drives? The SSDs in the previous article or the mechanical drives in this one? In either case, I think that it isn't possible to set limits on use by saying a particular storage device will or will not be used in an array. None of us are in a position to hover over ever data center's systems administration staff and slap their hand with a ruler when they start configuring RAID on a particular media type.MDD1963 - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link
I've had my 4 TB drive for about two years, and, until I did a Clonezilla image backup two weeks ago rocketing my total to 300 GB used, I had less than 40-50 GB worth of data on it....(Most everything truly important is in multiple cloud storage accounts anyway....) I almost wish I needed more drives so I could find an excuse to build and/or buy a NAS...mode_13h - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
SMR reminds me of helical scan, for tape. And to that, I say: bring on the flying erase heads!Xajel - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link
The thing is, why the higher capacity drives are still expensive? I mean there's a big price gap when you go between 4TB, 6TB, 8TB & 10TB. And the worst thing is external drives are much less expensive than regular internal drives they makes it to look like internal and NAS drives are just overpriced drives.I guess they're intentionally keeping the higher capacity drives that expensive because SSD's at those capacities are still not there yet, I mean maximum mainstream SSD's are just reached 4TB. So when you need more HDD's are the only option you have.
MDD1963 - Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - link
Within the last few weeks when I last checked typical Amazon prices on 4,6,8, and 10 TB drives, the price increases are fairly linear jumping from 4 TB (~$120) to 6 TB ($160-ish), and 8 TB (~$250); however, the prices go up quickly for each 2 TB jump beyond that point.