[SOLVED] will hard drives continue to get cheaper per gb?

Pc6777

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hdds have gotten pretty cheap, just bought a 4t drive for 75 dollars(SMR seagate compute, but its for cold storage) will the price per gb keep going down? thinking of ordering a second one because of how cheap they are even tho I don't need it atm.
 
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I've never known a powered ssd to lose any data. Nor one that's actively used/powered up every 6 months or less. SSDs retain data as blips of voltage, that'll last indefinitely if adequately refreshed. It's only when stuck on a shelf and forgotten for a year than most will suffer bleed or electromigration or deterioration of that voltage to levels lower than is specd by the controller to be viable data.

But the same can eventually happen to hdds, the platters only last so long before you start getting bleed from sector to sector, corrupting the data and then CHKDSK has to rearrange whatever it can, grab redundancy sectors, rewrite/fix data and block off the failing sectors. Once you run out of spare sectors, that's when you start...

USAFRet

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hdds have gotten pretty cheap, just bought a 4t drive for 75 dollars(SMR seagate compute, but its for cold storage) will the price per gb keep going down? thinking of ordering a second one because of how cheap they are even tho I don't need it atm.
Yes, they will get cheaper over time.

For instance, a 12-16GB was Unobtanium levels of money not too long ago.

But don't wait for cheapness. Buy it when you need it.
 
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Pc6777

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I think it will keep going down....but I wouldn't wait because I don't think there's that much to be saved.

I think eventually HDDs will become extinct.
Ssds are horrible for cold storage, I will have to constantly rewrite to them to archive on them. It will be annoying, with an hdd I can rewrite every 2 or 3 years instead of ever 6 months to year.
 

Pc6777

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Yes, they will get cheaper over time.

For instance, a 12-16GB was Unobtanium levels of money not too long ago.

But don't wait for cheapness. Buy it when you need it.
True, I don't need it right now, and I'm worried if I buy extras i don't need atm, and keep it in a box for a while, then go to use it it's ethier dead or has experienced degredation from sitting for years.
 
True, I don't need it right now, and I'm worried if I buy extras i don't need atm, and keep it in a box for a while, then go to use it it's ethier dead or has experienced degredation from sitting for years.
If you dont see yourself using them right away then I see no downside to waiting.
You can potentially save money (albeit, not much) and wont risk a non functioning drive sitting burning through its warranty period.
 

Pc6777

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If you dont see yourself using them right away then I see no downside to waiting.
You can potentially save money (albeit, not much) and wont risk a non functioning drive sitting burning through its warranty period.
Plus I have 2 archive drives that will be sitting around doing nothing, just holding data(that I will rewrite every year or 2) that I will probably replace in 5 years so I always have newish drives to hold my data. So after I retire them from archival I will have 2 large smr drives to use in my desktop for read often stuff(bad to write to smr a lot and slow)
 

Karadjgne

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No. Laws of supply and demand vs price. Hdds still retain some popularity, simply because of their size to price value. But as time goes on and new tech replaces old, it'll get to the point where a 16Tb SSD is dirt cheap. Look at usb flash drives. 6 years ago a 32Gb cost well over $100, today you can get them for less than $20.

Sata SSDs will most likely replace hdds for mass storage in the not too distant future, and Hdds will loose the popularity. Noisy, slow things that they are. Meaning there will be little profit in mass production, and so what remaining demand there is will be on a more limited supply.

Just like 3rd and 4th Gen Intel bottomed out in pricing for a while, they still retain higher than normal pricing because supply is diminished, but demand isn't.

Only when demand plummets, like lga775 cpus, will pricing follow suit, and by that time it'll be more value overall to use ssd vs hdd anyway.

Right now we enjoy a buyers market with hdds, why buy a 1Tb WD for $40 when you can get a 2Tb Seagate for $43. That'll change soon enough to a sellers market once demand drops and supply drops soon after. Then of you want a hdd, you'll have to pay for one, and the 1Tb WD will be discontinued, the smallest size available being the 4Tb WD for $100
 
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Pc6777

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No. Laws of supply and demand vs price. Hdds still retain some popularity, simply because of their size to price value. But as time goes on and new tech replaces old, it'll get to the point where a 16Tb SSD is dirt cheap. Look at usb flash drives. 6 years ago a 32Gb cost well over $100, today you can get them for less than $20.

Sata SSDs will most likely replace hdds for mass storage in the not too distant future, and Hdds will loose the popularity. Noisy, slow things that they are. Meaning there will be little profit in mass production, and so what remaining demand there is will be on a more limited supply.

Just like 3rd and 4th Gen Intel bottomed out in pricing for a while, they still retain higher than normal pricing because supply is diminished, but demand isn't.

Only when demand plummets, like lga775 cpus, will pricing follow suit, and by that time it'll be more value overall to use ssd vs hdd anyway.

Right now we enjoy a buyers market with hdds, why buy a 1Tb WD for $40 when you can get a 2Tb Seagate for $43. That'll change soon enough to a sellers market once demand drops and supply drops soon after. Then of you want a hdd, you'll have to pay for one, and the 1Tb WD will be discontinued, the smallest size available being the 4Tb WD for $100
I wouldn't mind hdds going away if ssds held data better and came down in price per gb by at least half of what it costs now, but they get corupted easily and forget data, they are unreliable for my archival, don't get me wrong they are fast and I like them for hot storage purposes and I always at least use a small one for boot. someone should really make an archival grade flash storage device using the same stuff that goes in firmware chips thats write once (bios/device firmware lasts like forever).
 

Karadjgne

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There's issues either way. My Samsung 840 Pro 128Gb was still at 99% health after 7 years as a C drive. Not exactly thrilled with the Mushkin 120Gb that was in the wife's pc that was at 88% after just 3 years as C.
I've had Toshiba die after 2 years, heads froze, I've seen Hitachi literally fall apart. Had a Seagate budget that had nothing but issues with head parking.

So there's a reliability factor to all storage, even dvd/cds, especially the rewritable.

Generally you get what you pay for, don't expect a Blue to last or perform like a Black or Gold, and better off buying Crucial or Samsung since they are OEMs and have better quality control than some no-name super-fast gold standard Chinese knockoff of a 5 year old design using the cheapest silicon they can purchase.
 

Pc6777

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There's issues either way. My Samsung 840 Pro 128Gb was still at 99% health after 7 years as a C drive. Not exactly thrilled with the Mushkin 120Gb that was in the wife's pc that was at 88% after just 3 years as C.
I've had Toshiba die after 2 years, heads froze, I've seen Hitachi literally fall apart. Had a Seagate budget that had nothing but issues with head parking.

So there's a reliability factor to all storage, even dvd/cds, especially the rewritable.

Generally you get what you pay for, don't expect a Blue to last or perform like a Black or Gold, and better off buying Crucial or Samsung since they are OEMs and have better quality control than some no-name super-fast gold standard Chinese knockoff of a 5 year old design using the cheapest silicon they can purchase.
I already bought a few cheap ssds for various uses and boot drives on my dual boot pc, no going back now, I use the cheap gigabyte ssds, pny, team group, silicone power, all like 30ish for 240/256, I use them for boot, and will do heavy uncompressing on them maybe to avoid wear and tear on my hdds. also, do higher quality hdds have better data retention for cold storage vs cheaper smr drives? obviously they would preform better and are faster and can handle more use, but do they have an edge for archival purposes I have 3 seagate compute smr drives that I will chuck in a bin and write every year or 2.
 

Karadjgne

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I've never known a powered ssd to lose any data. Nor one that's actively used/powered up every 6 months or less. SSDs retain data as blips of voltage, that'll last indefinitely if adequately refreshed. It's only when stuck on a shelf and forgotten for a year than most will suffer bleed or electromigration or deterioration of that voltage to levels lower than is specd by the controller to be viable data.

But the same can eventually happen to hdds, the platters only last so long before you start getting bleed from sector to sector, corrupting the data and then CHKDSK has to rearrange whatever it can, grab redundancy sectors, rewrite/fix data and block off the failing sectors. Once you run out of spare sectors, that's when you start seeing bad sectors show up in Defrag.

It's entirely possible, even plausible, to have bad sectors from day-1, and never even know it, redundant sectors already getting reassigned as that address.

SSDs have the exact same thing, generally 7%-13% extra, which is hidden from view to the user, whom just sees 100% healthy for a really long time, 99% only showing up once the redundancy is used up.
 
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Pc6777

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I've never known a powered ssd to lose any data. Nor one that's actively used/powered up every 6 months or less. SSDs retain data as blips of voltage, that'll last indefinitely if adequately refreshed. It's only when stuck on a shelf and forgotten for a year than most will suffer bleed or electromigration or deterioration of that voltage to levels lower than is specd by the controller to be viable data.

But the same can eventually happen to hdds, the platters only last so long before you start getting bleed from sector to sector, corrupting the data and then CHKDSK has to rearrange whatever it can, grab redundancy sectors, rewrite/fix data and block off the failing sectors. Once you run out of spare sectors, that's when you start seeing bad sectors show up in Defrag.

It's entirely possible, even plausible, to have bad sectors from day-1, and never even know it, redundant sectors already getting reassigned as that address.

SSDs have the exact same thing, generally 7%-13% extra, which is hidden from view to the user, whom just sees 100% healthy for a really long time, 99% only showing up once the redundancy is used up.
makes sense, hdds and ssds ship out with spare space/sectors as fallback so when a sector/space is starting to go bad it can automatically move everything then switch them out and use up one of the "redundants". you an have multiple bad sectors and it wont show up because you still have some redundant sectors left. Its when you run out of redunt/backup sectors that you actually start to get bad sectors. I guess thats why for example 2 terbyte drives only have 1800 gigs of usable space.
 

Karadjgne

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In device-managed SMR HDDs, the drive does its internal data management during idle times. In a typical small business/home NAS environment, workloads tend to be bursty in nature, leaving sufficient idle time for garbage collection and other maintenance operations.
In a normal pc, where there's a lot more continuous use, and not so much 'bursty' traffic, especially for boot/C drives or Windows use, I'd expect that a CMR drive (conventional) would be better suited to SMR, as it'll do its internal data management as needed, not specifically during idle times. That means more use, slower overall response at times, but an SMR only doing maintenance at idle will run into trouble if it's rarely ever idle, leaving a giant mess in its wake.