HDDs On The Ropes, Samsung Predicts SSD Price Collisions As NVMe Takes Over

[Sakkura]

24 minutes ago, Deli said:

Some Z87 boards with BIOS update will support NVMe. But anything older with only do SATA. PC upgrade cycle is getting longer. Most non-power users just are fine for machine 5, 6 years or older. SATA is plenty for them.

 

I fail to see NVMe SSD takes over in 2-3 years time, except for the higher end machine.

Laptops are going in that direction too, and we're talking about the marketshare of sold products, not of what old stuff people still happen to be using.

[Deli]

1 hour ago, Sakkura said:

Laptops are going in that direction too, and we're talking about the marketshare of sold products, not of what old stuff people still happen to be using.

I know. I mean people with older PCs who need more storage will still get Sata drives. Instead of buying a new PC to use NVMe.

 

Also NVMe M.2 is more expensive than SATA M.2. Many mid-range laptop with M.2 are still using SATA.

[Sakkura]

4 minutes ago, Deli said:

I know. I mean people with older PCs who need more storage will still get Sata drives. Instead of buying a new PC to use NVMe.

 

Also NVMe M.2 is more expensive than SATA M.2. Many mid-range laptop with M.2 are still using SATA.

People who need more storage will more often buy HDDs for the time being, or rely on NAS.

 

NVMe will not remain that much more expensive, that's the point.

[haloharry97]

15 hours ago, meenmeen1103 said:

It won't die within a few years at least because there's no need to currently sacrifice both money for speed and capacity in EVERY situation. I don't see NAS with NVMe, a majority of pre-builts shipping with NVMe, nor the majority of users who want bulk storage for media files or backups using NVMe anytime soon.

sata 4 is all rady out it is called SATA_Express.

[patrickjp93]

8 hours ago, Sakkura said:

People who need more storage will more often buy HDDs for the time being, or rely on NAS.

 

NVMe will not remain that much more expensive, that's the point.

Still, it depends what we mean by more. If all you need is 1-1.5TB, you really shouldn't be using HDD anymore. The investment in 1-3 SSDs is entirely worth it.

[Doobeedoo]

10 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

SATA4 isn't coming. U.2/SAS will take over.

Right, makes sense for U.2 but why SAS along?

[patrickjp93]

58 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Right, makes sense for U.2 but why SAS along?

It's the same mobo connector, just different pin layouts. The two (theoretically) can share the same connector. And SAS provides the ability to handle 2+ SATA devices per port as well. That's part of the reason SAS hardware has always been more expensive.

[Notional]

1 hour ago, haloharry97 said:

sata 4 is all rady out it is called SATA_Express.

Ah yes, the amazing giant connector where 6+6(+½) = 10. And still needs a separate power connector. But hey, at least it's gigantic and impractical.

 

Not that the SSD end of the U.2 connector is any better. Actually it's probably even worse. Probably why only Intel, who invented it, uses it on their drive... one drive.

[Sakkura]

Just now, Notional said:

Ah yes, the amazing giant connector where 6+6(+½) = 10. And still needs a separate power connector. But hey, at least it's gigantic and impractical.

 

Not that the SSD end of the U.2 connector is any better. Actually it's probably even worse. Probably why only Intel, who invented it, uses it on their drive... one drive.

You can upgrade SATA Express to PCIe 3.0, then it's 16 Gbit/s. Plus the reduced encoding overhead makes that ~2 GB/s of usable throughput where two SATA3 ports combine for 1.2 GB/s.

 

Still, SATA Express is DOA because M.2 is faster and addresses both the desktop and laptop market.

[VerticalDiscussions]

NVME -> Crazy speeds + high price.

 

SATA -> Great speeds + modest price.

 

HDD -> Can be used as a water tank.

 

Which one is going away first :l?

[BuckGup]

15 hours ago, PocketNerd said:

I lived with only 1.5tb of space and had done so for years. Heck I used to only have 1tb but got a 500gb drive to use for recording small videos when I experimented with recording games.

 

Though now I have an SSD for the OS, what do people use all that space for?

Pure pictures in RAW form have taken up over 10TBs and videos well over 30TBs.

[Doobeedoo]

49 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

It's the same mobo connector, just different pin layouts. The two (theoretically) can share the same connector. And SAS provides the ability to handle 2+ SATA devices per port as well. That's part of the reason SAS hardware has always been more expensive.

But SAS doesn't use PCIe x4 lanes?

[patrickjp93]

16 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

But SAS doesn't use PCIe x4 lanes?

No, but it does go up to 12Gbps on its own, so it provides double the bandwidth of SATA 3 right out of the box even without PCIe lanes. If you combine the pins of both SAS and U.2, you can have a unified connector with the capabilities of both.

[The Benjamins]

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

But SAS doesn't use PCIe x4 lanes?

 

1 hour ago, patrickjp93 said:

No, but it does go up to 12Gbps on its own, so it provides double the bandwidth of SATA 3 right out of the box even without PCIe lanes. If you combine the pins of both SAS and U.2, you can have a unified connector with the capabilities of both.

 

And that is per drive, depending on the connector you can go up to 8 drives per port. for example mini SAS can do 4 drives at 12Gbps

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI

[Tieox]

I would love to see SSD prices come down to around mechanical drive price, would be amazing to replace all my storage drives with SSDs!

 

What would Linus do though? surely he would have to step up his server game?

[silberdrachi]

I think this is a bit of the optimism that comes with them producing huge amounts of flash. I do agree HDD are slowly falling to the side, especially in consumer built laptops/desktops they have become a bit more uncommon.

 

I'd love to replace my ssd in my desktop when it dies with a 2tb ssd, but for now i have to have a hdd local for game files. My NAS will stay with HDD much longer just because the cost of the large sized drives will be prohibitive for a while. Hopefully by the time i run out of 19tb of space (30% full now) prices will come down.

 

I approve of the trend of lower prices and higher sizes, but i dont think it will happen at the rate they are predicting.

 

But i was wrong about SSD costs before, so im more than willing to be wrong on this.

[ScratchCat]

21 hours ago, meenmeen1103 said:

How does a graph comparing NVMe to SATA SSD sales determine HDD being put to rest exactly? I don't think HDD will go anywhere until flash memory price/gb gets much closer.

NVMe will become cheaper due to higher volume, SATA SSDs then will become cheaper in order to compete and so will come closer to HDDs in price.

It is still a bit of a hyperbole.

[Monkey Dust]

For mass storage SATA SSDs are plenty fast enough, at least for the next 5 years probably 10. Also Intel doesn't seem very enthusiastic about adding more PCI lanes to it's consumer chips, limiting the number you can run in one machine without slowing something down.

 

Also from a standard consumer point of view, they are still selling a ton of laptops with HHDs in them. I bought a new laptop mid June this year, and my £800 (Pre-Brexit £, probably £880 post-Brexit) got me a 128GB SATA M.2 drive and a HDD. There was virtually nothing cheaper with a SATA SSD, everything with an NVMe was over £1000. And £800 was more than pretty much everyone in my office was willing to spend on a laptop, though nearly that on an iphone 7 plus seems fine for a couple of them. I'm also willing to bet most of the business class desktops, still use HDDs as every cent counts.

[Atmos]

People have been saying that ssds are going to replace hdds entirely now for YEARS. literally years.

Until we actually start to see 1tb ssds at a comparable price, then it doesn't mean shit. But to date the largest ssd you can get for the price of a standard hdd is only 240gbs, barely enough to do much of anything.

 

Come back when 960gb/1tb ssds are down at $60-70

 

And now nvme are supposed to replace sata? Bullshit. Sata ssds are still over priced to hell and back, m.2 and pcie ssds are still even far more expensive.

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, Atmos said:

People have been saying that ssds are going to replace hdds entirely now for YEARS. literally years.

Until we actually start to see 1tb ssds at a comparable price, then it doesn't mean shit. But to date the largest ssd you can get for the price of a standard hdd is only 240gbs, barely enough to do much of anything.

 

Come back when 960gb/1tb ssds are down at $60-70

 

And now nvme are supposed to replace sata? Bullshit. Sata ssds are still over priced to hell and back, m.2 and pcie ssds are still even far more expensive.

It means plenty. The gap is closing. SSDs used to cost 40x or more per GB what HDDs did. Now we're at 9-10x the price on the high end and 3-4x down below ($200 for a 1TB drive), and HDDs have officially lost the long-run storage density battle. It is officially only a matter of time, and I could see the cross happening before the close of the decade.

[Atmos]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

It means plenty. The gap is closing. SSDs used to cost 40x or more per GB what HDDs did. Now we're at 9-10x the price, and HDDs have officially lost the long-run storage density battle. It is officially only a matter of time, and I could see the cross happening before the close of the decade.

Once again, if its still 5-10 years away then it means absolutely nothing to me.

Hard drives haven't died until the point where ssds are at a comparable price per/gb and if that's not for another half decade to full decade then guess what. The horse shit "hard drives are dead" headlines that keep popping up don't mean anything. Not to mention people have been trying to say this shit for the last 3 years. Enough already.

SSD prices are dropping, awesome! That's good for everyone, but if ssds at current price are still 4-5x more expensive per/gb than a hard drive, guess what, then that means hard drives are no where close to being dead.

[patrickjp93]

7 minutes ago, Atmos said:

Once again, if its still 5-10 years away then it means absolutely nothing to me.

Hard drives haven't died until the point where ssds are at a comparable price per/gb and if that's not for another half decade to full decade then guess what. The horse shit "hard drives are dead" headlines that keep popping up don't mean anything. Not to mention people have been trying to say this shit for the last 3 years. Enough already.

SSD prices are dropping, awesome! That's good for everyone, but if ssds at current price are still 4-5x more expensive per/gb than a hard drive, guess what, then that means hard drives are no where close to being dead.

It's 3 years away, at most. Also, part of their argument is that SSD prices are falling far faster than HDDs. That's completely true, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. There's no need for such pessimism and FUD when you clearly don't understand the arguments being made.

 

And being 3-4x the price for nearly 10x the performance/GB is acceptable.

[Atmos]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

It's 3 years away, at most. Also, part of their argument is that SSD prices are falling far faster than HDDs. That's completely true, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. There's no need for such pessimism and FUD when you clearly don't understand the arguments being made.

 

And being 3-4x the price for nearly 10x the performance/GB is acceptable.

I completely understand the argument being made. What I'm saying is that until such a point that the prices actually are comparable in stores and online  then hard drives are not dead. And that's still years away.

[Deli]

1 hour ago, Atmos said:

I completely understand the argument being made. What I'm saying is that until such a point that the prices actually are comparable in stores and online  then hard drives are not dead. And that's still years away.

Agree. For using as system/OS drive, oh yes SSD makes sense for its price/performance. But if someone needs a large media storage, like 6-10 TB. HDD is still the way to go for quite some time.

[Zeeee]

Everyone is saying bullshit but i bet everyone saying that has absolute fuck all idea of what an NVME ssd is. All of you saying "omgerd theres no difference".... have you compared the specs of the two?! Sata ones max rated at 5xxmbps read and write, NVME's are like 2xxx-3xxx read and write thats literally 4-6x faster than ssds on read and writes alone that alone is enough for most tech people to buy an NVME