WD Wants to Save Rotating Magnetic Storage

Status
Not open for further replies.

CrArC

Distinguished
Jun 5, 2006
219
0
18,690
I'd be happy to support their business with many hard drive purchases if they'd just lower the friggin' price. I need several TB more storage but can't afford it, even if it is massively cheaper than years ago.
 

LaughALot

Distinguished
Mar 24, 2009
48
0
18,530
Bring out your dead.
Here's one.
That'll be nine pence.
I'm not dead.
What?
Nothing, here's your nine pence.
I'm not dead.
Ere, he says he's not dead.
Yes he is.
No I'm not.
 

g00fysmiley

Distinguished
Apr 30, 2010
2,175
0
19,860
as ssd prices keep coming down hdd are going to have to get exrtremely cheap per gig to remain viable in the next decade... but for now most systems use a hdd for media storage and a ssd for programs, i see this remaining to be the trend for the for the next 4-5 years but with the efficiency of ssd's and as costs go down mechanical drives will have very limited market in the next 10-15. that is assuming that current ssd prices continue to plummet and i can get a 1 TB ssd in the $100 range in 5 years which i think is likely
 

aramisathei

Honorable
Aug 25, 2012
303
0
10,810
I somehow doubt that any decline in HDDs/SSHDs is due to lack of awareness---unless you assume that people have no idea what their storage mediums have been for the past couple decades (in which case, they probably still don't care).
 

jn77

Distinguished
Feb 14, 2007
587
0
18,990
A year ago a 1TB SSD was running $1500-$2400 depending on the brand, this year you can get a Samsung EVO 1TB for just over $600..... for $1200 I can put 2x 1TB EVO SSD's in my latop for 2TB Storage in a laptop...... but on the same token, I can buy how many 750gb WD Black's for my laptop for $1200 ?
 

TyrOd

Honorable
Aug 16, 2013
527
0
11,160
God Toms Hardware is so damn clueless. The gap between $/GB in Hard drives and SSD is getting bigger every year. There will be 40TB bit patterned recording hard drives before there are 3TB SSD planar SSD. Also, the sequential read/write speeds of hard drives are getting faster more so than SSD in comparison as well.
SSD is not a replaceent for hard drives except for in enthusiast/specialized environments where access time is far more important than sequential speeds.

WD and the rest of the industry knows the future of SSD is as a caching solution for Hard Drives. It's Toms that is clueless and thinks they need saving.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

How much lower do you want them to be? At $70-80 for 1TB or $100-110 for 2TB if you look for the cheapest models, I doubt they can afford to make HDDs significantly cheaper without compromising reliability - engineering mechanical devices that will maintain their operating tolerances for tens of thousands of operating hours requires considerable precision and quality materials.

Cutting any (further) corners on that would likely mean drastically increased failure rates and that would ruin their reputation... IIRC, IBM's desktop storage division never recovered from their "DeathStar" incident.
 

The_Trutherizer

Distinguished
Jul 21, 2008
509
0
18,980
Look for me HDD tech will definitely have a role to play and I can understand why they want to leverage on cloud storage, but for PCs SSD is just simply the way. Mind you i have an SSD system drive and a very large HDD at the moment - A configuration that is serving my exquisitely well. Its just that I know what's just on the horizon with SSD tech...
 

TravisJunky

Honorable
Aug 16, 2013
1
0
10,510
The fact is of those companies mentioned (WD, Toshiba, Seagate) they're all falling behind in the SSD market. Companies like Samsung and Intel hold the market on SSD where WD and Seagate were dominate in the HDD market. This is just a strategy to keep what will become an outdated market alive instead of innovating and making quality SSD's to compete with. Just my opinion.
 

stevejnb

Honorable
May 6, 2013
609
0
10,980


So they are lowering the prices - massively - but you still need it lowered more. Curious, if you're too low on funds to buy HD's, what type of storage medium are you using that is saving you money over hard drives? Tape drives?
 

somebodyspecial

Honorable
Sep 20, 2012
1,459
0
11,310
How much cheaper? How about pre-flood pricing at least? I bought many 1TB seagates for $55 and all had longer warranty. They've now shortened it greatly and charge us more thus tripling their profits.

Check profits pre-flood and you'll see WD and Seagate made 1/3 or 1/4 of what they are now respectively. So, I'm thinking we're being overcharged and they have plenty of room to lower prices & should give back our warranty length!

IE Seagate made 511mil in 2011 pre flood. After 2.86B in 2012, then 1.84B now as pricing is finally coming down a bit.
http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/financial-statements?symbol=US%3aSTX
They have been making a KILLING for the last 2 yrs. The flood seems to be the best thing that ever happened to both companies. The flood was over-hyped BS. It didn't affect either company much when price gouging us to death during the problems. They made out like bandits claiming it lasted for a long time but it was over quickly and they were producing more than ever before. When your profits soar from 511mil to 2.86bil in the year after the flood, you aren't hurting due to the flood correct? That's over 5x the profit. At these numbers I'd be hoping for more fake floods yearly if I was them (they probably pray for another!).
 

eklipz330

Distinguished
Jul 7, 2008
3,033
19
20,795
Failure to modernize their company will be their demise. WD is probably run by old people who lack imagination. I remember back in 09 how they stated ssd isn't ready for prime time, and it's a bad investment. Bad move
 
Love my SSDs. You pros/cons
1) Performance no if/and/buts SSDs win
2) Long term BU (stored) - HDD. SSDs NAND loses data much faster than a HDD when non-powered. NAND cells will decay within 3 Months to a Year. Have used a HDD that was in storage for approx. 4 Years.
3) Cost per gig, excluding performance, HDD - at least in the near term. Long term SSDs could become cheaper than HDD (manufacturing vs "Stamping out NAND based "Cards).

Some Observations:
.. 5 yrs downstream SSDs and HDDs may be a dyeing technology.
.. HDDs manuf need to improve on quality as Current Consumer HDDs have decreased over the years (NOTE higher priced enterprise drives are OK). I have some OLD HDDs that are almost 20 Years old and still chugging away (2 Gigabyte SCSI drives) and some OLD IDE drives around 15 Years old - Somehow do not think the "new" drive, with their much higher performance will last near that long.
PS The tests that show SSD should last some 17 years, I do NOT think are valid lifecycle test.
 

bin1127

Distinguished
Dec 5, 2008
736
0
18,980
mag hd's are pretty fast nowadays so ssd's speed cannot be the dealbreaker it once was. 180 mb/s is plenty fast for doing most pc stuff and 500mb/s can only be reached on sequential read. access etc is very good on ssd but the greatest advantage I'd say is the lower power draw compared to mag hd. but do i want to pay 6x the price if it really isn't necessary?
 

WithoutWeakness

Honorable
Nov 7, 2012
311
0
10,810


You can still only buy 2 for your laptop; you would just keep the remaining $1050 in your pocket. Buying $1200 worth of hard drives doesn't suddenly give your laptop 14 hard drive bays. :D
 

Pherule

Distinguished
Aug 26, 2010
591
0
19,010
Having worked for a computer repair company, I can say that hard drive failure rates are way too high. Spinning drives need to be ditched completely by 2020.
 

qlum

Distinguished
Aug 13, 2013
195
0
18,690
I hope we will see the common pre death innovation burst you have seen with so many technologies that went away as that could mean a lot faster harddrives or a lot more gb per €.
 

wysir

Honorable
Aug 9, 2012
169
0
10,690
This coming from a company that doesn't have any grasp in SSD tech is laughable. You want HDDs to stay around? What happened to that WD innovation tech that was supposed to get HDDs spinning @ 20k RPMs by using (H or He) in the drive instead of oxygen. The only useful place in technology for these are only in High-End PCs and servers.
 

tomfreak

Distinguished
May 18, 2011
1,334
0
19,280
it is really simple, just make 10K rpm HDD mainstream. close the speed gap between HDD vs SSD when the adaption of SSD is slowed down, so are the price drop slowing down, then the snowball effect.
 

none12345

Distinguished
Apr 27, 2013
431
2
18,785
As long as hard drives can command a solid price/storage lead, they arent going anywhere. For mass storage i will always buy the cheaper/more reliable option. For performance i will buy the most reliable fast option. I have no problem having both a medium size fast drive for my system and performance apps, and a big slow cheap drive for media where it doesnt matter. SSDs would have to cut their price by 90% to change that, Or HDDs would have to increase their performance by a lot to change it.

However they will be pretty much extinct in portable computers. As long as portability isnt in question, they will still rule. If SSDs ever become cheaper/space then spinning disks, then the spinning disks are dead.
 

laststop311

Distinguished
Nov 8, 2010
281
0
18,790
whatever happened to all the new technologies that was supposed to double and triple hard drive capacity. Heat assisted and helium filled and i know there is at least a third one. We were supposed to have like 10-12TB drives. Hard drive sector has been extremely stagnant and stuck at 4TB for a long time.
 

mchawk

Distinguished
May 26, 2010
33
0
18,530
"For more information about WD's new cheerleading squad for hard drives and hybrid drives, head here. Pom-poms aren't required."

WD's new cheerleading squad... haha lol! Spicy comment...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.