[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]what? what is this i'm reading? stronger demand for HDDs? record numbers for consumer and enterprise PC HDDs? because of stronger PC demand? wasn't the PC going to be replaced next week by the mighty ARM powered device?????[/citation]
Almost all of the drives sold right now are going into cloud storage systems as business prep to off-load all of their data from their end-user devices, and replace them with smaller SSDs or devices with SSDs in them. They are fools if they think this is a trend that is going to continue for very long.
Also keep in mind for PC sales that the largest volume of sales of a platform is when it is about to die because the platform becomes cheap, and those who are tied to the platform stock up so that they have devices available for a while before they pick their next platform. This is true on the PC end as people stock up before tablets take over end-user devices next year, as well as people/businesses buying up PCs before win8 is released, so that is a lot of HDDs being sold via computers right now. Case and point; PS2 had its best sales when the current gen of consoles were released. PS2 outsold the Wii, PS3, and xBox360 combined for 2 years before it died. Same with VHS; when DVD was released VHS sales skyrockedted for a few years. When bluray was released DVD sales soared for 2 years before BluRay finally started selling more units. Do not misunderstand; I thing the PC will still be around for many more years. for hard core gamers, the only real option is the PC, and it will remain that way for another 5 years at least (probably more like 7-10) before we start seeing high end tablets that can hook up to a TV/monitor with passable game quality. For content creators and editors I think there is nothing on the horizon yet to replace the PC... but then again photo editing can already be done pretty well on a high end tablet, so perhaps I am wrong on this. For for the average user that plays normal games and MMOs, or browses the web, I fully expect tablets (high end x86 tablets... not this arm crap) to be able to do the job within the next year, and Arm tablets can already take the place of the average PC that just browses the web and watches movies. And the browser and causial gamer market are some 75+% of the 'PC' market... so ya, the PC is not dead yet... but it will be within the next few years.
On the other end of HDD sales; it is businesses stocking up on HDDs because they are afraid of the reliability of SSDs simply because it is the 'new kid' in town. Next year (or possibly even before the end of this year) we are going to see 2TB SSDs on the pro market, and possibly entering the consumer market. SSDs offer much higher performance (even on entry level models), lower power consumption, lower cooling costs, less noise (don't think for a second that is not a huge consideration for small-midsized business when buying a server), and much higher data density than HDDs. All the while they provide a similar lifespan, and not much premium on price compared to high end SAS drives. My bet this that you will not be able to find HDDs for servers within 5 years, and they will have eaten most of the consumer market by that time as well as they come down in price. In fact, if someone was bold enough to come out with a lower performance (150MBps, but still a sub 2ms seek time), but reliable drive for a dirt cheap price then I bet OEMs would ditch HDD technology all together right now.
The only 'future' for HDDs right now is for home and small business users who need bulk storage and cannot afford bulk SSDs or professional SAS drives. For everything else SSDs have a better answer, and with the price doping as quickly as it is, it will only be a year or two before they are nearing the cost of a traditional HDD. I mean, 1 year ago you could get a 60GB SSD for ~$100, where now you can find a 240GB SSD for $140 (what I recently paid for my last one, go NCIX!). That is a price drop from $1.66/GB down to $0.58/GB. It is not the same as the current $0.10/GB of a HDD, but it is quickly bridging the gap, while offering extreme performance gains.
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