News HDDs Will Be Extinct by 2028, Says Pure Storage Exec

[Admin]

Pure Storage exec predicts the demise of the HDD industry by 2028, but such a rapid decline might simply be wishful thinking by the flash-centric firm.

HDDs Will Be Extinct by 2028, Says Pure Storage Exec : Read more

 

[Gam3r01]

Lol.
"Blocks & Files says that it has seen no hyperscale data center businesses signal a move from HDD to flash"

So they predict, that in the next 5 years, the entire storage industry is going to completely switch over their hardware?
Buddy, I work for the government and our servers are running on software from the 90s. Do you really think we are anywhere near a hardware switch?

I doubt we will see the majority of data centers on flash by the end of the decade, let alone sales stopping completely.

 

[PBme]

My takeaway from his argument is that Pure's most interesting product is whatever he is smoking.

 

[Giroro]

We should go back to magnetic tape storage for our backups.
That's not even a joke. You could fit like 4TB on a cassette tape with modern tech. Just nobody is doing it outside of expensive server-class stuff.

 

[jeremyj_83]

We should go back to magnetic tape storage for our backups.
That's not even a joke. You could fit like 4TB on a cassette tape with modern tech. Just nobody is doing it outside of expensive server-class stuff.

My company uses tape for part of our backup routine. Using LTO-8 tapes you can get 8TB uncompressed storage for $100. Not that bad for overall.

 

[Dr3ams]

I use HDDs for backup. This time next year I will be upgrading my current drives to ones with more capacity. I don't see that trend changing anytime in my future.

 

[Eximo]

Yeah, not seeing that happen. Unless there is a huge advance in solid state storage technologies. As density increases, durability goes down. Not sure how much farther they can push it if they want Enterprise drives to last more than a few years. Though I suppose they could just stop density increases and start scaling up with 3.5" bricks of flash.

 

[PBme]

We should go back to magnetic tape storage for our backups.
That's not even a joke. You could fit like 4TB on a cassette tape with modern tech. Just nobody is doing it outside of expensive server-class stuff.

Tape backups are still very common thing. This article isn't about backups, it is about live data center drives.

 

[bit_user]

Tape backups are still very common thing. This article isn't about backups, it is about live data center drives.

Yeah, but HDDs are commonly used for nearline and cold storage. Spinning up a HDD and accessing data on it is a lot faster than accessing it from a tape.

And HDDs will retain data, in cold storage, for at least 5 years. Modern, datacenter SSDs probably couldn't even manage 1 year. The spec sheet on an Intel DC drive I got off ebay says only < 90 days, but I know that's a conservative estimate.

 

[emike09]

I'm just sitting here waiting for large consumer nvme SSDs to be a thing, at an affordable price. Where are 8+TB drives at? Everyone is pumping their new PCI-e 5 drives with speeds that 99% don't need yet. Give me PCI-e 3 speed drives with 8-16TB capacity at a price competitive to HDDs and I'll throw my HDD array out.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

While it's stupid to think HDDs will be gone by 2028 for obvious reasons, it would be nice if by 2028 flash storage to at least the 8TB level were price feasible for the consumer and prosumer market so HDDs would effectively be "extinct" except for offline backup drives.

 

[lmcnabney]

I was all set to laugh until I did the math.
In the last 10 years solid state storage has dropped in price to 1/8 where it was. Currently solid state costs a bit more than double. If SSDs continue on their previous pace in five years non-magnetic storage will be cheaper (and faster, and smaller, and use less power).

So I'm not laughing at this guy.

 

[bit_user]

I was all set to laugh until I did the math.
In the last 10 years solid state storage has dropped in price to 1/8 where it was.

You should compare to when it was last profitable (Q3, 2022?). Not today's prices, which are unsustainable.

Currently solid state costs a bit more than double. If SSDs continue on their previous pace in five years non-magnetic storage will be cheaper (and faster, and smaller, and use less power).

Cool. Just imagine where it will be in 100 years! Do the math!

10 years ago, NAND was planar 2D and SLC, probably made on a 40 nm node. Now, we have 4 bits/cell and about 200 layer 3D. In 10 years, we should have 16 bits per cell, about 40,000 layer 4D, made on a 0.1 nm-class node. Do the math!

So I'm not laughing at this guy.

: D

 

[Sluggotg]

In the 70s when Coin Op Arcade gaming became huge with us Teens, the news and older people predicted this "FAD" would be dead in a few years. In the early 80s they said all Video Gaming is Dead. In the 90s, (and ever since), people predicted the death of "PC Gaming". Yes Coin Op was replaced by Home Consoles and Computer Gaming but that was 20 years later.
HDDs are very cheap right now and have vast capacity. I love SSDs and especially the M.2 format. M.2s are my OS drives, Gaming Drives and some productivity. My HDDs are usually in a software mirror and that is my mass storage.
Like almost everyone here, the is No Way HDDs will be gone that soon.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I was all set to laugh until I did the math.
In the last 10 years solid state storage has dropped in price to 1/8 where it was. Currently solid state costs a bit more than double. If SSDs continue on their previous pace in five years non-magnetic storage will be cheaper (and faster, and smaller, and use less power).

So I'm not laughing at this guy.

I am. To borrow Seagate's roadmap, they have 50TB HDDs before 2028. I don't see SSDs reaching 50TB capacities anywhere near 2028 in anything that can be called "affordable", even at the budgets of hyperscale datacenters.

 

[truerock]

We keep our data on 12TB and 20TB HDDs. The backups are on the same HDDs - some of which are taken off site for disaster recovery purposes.

Where performance is needed, we just keep adding more and more TBs of primary memory to our servers.

SSDs have a much smaller role and they are used to store software when it is not being executed in primary memory.

Amazingly, every time I sit in on an infrastructure planning meeting, analysts think that SSDs are going to be a major part of the architecture and I always (and I mean ALWAYS) get them to understand that SSDs just aren't part of the data access architecture.

Obviously, there are almost some idea where SSDs can play a data buffer role between HDDs and primary server memory... and it just never pans out. I keep thinking a project with a tight budget will be forced yo use SSDs instead of primary server memory and it just never happens.

From a performance perspective, keeping the active data in primary memory as opposed to SSDs makes an incredible difference.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

I have 2 HDD's... a 12TB Seagate and 10TB WD (currently 6TB in use) that I use to store my digital movie library (over 1000 titles) as well as other videos... photos... etc... One drive for the data and the other is the backup... and I still have all the movies on disc as well as a 3rd backup.

It's all tied into the Apple TV ecosystem that allows me to stream movies to any set in the house via iTunes on the PC.

I use HDD's because it doesn't make sense to tie up SSD space when streaming doesn't require fast data access. Will probably move all the data to SSDs at some point in the future. I could do it now with the 16TB I have... but don't see the point as long as the HDDs are still functional.

 

[Firestone]

I'm just sitting here waiting for large consumer nvme SSDs to be a thing, at an affordable price. Where are 8+TB drives at? Everyone is pumping their new PCI-e 5 drives with speeds that 99% don't need yet. Give me PCI-e 3 speed drives with 8-16TB capacity at a price competitive to HDDs and I'll throw my HDD array out.

You can already get 8TB Samsung SSD here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089C3TZL9/

current price is $448 USD, down from about $660 roughly 6 months ago iirc

you can also find these same drives on ebay used for good prices as well sometimes.

currently, 4TB SSD's (SATA and M.2) are in the $240 USD ballpark, and 2TB drives are hitting $99. Hopefully in the next several years we might see the 8TB hit the $250 mark, and see more options available on the market too.

Keep in mind, that enterprise SSD's have had 16TB and 30TB capacities for a while now, in the U.2 form factor, but they cost many thousands of dollars even used.

I too look forward to replacing my HDD storage RAID with SSD's

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

I too look forward to replacing my HDD storage RAID with SSD's

If the prices continue to steadily fall I may dump my HDDs a lot sooner.

 

[USAFRet]

My house systems have been SSD only for years.

The ~90TB in or attached to the NAS, however....still spinning.

 

[bit_user]

current price is $448 USD, down from about $660 roughly 6 months ago iirc

They're probably losing money, selling them at $448, though. So, you really shouldn't treat that price drop as an actual cost reduction, much less extrapolate from it.

 

[bit_user]

I am. To borrow Seagate's roadmap, they have 50TB HDDs before 2028. I don't see SSDs reaching 50TB capacities anywhere near 2028 in anything that can be called "affordable", even at the budgets of hyperscale datacenters.

Thanks for looking that up. I thought to lookup a roadmap, but too lazy...

What is becoming more of an issue for HDDs is how long it takes to fill them. I've read that's become a significant factor in data-redundancy calculations, and has even made conventional RAID functionally obsolete. Dual-actuator drives helped regain some ground, but the bandwidth bottleneck is real and will probably play a role in continuing to marginalize the use of HDDs.

 

[spongiemaster]

You can already get 8TB Samsung SSD here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089C3TZL9/

current price is $448 USD, down from about $660 roughly 6 months ago iirc

you can also find these same drives on ebay used for good prices as well sometimes.

currently, 4TB SSD's (SATA and M.2) are in the $240 USD ballpark, and 2TB drives are hitting $99. Hopefully in the next several years we might see the 8TB hit the $250 mark, and see more options available on the market too.

Keep in mind, that enterprise SSD's have had 16TB and 30TB capacities for a while now, in the U.2 form factor, but they cost many thousands of dollars even used.

I too look forward to replacing my HDD storage RAID with SSD's

Meanwhile, an 8TB mechanical drive is around $100 and you can buy a 22TB NAS drive for the $360. Since 22TB is the largest capacity available, it has an inflated price. If you step down slightly to 20TB, you can get an enterprise SATA drive for $290. That's 5x the capacity for the price vs SSD's.

 

[truerock]

Thanks for looking that up. I thought to lookup a roadmap, but too lazy...

What is becoming more of an issue for HDDs is how long it takes to fill them. I've read that's become a significant factor in data-redundancy calculations, and has even made conventional RAID functionally obsolete. Dual-actuator drives helped regain some ground, but the bandwidth bottleneck is real and will probably play a role in continuing to marginalize the use of HDDs.

I'll disagree that the speed of HDDs is an issue. RAID configurations will max out whatever network connectivity you have available.

An important issue is how long it takes to recover failed storage. Critical applications generally mirror their data at the sector level to a remote location... so, there are always 2 copies of data at 2 different locations. But, to rebuild one of the locations if therr is an HDD failure is definitely problematic and takes a lot of resources and there is risk involved until you are recovered.

I don't know when we will start to replace HDDs with SSDs. It's somewhat about the cost per byte for the media - but, more importantly it is power and cooling of the storage. But, even more important than that is the amount of storage you can fit in one rack-unit of space... i.e. number of bytes per cubic meter of data center space.

 

[DSzymborski]

Things Other Than What My Company Sells Will Be Extinct in Five Years says Extremely Objective Executive