Blogs Is it time for the hard disk to die?

I had an SSD, I could see no improvement. I could, however do without the transported back to the late '90s feeling of shifting things to make them fit. Given the setup I have, with just a single F1 my boot is under 30 seconds (go go enterprise board) and I wait an annoying amount of time on nothing. I'm redoing my storage setup with SAS 15k drives, since I found 36.4GB drives for $9 on Ebay, warranty time left. I have a SAS RAID controller, $72 nets a darn nice nested RAID10 that's big enough for OS/games and FC is dropping every day for REAL storage space.

With opportunities like that, why would I even consider SSDs?

 

That is based on old ssd's and old boards.

SSD's in the past were limited by Sata2, which is about what most spinners do. That isn't the case anymore with Sata3. You only got the fast boot times because of access times, transfer rate matters less on boot. Now that transfer rate is higher, everything is faster as programs use transfer rate to load larger files faster.

Take a look at this, keep in mind that Sata2 maxes out at 300 and you never get full capacity, which means a Sata3 modern SSD is severely handicapped to an average of around 225 or so.

Crucial M4 (from Storagereview)
2mb sequential read - 497 MB/s
2mb sequential write - 293 MB/s
2mb random read - 461 MB/s
2mb random write - 244 MB/s

Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3TB fastest spinner (from StorageReview)
2mb sequential read - 153 MB/s
2mb sequential write - 155 MB/s
2mb random read - 60 MB/s
2mb random write - 63 MB/s

Remember, Once you switch the SSD to Sata3, the race is long over, they aren't even close.

 

I think it's still going depend on the intended usage for quite some time yet.

A casual user might find their entire install fits comfortably on a reasonable sized SSD and also gain great performance from it. For them a SSD is a no-brainer.

Becomes more complex when you start factoring in large game + media installs.
It becomes completely unreasonable to store huge steam installs or audio/video media on SSD... Too expensive and such static files won't benefit much from an SSD anyway (well, for video anyway)

IMHO, if you're tech-inclined enough to cope with a split SSD/HDD setup that is by far the way to go. whether it be a SSD/HDD setup or a SSD/NAS one, i prefer the latter as you can share the NAS part over multiple PCs...
Great for hibernating my PC, retreating to bed, then loading up the same video i was watching on my laptop

MY current setup is:
mainPC:
90GB SSD + 1TB RAID1 HDD (my steam + 'random crap' drive)+ NAS share
Laptop:
64GB SSD + NAS share
parents + brothers PCs:
<misc HDD> + NAS share

NAS box has a 2TB RAID5 HDD array

With a gigabit ethernet backbone, the setup works flawlessly

 

Agreed, it does depend some, and my setup is similar.

Desktop has a 120gb Crucial M4
Laptop has an Crucial C300 60Gb SSD with wirelessN 300.
2Tb file server on Gigabit E/N300.
Works fantastic.

 

That's ok if you have the patience to wait for sweet bargains like that but then again drives like that are noisy, hot & big power draw but if that doesn't bother you then that's great .

Many seem to not notice the difference going from hdd to ssd but I absolutely did & so did my bro after tricking him .

It's not just fast boot times & being 100% ready for action as soon as you hit the desktop, all programs load either instantly or very near instant, personally after getting used to SSD's for a OS & programs drive I absolutely hate operating PC's which are stuck with HDD for the OS & you have to be pretty patient to operate them after having a snappy rig & SSD's make any system snappy so a very worthy upgrade to any rig I'd say I've read of many with older laptops saying it gave it a new lease of life & it really does, they were long overdue with the nice speed of all the other computer components, I wouldn't say it's the rated speeds that make them so snappy I'd say it's the access times, they absolutely blitz HDD's on that but yeah they are way too expensive to use them for a games drive if you have many games, I'd even say it's like comparing the very first tft monitor with huge lag & ghosting to 1 of the best 120hz 2ms monitor but it's better than that even, suppose you have to experience the difference to know why people swear by them to know for sure .

I used to buy WD raptor hdd's as they were pretty good back when they were new & I think the prices of those back then are nicely comparable to ssd's of much higher capacity of now so I see them as a bargain to be honest, I remember getting a raptor 74GB for more than what my 120GB SSD cost.

My bro said he didn't notice the difference though so I let him carry on using it for a few weeks with the ssd & then while he was out I did a ghost image so I could restore it later & whipped out the ssd & replaced it with a hdd & he thought his pc was dying so I think that says it all really .

 

Can't see that happening. SSD's are still too expensive and until they get close to the HDD's price per GB ratio then there is no chance HDD's will die.

 

For me, as it is for others, SSDs are still too expensive and I don't entirely trust their reliability. Granted I've had more than one HDD die on me (even a less-than-2-year-old F1 seized, although I managed to fix it), but I don't want to do more clean installs of Windows because I had a boot drive die. For now, I don't trust SSDs to be reliable enough.

HDDs will die once SSDs get down to the same price level. And it's got to be across the board, too - if the Thailand flooding hadn't happened, I'd be able to get a 3TB drive now for around $100, give or take. $100 gets me practically nothing in SSDs. To kzinti1's point - exactly. I got a comparable Samsung 2TB last spring for around $80. SSDs will kill HDDs when there's price parity. Simple as that.

 

There are is only one things that makes a SSD better then a HDD. And that is speed. All other things like; endurance, reliability, storage space, price and power consumption are (in perspective to the price point) a win for HDD

Then you can ask yourself: "Do I really need this SSD, does it save me money with the stuff I do on my PC and can I do more with it than a HDD?"

The logical right answer is NO.

I had a 120gb SSD (for 343 pounds) in my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) At the time (late 2009) I thought this was a great way to load audio samples into Contact very very fast. Well it did and was wonderful until I ran out of space evenly fast.

I then had a revelation after a restless sleep and instead bought 16GB of memory and 4 sata 300 1TB drives in raid, almost for the same price as that 120GB SSD. And never looked back...

 

I'd rather spend the excess money towards a newer video card or more system RAM. Load time decrease does not necessarily equate to game performance. I will stick to HDDs for now until SSDs are closer in cost.

If I completely lost my mind and decided to start gaming on a laptop, then I would lean toward SSDs. In that scenario, I would only install a handful of games at a time on the machine so I didn't fill up the SSDs.

But, I haven't lost my mind and will not spend a stupid amount of money on a laptop that can run current popular games on a smaller screen. Trying to upgrade that after two years would be a pain.

 

Wow your setup is virtually identical to mine. Since I went SSD I plan to not put a spinner back in my PC(s) again.

My setup is:

Gaming Desktop - 120GB Vertex 2E
Gaming Laptop - 64GB Crucial C300
NAS - Buffalo Linkstation Duo - 1TB (2x500GB) with 1TB mirrored backup
500GB external HD with Steam backups used as required.

All of my documents, media (pictures, video etc) and main downloads are now on my NAS, the SSD's are my main system drives for programs & games.

In the near future my main system will get upgraded to a 240/256GB SATA 6GB/s drive. This leaves the 120GB Vertex 2E either for my laptop or as a Steam game drive (probably the latter as reinstalling windows on my laptop is a nightmare - Dell cryptic driver headers for the lose )

My NAS will eventually get upgraded to 2x2TB drives but this will only happen once I fill up what I already have. I love having centralised storage as I hate duplication of files as I am stupidly anal about folder structure and file locations.

But back to the point at hand. Mechanial HD's will not die until a replacement comes along that is both better in real world terms (Faster, more reliable etc), AND works on a economic level (ie is cheaper or the same price). This happened with floppy drives (flash storage), primamrly due to the lack of storage, but the move from HD's will be much longer drawn out.

 

what's worth mentioning is that ssd's implementing memristors are on the way (due 2013?), and will most likely affect the market.
being faster, more energy efficient, cheaper to produce and having a better storage per unit of area, they could potentially be the (slightly larger) david against the goliaths we commonly accepted as storage overlords.

however, by the time david hits the market, goliath (http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/10/20/hard-disk-capacity-can-sextuple-with-pinch/1) will too. using salted drives on smaller volumes (3-6tb) will probably push down prices even further on mechanical drives, and thus once again increase the gap between the two.

currently (from what i've read), only hp/hynix and samsung are working on memristors, but if the technology keeps its promises more manufacturers will jump onboard.

 

I think the mechanical drives will continue as they are, which is to gradually be replaced by SSD as the main boot device, but continue on as mass storage. After all, they are still finding ever more ingenious ways to cram more on a platter. And I can't see that stopping for some time yet.

 

Until SSDs are on par with HDDs in terms of capacity then I don't see them dying off soon. Once they are though. I'd say good bye to HDDs in a heartbeat.

 

Many will probably not agree with me, but it seems that where earlier technological advancements usually meant "better", these days they usually mean both "better" and "worse".

Take the CRT vs TFT example. CRTs, while being clunky, generally offered great performance across the board. Lag-free 100 Hz high-res gaming was the norm, not the exception. No viewing angle issues and great colour reproduction. Even though TFTs have come a long way if you buy one you pretty much have to decide if you want to have a fast panel that looks crap or a slower panel that look good. TN: Cheap and fast, lousy in pretty much every other regard. IPS: great colours and colour stability, lousy black levels and not quite as fast as TN. VA: Great colours and good black levels, average viewing angles, colour shift and generally somewhat slower than IPS.

The same applies to HDDs vs SSDs. While the latter undoubtedly are much faster than the former, as well as being more quiet and _generally_ more energy efficient, they're also more prone to errors. I'm primarily thinking of the BSoD-riddled drives from OCZ or those nifty little firmware updates, which either wreck your drive or send your data to Nirvana (I'm looking at you, Intel).

Oh, and please, don't use more than about half of the available drive space, because otherwise performance will drop like a rock. Yes, there's TRIM support in certain OSes, but that's more of a kludge than a proper solution.

And don't forget the decreasing life span of the flash memory cells. I believe they're down to about 3000 read/write cycles on the 25 nm tech.

The list goes on, but I believe I've made my point. It seems to me that SSDs, like TFTs, are more of a stop-gap solution. And I firmly believe HDDs will still be around for a long time. Especially if we get back to pre-flood prices. YMMV.

 

Give it 2 or 3 years and HDD's will be almost strictly relegated to storage drives.

Most people don't use anywhere near the drive space we do. My Xp clients almost never exceed 30 gigs. Win7 clients almost never exceed 60. Offer a 120-250Gb drive for a reasonable cost and drives will drop by the wayside in a hurry in new systems.

 

HAH My C drive has 250GB of 500 used. Give me a 500GB SSD at a reasonable price and I will be sold

 

Could someone let Scan know then? Their prices are still the same for 1TB and 1.5TB, plus they still have 2TB drives priced so high you have to call them to find out how much it's going to cost you.

 

I personally think this may be the way to go.
As only Z68 supports this and Z68 has been dropped like a brick by all reviewers and manufacturers, it doesn't look like it now.
But it's supposed to be a key feature of Ivy-Bridge, so I expect a big big rebound for SSD Caching this year.

 

Haaha i thought professionals write these posts. Here I'll help you list the advantages of HDD:

- Price per GB, (even though floods have rocketed the HDD prices)
- Maximum capacity, (2TB SSDs lol nice dream. and imagine the price )
- Write speed (yeah the SSDs have a higher read speed but are still slower when it comes to writing to the disk than HDDs),
- SSDs are prone to errors (your system suddenly won't boot), it is nowhere as reliable as HDD,
- SSDs have a set amount of writes after which the disk is useless (the number is massive but still), HDD does not have that problem,

+ others, please do some research.

 

I think this is why it isn't an article & is instead a blog, basically just thoughts & me & I'm sure many others like the blogs, a recent one inspired my next project .

If you compare a WD raptor 10,000RPM HDD to a 120GB SSD they are reasonable price now but strictly for an OS & programs drive though & maybe a few games depending on how big the games are.

But I have no faith in sandforce 3 at all, my corsair force series 3 died on me the other day & had problems from the start with it so went back to the super reliable ocz vertex 2e which I bought after finding the sandforce 3 one caused many BSOD's with it disappearing completely randomly while using it but it corrupted the drive badly last time it BSOD so it's out of my system for good now.