Help solve a debate between mechanical and solid state.

[chewtech]

Me and a friend were having a little debate about the importance, or lack there of, of mechanical. One person thought they were useless and dated, the other thinks they're still very much important.
One of us thought they wont be around much longer, if any space, industrial, all the way down to average home user, the other thinks they'll be around much longer then people may think. One of us thinks it's waste to purchase any storage options that are mechanical, the other deems it necessary.
So if anyone reading this could give there thoughts, on mechanical vs solid state, that would be great. Kinda just share how long you think they'll be around before going obsolete for purchasing, whether or not they should still be purchased now, and give any other thoughts on the subject please.

 

[R_1]

Mechanical is not going anywhere and I can sum it up in exactly one word.
BACKUP.

magnetic mechanical storage is tried and true with decades of reliability. data recovery after a failure is even possible.
tape backup units are making a return, and that is very much a mechanical storage solution.

show me a solid state drive that can store 6.25TB on medium that is under 40 dollars.
https://www.amazon.com/Sony-Linear-0-85-Inch-Internal-LTX2500G/dp/B00ARHKUZG?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-ffsb-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00ARHKUZG.

 

[USAFRet]

Me and a friend were having a little debate about the importance, or lack there of, of mechanical. One person thought they were useless and dated, the other thinks they're still very much important.
One of us thought they wont be around much longer, if any space, industrial, all the way down to average home user, the other thinks they'll be around much longer then people may think. One of us thinks it's waste to purchase any storage options that are mechanical, the other deems it necessary.
So if anyone reading this could give there thoughts, on mechanical vs solid state, that would be great. Kinda just share how long you think they'll be around before going obsolete for purchasing, whether or not they should still be purchased now, and give any other thoughts on the subject please.

You're speaking about drive types?
Spinning platters still hold the high road as far as $$ per GB. By a LOT.

All my house systems are SSD only, but that is only because of the 20TB spinning platters in or attached to the NAS box, that hold stuff where that speed does not matter.
The music playlist does not play any faster by being on a spinning platter.

20TB of SSD space is quite a bit beyond my budget.
But I would not build a PC without an SSD as the primary drive.

How much longer? Years.

 

[J_E_D_70]

Mechanical arent going anywhere. SSDs are awesome but the cost per TB will be too high for mass storage, particularly in data centers or for anyone storing lots of video.

For simple gaming, I don’t see a need for mechanical. 500GB SSD holds lots of games and is reasonably priced. 1TB is a bit steep but not outrageous and should accommodate all but a hoarder.

 

[chewtech]

So to R1, I'm kinda ashamed to say it, but I have never heard of that tape device you linked to, and I gotta ask if you could maybe tell me, or link me to where I could find out more, if not be able to purchase that, and use it because HOLY GOD that's cheap.

And to USAFRet, that's probably the only part of the argument I could understand, is that it's kinda crazy at this point to go OS on solid state, but as for file storage, media storage, workloads, I just don't know of many people who can afford to go all solid state, so I just don't get the negative on mechanical.

 

[chewtech]

And JED70, that was another thing I thought was a good side of my argument, that even the big buck data centers aren't even at the all SSD range yet, which means it's should be a very long time before consumers are for all their data and backups.

 

[J_E_D_70]

We’re all SSD in my house as well except for HDD to hold the photos/docs. OS should always go on SSD along with programs. Just the actual data/files/photos go on HDD.

Datacenters do use SSDs in a tiered arrangement. Most-accessed files are cached on them. There can a be a middle tier with 15k rpm SAS drives. Finally the primary HDD storage. This all gets backed up in some fashion.

 

[R_1]

the tape is the cheap part, the drives are kinda pricey until the first time you lose data, the fast ability to restore to any specific tape pays for itself.
Linear Tape-Open or LTO drive have been around for decades.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F0RJ2XY/ref=psdc_6795226011_t4_B019DMRFSA

I see now that you mean only spinning disks, and I still say mechanical spinning drives will go nowhere until price parity has been reached and possibly surpassed. magnetic disks are easier to recover data from, I have personally recovered data that has been deleted and overwritten from a clients RAID array after a drive failure. I do not think you can recover any data from solid state after overwriting. (correct me if wrong here)

I personally use an SSD (crucial Adrenaline) as a cache for main main 1TB drive. it is rare that my WD even spins up, but when I need to save huge files the room is there.

 

[chewtech]

To add a little clarification, this all started, when I showed him that I saw an 8th external drive for 85 bucks, then we got into it based upon him saying no matter the application, the user, or the reason, solid state is the only way to go or it's all a waste to die in the next decade.

 

[geofelt]

The answer to your post is to declare a tie.

 

[chewtech]

I think it's more of solid state is losing pretty hard.

 

[USAFRet]

I think it's more of solid state is losing pretty hard.

Not at all.
As said, I'd never build another PC without one.

Combination. Don't have to go all for one or the other.

 

[gerrypeters]

It's all about economy. SSD are super fast for an OS to boot and are super in my audio recording studio for loading wav file samples into a song. The songs open fast, because of SSD. But as far as storage and playing audio, SSD's are no better, so why spend the extra money?

Maybe 5 years from now SSD's will be close in price to the mechanical ones. If so then the mechanical ones will slowly be phased out I'd guess. I have tons or backup HD's and some old HD's that still work, even a 10 gig. Those are still fulfilling a use for me.

 

[hang-the-9]

Think of SSD and platter drives as sports car vs truck. Neither is "better" in all ways than the other, but if you have both you can be very flexible with what you can do. Want to drive fast in summer breeze and pick up girls, use sports car. Want to be safe in snow and/or carry a bunch of stuff from Ikea, use the truck. You have both on the garage, that is the best thing. If you must have only ONE, that is a big harder to pick since there is no good middle ground in storage. If you are financially out of reach of a decent size SSD, then you need a standard drive for data storage if you are a power user with lots of files to save locally.

 

[seagate_surfer]

The world consumes data at an ever-increasing rate. You may be interested in our report with IDC called Data Age 2025. Basically, it's been estimated that by the year 2025, the world will continue to expand at more and more prolific rates, hitting 163 zettabytes. Notice the z...

Data is alive, data is human, it's creation, innovation, memory, and all that we treasure, and it's a beast that is always hungry. While it would make all of us geeks extremely happy, the factor is you're not getting all of that on SSD. You're not getting all of it on your standard spinning 10TB hard drives either. Rather than seeing these as technologies competing for sole existence, it may be better to think of the whole picture and realize it is going to take innovation in multiple storage technology mediums, across the whole spectrum, in order to keep evolving to keep pace with the beast and meet the future. In fact, the most common storage approach you'll probably see today showcases this: an SSD for performance and snappy load-times, in conjunction with a significantly larger HDD for storage capacity value.