While mechanical drives will still fill the need for the next 5 or so years, I have a sneaking suspicion that after it'll be 'cold storage' SSDs. The amount of flash that can be stuffed into a small space these days is impressive, and the 128 layer 512Gb flash modules do carry quite a bit of storage. Once we hit the 1Tb/256 layer, I'm sure capacity restraints won't be an issue
Spinning Rust is still way cheaper and will remain way cheaper for mass storage for likely a very long time. NAND prices collapsed because of an oversupply, like the DRAM crash in the early 2010's NAND prices are going to correct, every producer has slashed production and most have ended entire production lines. By the end of 2020 I expect prices to at least double if not triple on NAND.
In the meantime with these new storage technologies mass storage will continue to be dominated by spinning rust and the amount of storage that's needed in the cloud companies is staggering, demand that couldn't be met by NAND because enough isn't produced to meet it. NAND will likely takeover the consumer market completely, but NAND has mostly already taken over that market so it doesn't really hurt the drive producers. Spinning Rust is frankly the only solution for the exabyte storage needs of the cloud companies, at least for the foreseeable future.
They have a huge margin for price drops, so you are most likely right. I mean SSDs really have become really cheap, but only up to about 2 TB. After that they are still far too pricey. Compare that to 16 TB HDDs and you have your answer who will still be king for a long time.
Right. Dieing is cutting a silicon wafer into dice, among other things. Dyeing is what you do to Easter Eggs, or fabrics, among other things. (Not the kind of fabric found in a supercomputer.) Isn't the English language wonderful? As for magnetic disks, they may seem a dying breed, but if you have any sense--and hyperscalers certainly do--currently SSDs should always be in RAID 1, 5, or 10, or backed up by HDDs. Which is less expensive? Depends on the amount of reading and writing done.
"As a result, only select companies – who happen to run software that considers peculiarities of SMR and a lower per-TB IOPS – are expected to use Western Digital’s 20 TB SMR drives"
is it worth throwing that much software engineering man-hours to save a few pennies on so called cheaper storage? and what do these little microwave ovens do to heat management and data center TCO? HDD are at a point where they take half a step fwd after 5 years and 3 steps back
It is absolutely worth it when you are dealing with high re-write data usage. The core product of the company I work for would chew up SSDs entirely too quickly, especially since there would be almost no performance benefit. We need an absolute ton of storage that can survive a lot of writes and much lower reads (most of the reads are from re-writing data) and HDDs are still king for that.
"..HDDs are still king for that." That is not going to change if NAND vendors continue to fatten the NAND cells. We are already at QLC and there is (crazy) talk for even more bits per cell than that. On the other hand there is the opposite trend in the market for high endurance along with quite higher performance, but at lower capacities. I am talking about Samsung's Z-NAND and Toshiba's XL-FLASH (both in SLC mode at first), and of course Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint.
The first two are largely equivalent in performance, capacity range and endurance. Performance will probably be somewhat higher than old style SLC NAND, the capacity will be up to ~1 TB (for the SLC based ones of the first generation) and the endurance will be roughly 10 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) for 5 years. SSDs with 3D XPoint have a similar capacity, a bit higher performance and the second generation of SSDs has an outstanding endurance of 60 DWPD for 5 years, which competes in endurance with the average spinning rust.
The problem? Due to their very high cost per GB all three are targeted at the enterprise market (with the exception of tiny SSDs intended as cache for HDDs). Consumers and small businesses will need to make do with TLC and crappy QLC+ based SSDs...
SMR is an excellent replacement for Tape in a lot of environments. It has good sequential throughput which is useful for backups and other large file storage. The densities are also still much better than SSD in $/GB. As for the heating elements they are very small and do not affect the heat produced by the drive by enough for it to matter. Most of the heat in any HDD is the motor and anything these new heads use is negligible.
Even ignoring R&D, I don't think it saves money. The reason is you can sell CMR drives for good money to used-drive marketers when they reach the end of their life as a data center drive, but SMR drives will be worthless.
I checked Steam and I only have 7 games. You know what? Of those 7 games I own, I only have installed Civ VI in my SSD, because that's the only one I am still playing.
The remainder 6 STEAM games I own I simply uninstalled because I no longer play. If I ever get the urge to play one of them again, I will re-install them. Unthinkable, I know, huh?
My Raid 1 of 2 6TB drives is about 40% full.
At that rate of accumulating DATA in my HDD's, I will have probably passed away first before I ever need a 18TB or 20TB drive.
A very large number of people do not possess internet that is fast enough to download games on the fly, or have data caps that can make it very difficult to swap between a lot of games in a month.
Most people also play more than one game, and own more than seven.
With only 7 games in his Steam Library he's not a gamer and even responding to this thread about the need for Steam storage just demonstrates ignorance of that.
This makes me think - I wonder how often people with those 128GB SSDs in their newish laptops try to install current games. 256GB SSD laptops surprisingly aren't as common as I would've guessed. I didn't even see 512GB as an option in most last time I looked 6 months ago. My Dad got a refurbished HP Envy with a 256GB SSD for ~$600 and he is starting to fill it up with his photos. I might have to set them up with a NAS... and more complicated backup.
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shabby - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
Hamr samr mamr eamr, can these guys stop with the buzz words, it doesn't help your dieing breed.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
"dying", not dieing. Also, these larger drives address a growing market of mass storage, something SSDs still cant touch.Drkrieger01 - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
While mechanical drives will still fill the need for the next 5 or so years, I have a sneaking suspicion that after it'll be 'cold storage' SSDs. The amount of flash that can be stuffed into a small space these days is impressive, and the 128 layer 512Gb flash modules do carry quite a bit of storage. Once we hit the 1Tb/256 layer, I'm sure capacity restraints won't be an issuerahvin - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
Spinning Rust is still way cheaper and will remain way cheaper for mass storage for likely a very long time. NAND prices collapsed because of an oversupply, like the DRAM crash in the early 2010's NAND prices are going to correct, every producer has slashed production and most have ended entire production lines. By the end of 2020 I expect prices to at least double if not triple on NAND.In the meantime with these new storage technologies mass storage will continue to be dominated by spinning rust and the amount of storage that's needed in the cloud companies is staggering, demand that couldn't be met by NAND because enough isn't produced to meet it. NAND will likely takeover the consumer market completely, but NAND has mostly already taken over that market so it doesn't really hurt the drive producers. Spinning Rust is frankly the only solution for the exabyte storage needs of the cloud companies, at least for the foreseeable future.
Beaver M. - Friday, December 27, 2019 - link
They have a huge margin for price drops, so you are most likely right. I mean SSDs really have become really cheap, but only up to about 2 TB. After that they are still far too pricey. Compare that to 16 TB HDDs and you have your answer who will still be king for a long time.Korguz - Saturday, December 28, 2019 - link
spinning rust.. the dumbest term to discribe mechanical hdds...eachus - Thursday, December 26, 2019 - link
Right. Dieing is cutting a silicon wafer into dice, among other things. Dyeing is what you do to Easter Eggs, or fabrics, among other things. (Not the kind of fabric found in a supercomputer.) Isn't the English language wonderful? As for magnetic disks, they may seem a dying breed, but if you have any sense--and hyperscalers certainly do--currently SSDs should always be in RAID 1, 5, or 10, or backed up by HDDs. Which is less expensive? Depends on the amount of reading and writing done.rUmX - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
"thousands of units"?That does not sound like much.
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
It's a sample. You done see more then a few thousand ES intel chips per generation.azfacea - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
"As a result, only select companies – who happen to run software that considers peculiarities of SMR and a lower per-TB IOPS – are expected to use Western Digital’s 20 TB SMR drives"is it worth throwing that much software engineering man-hours to save a few pennies on so called cheaper storage? and what do these little microwave ovens do to heat management and data center TCO? HDD are at a point where they take half a step fwd after 5 years and 3 steps back
jordanclock - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
It is absolutely worth it when you are dealing with high re-write data usage. The core product of the company I work for would chew up SSDs entirely too quickly, especially since there would be almost no performance benefit. We need an absolute ton of storage that can survive a lot of writes and much lower reads (most of the reads are from re-writing data) and HDDs are still king for that.Santoval - Wednesday, December 25, 2019 - link
"..HDDs are still king for that."That is not going to change if NAND vendors continue to fatten the NAND cells. We are already at QLC and there is (crazy) talk for even more bits per cell than that. On the other hand there is the opposite trend in the market for high endurance along with quite higher performance, but at lower capacities. I am talking about Samsung's Z-NAND and Toshiba's XL-FLASH (both in SLC mode at first), and of course Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint.
The first two are largely equivalent in performance, capacity range and endurance. Performance will probably be somewhat higher than old style SLC NAND, the capacity will be up to ~1 TB (for the SLC based ones of the first generation) and the endurance will be roughly 10 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) for 5 years. SSDs with 3D XPoint have a similar capacity, a bit higher performance and the second generation of SSDs has an outstanding endurance of 60 DWPD for 5 years, which competes in endurance with the average spinning rust.
The problem? Due to their very high cost per GB all three are targeted at the enterprise market (with the exception of tiny SSDs intended as cache for HDDs). Consumers and small businesses will need to make do with TLC and crappy QLC+ based SSDs...
SaberKOG91 - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
SMR is an excellent replacement for Tape in a lot of environments. It has good sequential throughput which is useful for backups and other large file storage. The densities are also still much better than SSD in $/GB. As for the heating elements they are very small and do not affect the heat produced by the drive by enough for it to matter. Most of the heat in any HDD is the motor and anything these new heads use is negligible.cbm80 - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
Even ignoring R&D, I don't think it saves money. The reason is you can sell CMR drives for good money to used-drive marketers when they reach the end of their life as a data center drive, but SMR drives will be worthless.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
Given how big games ahve gotten, you'll need at least one of these in your steam machine in the next 5 years.Achaios - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
? I don't think so.I checked Steam and I only have 7 games. You know what? Of those 7 games I own, I only have installed Civ VI in my SSD, because that's the only one I am still playing.
The remainder 6 STEAM games I own I simply uninstalled because I no longer play. If I ever get the urge to play one of them again, I will re-install them. Unthinkable, I know, huh?
My Raid 1 of 2 6TB drives is about 40% full.
At that rate of accumulating DATA in my HDD's, I will have probably passed away first before I ever need a 18TB or 20TB drive.
Ushio01 - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
Must be nice to not have to monitor monthly allowances.inighthawki - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
A very large number of people do not possess internet that is fast enough to download games on the fly, or have data caps that can make it very difficult to swap between a lot of games in a month.Most people also play more than one game, and own more than seven.
rahvin - Thursday, December 26, 2019 - link
With only 7 games in his Steam Library he's not a gamer and even responding to this thread about the need for Steam storage just demonstrates ignorance of that.Railander - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
pretty sure that was a jokeripbeefbone - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
what does your personal experience have to do with anything here? owning 7 steam games is hardly the normBeaver M. - Friday, December 27, 2019 - link
I consider myself lucky with my 100 mbit connection, yet downloading a 80 GB game is still taking ages.Hes right, you need much bigger drives nowadays as a gamer. Even 2 TB are quickly filled. And you arent a gamer with just 7 games.
mikato - Friday, January 3, 2020 - link
This makes me think - I wonder how often people with those 128GB SSDs in their newish laptops try to install current games. 256GB SSD laptops surprisingly aren't as common as I would've guessed. I didn't even see 512GB as an option in most last time I looked 6 months ago. My Dad got a refurbished HP Envy with a 256GB SSD for ~$600 and he is starting to fill it up with his photos. I might have to set them up with a NAS... and more complicated backup.