News HDD Shipments Plummet 45% YoY on Weakening Demand

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Not really surprising that mobile hard drive sale plummeted. You really have to look to find a laptop these days with a traditional hard drive.

Not sure how this article was written without mentioning Chia coin was launched in March of last year which caused an unnatural surge in demand. It took a few months for the market to recover from that.
 
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Uhhh... what? The title and opening paragraph say -45%, followed by a chart and a source that say -31% to -34%.

The rumors in your headlines are greatly exaggerated.
 
Francisco Alexandre Pires said:
You're absolutely correct. I mistook the volume of units shipped (~45M) with a percentage. This wasn't meant to manipulate data and make the story more clickable. It's an honest mistake, and has been reported for correction. Thank you for the heads-up!
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I figured that was the case. I didn't mean to imply shadiness with my "greatly exaggerated" comment; I was just trying to playfully flip the subhead around. 😛
Thanks for the correction!
 
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Aside from prosumers and professionals, those people who need terrabytes of storage for their work, and gamers, who may prefer to keep their games library installed, in 2022 consumers don't exactly need terrabytes of storage to carry about their physical media library on their device, that's what an NAS or personal cloud device is for, and those drives are designed for longevity. Aside from that, there are services like Google One which gives 2TB cloud storage for $100/year, among other benefits, and Microsoft 365 which gives 1TB of cloud storage and the entire Office suite for $70 a year or 6x1TB for $100 a year (sadly not 6TB shared, stupid Microsoft), and this is in addition to services like Amazon Photos which give unlimited free storage for photos, all of which have become much more accessible with the spread of inexpensive unlimited cell data plans and high speed WiFi.

So yeah, affordable 1-2TB SSDs may have helped to kill the HDD, but streaming services have done even more.
 
It also doesn't help that many HDD's of the higher capacity have a high financial barrier to entry.

$300-600 might not seem like much to Enthusiasts, Prosumers, or Professionals.

But to the average consumer, that's ALOT of $$$.

2.5" HDD's need to be updated to be cheaper and have the latest platter density installed to scale with expected demand of High Capacity at a cheap cost along with a compact form factor.

Consumer HDD's should start with 2.5" HDD's.
Enthusiast, Prosumer, Professionals, & Enterprise should focus on higher capacity 3.5" HDD's and start with capacities that 2.5" HDD's can't support with their existing platter size based on the thickness of the 2.5" HDD solution.

Also we need to get Multi-Actuator HDD's to become common.

The amount of Linear R/W speed gain you can get from it is worth the effort.

Especially given how QLC, PLC, and higher bit density flash drives has Linear R/W speeds that are matching or worse than existing HDD7200 RPM HDD's in certain cases.

We need HDD to improve their Linear R/W performance without having to spin the Platter more since we can get more performance out of the drive.

If that means the multi-actuator drives need internal RAID 0 of some form, so be it.
 
I wonder at what point the economics get weird for continuing to make lower-capacity 2.5" models at all.

3.5" will have the server market keeping it alive a long time, and e.g. sub-$100 4TB drives are not a huge niche but seem safe for a while (nobody's close to having a $90 4TB SSD). But e.g. 1TB and smaller HDDs have closer competition from both Flash and larger HDDs.

Maybe it's cheap to produce weird models in relatively small numbers a long time, or enterprisey users demand exact replacements for the model they got X years ago. But it's imaginable some of these models are getting close to being retro tech.
 
I don't know about others, but I don't buy HDDs on an annual basis.

I am slowly, but surely replacing all of my 1, 2, and 4Tb HDDs with 12Tb HDDs.

SSDs may be faster, but for those of us with 30+ years of digital "stuff", they are simply not cost effective.
 
SSGBryan said:
I don't know about others, but I don't buy HDDs on an annual basis.

I am slowly, but surely replacing all of my 1, 2, and 4Tb HDDs with 12Tb HDDs.

SSDs may be faster, but for those of us with 30+ years of digital "stuff", they are simply not cost effective.
Click to expand...
I'm actually planning to replace my smaller HDDs with a 12TB as well (yeah, just one for now. I only have about 17 years of digital "stuff". XD)
I just started shopping around a couple of days ago. Not sure what I'll buy yet. Any brand/model in particular that you'd recommend?
 
I would tell you to stay away from anything that isn't enterprise level (See Western Digital SMR, Western Digital NAND ssd). Yes, it is more expensive, but you don't have to worry as much about things that I just mentioned. consumer grade stuff is bottom of the barrel.

Google: backblaze hard drive stats for 2022

This will give you a very, very clear understanding of long-term reliability of drives - it will tell you what is good, and what could be considered questionable.

On to more specifics....

Do you have a plan for your data?

If not, stop now and come up with a plan.

How important is your data? What is your back up plan? Do you know how to test your back up plan? Are you sure? Check again. Nothing is more heartbreaking than discovering that the backups that you so diligently made can't actually be read. (Ask me how I know...🙁 )


AFA brands - HGST has been my go-to. They are expensive, but I am responsible for over 50 years of family photos and home movies for my extended family. Failure is not an option.
 
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SSGBryan said:
I would tell you to stay away from anything that isn't enterprise level (See Western Digital SMR, Western Digital NAND ssd). Yes, it is more expensive, but you don't have to worry as much about things that I just mentioned. consumer grade stuff is bottom of the barrel.

Google: backblaze hard drive stats for 2022

This will give you a very, very clear understanding of long-term reliability of drives - it will tell you what is good, and what could be considered questionable.

On to more specifics....

Do you have a plan for your data?

If not, stop now and come up with a plan.

How important is your data? What is your back up plan? Do you know how to test your back up plan? Are you sure? Check again. Nothing is more heartbreaking than discovering that the backups that you so diligently made can't actually be read. (Ask me how I know...🙁 )


AFA brands - HGST has been my go-to. They are expensive, but I am responsible for over 50 years of family photos and home movies for my extended family. Failure is not an option.
Click to expand...
Don't forget the 3-2-1 backup rules.

2x copies of all your data.

1x extra copy offline on a Blu-Ray Disc. Blu-Ray is rated to have 100 year shelf life via advanced accelerated wear testing.

Blu-Ray has moved to Synthetic dyes and doesn't use Organic Dyes.

Avoid BD-R LTH since those use Organic Dyes and are cheaper.

Consider using Blu-Ray Discs to make a immutable copy that isn't vulnerable to magnetic failure or EMP's.
 
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