Storage Are traditional hard-drives dead?

http://m.tomshardware.co.uk/Intel-Micron-128Gb-NAND-IMFT,news-37226.html

I saw this in today's tech news, and a feeling I've had in the last few months became a little more concrete. What with spinning platter HDs struggling for supply and at increased cost for the next 6 months or more, it seems like a 'perfect storm' is brewing, as larger capacity and ever cheaper SSDs are going to hit the shelves in the same period, while also maintaining the advantages of speed, silence and low power usage. As it is fast nearing the end of the year and we naturally start to think of the new year ahead, I thought it was an appropriate time to post a thread to poll people's thoughts of where the next year will take us!

I think that the next 12 months is going to see the death of traditional hard drives, at least in the home user market. What do you think? Is the degradation over time of an SSD enough of a drawback to give HDs a lifeline in the home market, or will they survive only in high storage servers? Is even that market threatened? I'm interested to hear people's views!

 

Do they make 2TB SSD for $70(pre-flood prices)?



No, so they aren't dead to me

 

Fair enough. Remember, the thread is a light-hearted look at the future, not a measure of the market today! I may be jumping the gun quite a bit with my 12 month prediction, but I feel that the cost of refitting is going to mean inflated HD prices for quite a long time to come, while SSD technology seems to be accelerating exponentially. Anyway, by all means feel free to disagree with me!

 

They will be as soon as ssd are on an even $/gb ratio as hdd, with similar 2tb+ capacities. Until then hdd will have their place in mass storage.
For os/apps drives hdd are dead to me for 3 years already.

 

Do they make traditional hard disks at pre flood prices? The answer is no also.

 

HDD's dead? LOL In total I have 12TB's worth of drives here. Can I replace them with SSDs without having to sell a car? No.

Stupid question.

"I think that the next 12 months is going to see the death of traditional hard drives"

When a 2TB SSD is the same price as a 2TB HDD, then yes, they are dead. Until then, no, as people always need cheap mass storage. The chances of 2TB SSDs being so cheap within 12 months is nil.

 

Exactly as everyone here has already said. Mechanical HDDs still fill the niche of cheap mass storage and that need isn't going to just disappear overnight. Without absolutely exponential growth in the current change of £/GB SSDs just aren't going to be cheap enough for mass storage in the next 12 months.

 

Not dead for a long time, cheap storage. SSDs will become more commonplace for a main drive or a sole drive for those who don't need much space.

As always though, it's price dependent. Currently though, if you don't use that much space it would be daft not to buy a SSD over a HDD at the moment.

But an SSD as storage, not for a long time.

 

I've produced over 30GB of photos and 16GB of videos in the last 3 months alone, and I wasn't even trying. At today's SSD prices, I would have to spend a couple of hundred pounds a year just to keep on top of my pictures and videos, let alone music, software and backups.

Coupled with the fact that for most of those applications I am unlinkely to see any benefit from faster storage, and the practicalities of having to house multiple drives, and I think mechanical drives are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

TLDR: Unless our storage needs suddenly start decreasing dramatically, I think we'll be using mechanical drives well into the next decade (at least)

 

Dead..no but doomed. very much so.
The mechanical hard drive is enjoying the end of it's days right now.

It wont necessarily be that long until SSD storage drives are common place.
They will not need to match Pre flood prices of mechanical HDD's, just so long as they are not so astronomical in comparison as they are today, then they would manage to pull a large enough chunk of sales to put the final nails in the mechanical HDD's coffin..

 

The average home user won't pay the premium for a SSD over a HDD.

When they are cheap enough for PC World/Dell to put into home systems that's the time they will take off.

 

I think they still have a few tears left, for a few reasons although not certain on all of them.

Read write cycle of a SSD, I'm faily sure its lower than most HDD's though improving, which will become more important if it is your only drive, not just a boot/os/program drive.
Total size/drive number limitations. Without going to PCI-e ssd's there don't seem to be many (any, didn't look long) available at over 512gb, therefore taking up lots of sata ports to get same storage space. If you do look at PCI-e ones the price jump once you get to a certain size is very high. Although, denser nand will solve this partly.

 

This.

 

It'll take more improvements on SSD's before they're mainstream, everything you do on them decreases the life span.

But like Pookeyhead said, need to be like for like price for people to want them for simple storage needs

 

Also agree with this. But in theory, their prices for £/GB should never meet in the next 5 years. Unlikely in the next 10. (But in tech, anything can happen)

Unless the cost of producing HDDs spikes (even higher), or they invent an incredibly cheap way of producing SSDs, the HDD should not die so soon.

Then, you have to consider reliability/ cost of replacement when comparing the same capacity side by side HDD vs SSD both in commercial and consumer POVs. HDDs will die eventually. It will be a very slow death.

 

i buy em cos there cheap, just like my women.

 

i wouldn't say traditional HDD's are dead.
i like my cheap RAID 0 setup i have atm. my boot times are quick for only £65 (pre flood)

 

Thread winner right there!

I'll happily admit my 12 months is perhaps a bit soon for the total disappearance of HDDs - Time will tell! Thanks for (mostly) keeping it polite in here, was expecting a bit more of a brutal put-down to be honest!

 

Personally i think cloud storage will replace the majority of hdds/ssds as internet speeds increase and the price goes down.

 

it'll take 5 or so years yet, but eventually they will be replaced, in the same way that cds replaced floppys.

However, by then we'll probably have a new form of storage device if the chinese havent started ww3 before then?