Hard drive prices - and innovation - decline

[Barman58]

As the market stabilises we may well see a situation like that in the retail PC market a while ago, the price stays at a set level and the spec changes

My situation is that I don't know what HDD I may get from a client, so have to be able to read IDE as well as SATA, I don't have IDE on my main system so have to drag out an old system to mount the older drives - The fact that the dock I showed has an e-Sata is also a bonus a cheap card in my systems will speed up transfers over the current USB

 

[Night Hawk]

I have eSata ports on the front top of the case here but not that type of enclosure that will take both types of drive. In fact I gave one of the same out as a gift to someone since his drives tend to fail more in order to at least be able to grab files from a drive ide or sata that will end up being tossed. Running right off of the board controllers of course would be preferred if the enclosure was only being used for just one pc however.

The external here is used for laptops as well as desktops which rules that out unless the enclosure provides both usb and eSata. The fan cooling was another thing this one offered however while the delay by usb hasn't been that noticable despite being a Green Power model.

In fact on the old Vista case used for XP, Vista, and the preretail 7 builds the main drive finally wore and was replaced in January. The new drive just put in now barely runs XP on it? When trying to get a clean install back on neither optical or flash key seemed to work with Vista but my friend was able to get XP on the old Sata II 500gb there. The new drive had seen a working restoration of an image to it from the previous and seemed to be running fine until it would no longer boot.

Now to grab another larger 1tb drive I can't say it will be this or that price in a day's time. Like you were saying the pricing stability seems to be off as well as vendors tending to mark the prices up a little when running low on inventory as well! When just looking the number of WD drives for example was low and the same drive I have went up not down in price?

 

[TanyaC]

Perhaps in the very near future we'll see SSDs with SLC nand in terabyte sizes becoming very affordable.

Peter, RAM prices here seem to be steady or slightly falling. I saw a 16GB, 2x8GB, 1866 kit today for $114.

32GB packages, like the G-Skill 2400-GXL have risen from $299 to as much as $359 from suppliers around me.

I was considering replacing all of my 7 x 2TB drives in my server, with 7 x 3TB drives. A year ago the 3TB drives (ST3000DM001) were $198. Now they are $133.

My OS on that one runs off a 120g Samsung SSD. Cut my boot time down from almost 5 minutes to just over 30 seconds.

 

[Britton30]

The larger the kit, the more expensive. this is due to all the RAM chips having to be matched in performance, which is difficult. A 32GB kit may have 16 chips per module for a total of 128 for a 4x8GB kit.

 

[Night Hawk]

The larger the kit the more dimms are to be found! You can order one dimm separated in some cases or two or four but never 3 or 5 in any kit form since dimms are matched.

The larger kit allows you to max things out from the start instead of adding a second kit in later. That can either help which it does most of the time or hurt since all dimms are from the same manufacturer's batch. The good part would be not running into any mismatch between two kits by the same or other brand.

The bad side however is when running into a bad batch you can end up with more then one bad dimm! That generally isn't the case but can still happen.

 

[GeneO]

tb = Terabit, (though think it should actually be tB (terabyte), which is 1024 (or 1000) GigaByte

Convention used in industry is:

Tb = Terabit= 10^12 bits
TB = Terabyte = 10^12 bytes = 1000 GB, etc.
Tib= 2^40 bits
TiB = 2^40 bytes = 1024 GiB, etc

 

[Night Hawk]

Sometimes when in doubt it's simply easier to use an online Conversion Calculator to find an exact answer when needed. Of course even any result there will differ from the actual drive space available per size of the drive in question. That's when you will need something like a Hard Drive Capacity Calculator

Save the links since those can come in real handy at times when you want to find something out without trying to do all the math.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
I'm seeing decent performing 7200 RPM SATA 4TB spinners now available for around 125 EUR and (best of all) 250GB SSD's for 160 EUR.

However the "Classical spinner" format has probably reached the end of the road now -- larger capacity spinner devices require a step function in electronics and mechanical engineering --while other technology that consumes less power is on the rise.

Whether the SSD format in the "End story" I don't know but we all want faster, less power hungry, larger capacity drives so we will get then in due course -- perhaps using some type of synthetic Biological material -- after all nobody has come close to working out the theoretical storage capacity of the Human Brain -- although sometimes when I read people's conclusions on these Forums about various sets of statistics I wonder if some brains have a block so the capacity is reduced to about 8 Bytes. !!

@Barman58

Why not get a powered external IDE===>USB enclosure for reading your clients IDE drives -- saves having to have an old machine with an IDE port on it. These are available anywhere -- and I think Wales doesn't use the Euro (yet) so I think you can get these (the powered version) for around 8 - 10 GBP.

I'm sure for diagnostic etc. uses the speed of your clients HDD isn't highly significant -- however if your modern machine has a USB3 slot get an IDE==>USB3 enclosure for better speed. Cost is only marginally more although whether the IDE drive especially if its an old 5400 RPM one with a small cache could handle the USB3 speed is a moot point of course.

You could then "retire" your old machine.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Night Hawk]

With the newer larger capacity drives you will notice the Green Power disignation on select models for each make. These were introduced when first seeing drives sold in separate usb/eSata self powered enclosures which often brought in another problem with temps. The self contained enclosures hardly see only one vent and no air flow!

One of the reasons why the docking station idea can work out is there is no encasing around the drives themselve when simply plugging them in. The best alternative however is the fan cooled enclosures that accept both ide and sata drives alike for working with new as well as older drives.

With the larger capacities and ATA standards being maxed out or close to it! jimbo45 you know as well as I do that many will still opt to run multiple smaller capacity storage as well as OS drives to keep things at the more basic levels when not running SSDs or when keeping the larger drives for storage and backup while using the SSD for the OS.

Besides fan cooling one other option that can work on the larger cases not ones where space is confined relying on air flow only are the HD liquid coolers sold separately. But those have to be used in the 5 1/4" bays limiting the number of drives depending on type of case. Want an Antec 1200 full tower or large ThermalTake full tower to still see one or two optical with HD coolers in use and then try moving the steel case around? Better get a fork truck! :roflmao:

Just moving the 900-2 mid tower around can be weight enough without them while the case allows for a half dozen 5 1/4" bay use over simply seeing two 3 1/2" slide out drive bays.

 

[Roders]

Hi All,
There are some interesting points being stated here.
The quest for increased HDD capacity increase is mainly a sales ploy to encourage sales by offering something "new".
I am sure that most people will never fill even a 1 or 2 Tb unit before the unit fails and this raises the most significant point of all.
By far the most important characteristic in this key component is reliability.
The life of their HDD's as stated by Seagate is deplorable and in my not unusuall usage amounts to less than one year.
If it were not such a serious matter it would be laughable.
Another thing that crosses my mind is that with SSD's spying facilities and back doors etc. could very easily be built in.
Food for thought?

 

[Barman58]

Hi there
I'm seeing decent performing 7200 RPM SATA 4TB spinners now available for around 125 EUR and (best of all) 250GB SSD's for 160 EUR.

However the "Classical spinner" format has probably reached the end of the road now -- larger capacity spinner devices require a step function in electronics and mechanical engineering --while other technology that consumes less power is on the rise.

Whether the SSD format in the "End story" I don't know but we all want faster, less power hungry, larger capacity drives so we will get then in due course -- perhaps using some type of synthetic Biological material -- after all nobody has come close to working out the theoretical storage capacity of the Human Brain -- although sometimes when I read people's conclusions on these Forums about various sets of statistics I wonder if some brains have a block so the capacity is reduced to about 8 Bytes. !!

@Barman58

Why not get a powered external IDE===>USB enclosure for reading your clients IDE drives -- saves having to have an old machine with an IDE port on it. These are available anywhere -- and I think Wales doesn't use the Euro (yet) so I think you can get these (the powered version) for around 8 - 10 GBP.

I'm sure for diagnostic etc. uses the speed of your clients HDD isn't highly significant -- however if your modern machine has a USB3 slot get an IDE==>USB3 enclosure for better speed. Cost is only marginally more although whether the IDE drive especially if its an old 5400 RPM one with a small cache could handle the USB3 speed is a moot point of course.

You could then "retire" your old machine.

Cheers
jimbo

Thats my intention, a powered Sata & IDE Dock, (thought the one I originally linked to had that spec), the old machine is actually my test machine and currently runs Win8, and has a 3 1/2" floppy drive in the case, I think of it more of an old friend than an obsolete machine

and as for the euro, I doubt we'll see it here, we can mess up our own banking system without any help

 

[jimbo45]

Hi All,
There are some interesting points being stated here.
The quest for increased HDD capacity increase is mainly a sales ploy to encourage sales by offering something "new".
I am sure that most people will never fill even a 1 or 2 Tb unit before the unit fails and this raises the most significant point of all.
By far the most important characteristic in this key component is reliability.
The life of their HDD's as stated by Seagate is deplorable and in my not unusuall usage amounts to less than one year.
If it were not such a serious matter it would be laughable.
Another thing that crosses my mind is that with SSD's spying facilities and back doors etc. could very easily be built in.
Food for thought?

Hi there
My experience is that however much disk space you have it's NEVER enough. These days 1 TB drives are nothing special - but I'll bet 10 years ago even the thought of a 250GB drive would have been considered as "Never fillable".

HDD's are pretty reliable -- but if you don't take good backups then it's your own fault -- do you really want to re-rip 3,000 CD's again or try and re-download all the music / videos you got from ITunes - or even torrent sites - again.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Roders]

Hi All,
There are some interesting points being stated here.
The quest for increased HDD capacity increase is mainly a sales ploy to encourage sales by offering something "new".
I am sure that most people will never fill even a 1 or 2 Tb unit before the unit fails and this raises the most significant point of all.
By far the most important characteristic in this key component is reliability.
The life of their HDD's as stated by Seagate is deplorable and in my not unusuall usage amounts to less than one year.
If it were not such a serious matter it would be laughable.
Another thing that crosses my mind is that with SSD's spying facilities and back doors etc. could very easily be built in.
Food for thought?

Hi there
My experience is that however much disk space you have it's NEVER enough. These days 1 TB drives are nothing special - but I'll bet 10 years ago even the thought of a 250GB drive would have been considered as "Never fillable".

HDD's are pretty reliable -- but if you don't take good backups then it's your own fault -- do you really want to re-rip 3,000 CD's again or try and re-download all the music / videos you got from ITunes - or even torrent sites - again.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi Jimbo,
I accept that there are bound to be those who do need, and use, huge storage capacity, but most do not.
"Pretty reliable" HDD's is not good enough. By now they should be absolutly reliable with a backup simply for peace of mind and not as a matter of neccesity because of the inevitable failures which we have all come expect and have been conditioned to accept.
We should never accept being fobbed off with second best.
Rgds

 

[Barman58]

Hi Roders,

I have to agree with Jimbo, in that, the responsibility for backup must lie with the user, no hardware can ever be totally reliable, or totally safe from theft or physical damage, Fire Etc.). The MTBF figures for current conventional, and SSD, drives are far superior to those we used to see, but are not, and never will be infinite

(MBTF = Mean time between failures)

 

[Roders]

Hi Roders,

I have to agree with Jimbo, in that, the responsibility for backup must lie with the user, no hardware can ever be totally reliable, or totally safe from theft or physical damage, Fire Etc.). The MTBF figures for current conventional, and SSD, drives are far superior to those we used to see, but are not, and never will be infinite

(MBTF = Mean time between failures)

Hi B,
I do not think anyone would expect them to be perfect and have an infinate life but I for one
think they should be much better than they are and that we should not allow ourselves to be condtioned
into accepting otherwise.

Being the most critical component in a computer what do you think that the guaranteed life of a HDD,, should be?

The present figure quoted by one manufacturer is absolutly pathetic and they should be ashamed of themselves for producing such products. It makes one wonder if the products should be considered as fit for purpose at all.
Rgds

 

[Barman58]

A difficult question to answer, as the cost factor will make a contribution, In most devices or manufactured goods it's normally possible to produce extremely reliable devices, but the more reliable the more the cost.

Drives should last for at least the projected life of the system they're in, plus a 50% margin, just my opinion, of course.

The projected life of a system is of course contentious to say the least, in business there is, or should be, planned obsolescence, with any system, in the home market. who knows? some users change their system often, some retain them for a very long time, and of course actual usage will vary.

In thirty plus years in the ICT business I cannot remember many "Critical" failures in industry, as most are covered by in place backup or RAID schemes. I have seen some very upset home users who have lost all their family memories, due to a failure, and they often admit that they know they should have backed up.

I can remember a sign affixed to restroom mirrors on industrial sites in the UK "on reflection, THIS person is responsible for YOUR safety" a variation fitted to all PC's sold would save a lot of heartache

 

[Night Hawk]

If I was to look at this time for one single that would hold everything here including system images for more then one machine(on two separate drives no less one external), two storage drives, plus what other files are on the main OS drive I would be looking for a 5tb model!

While there is still left over on each drive I never fill one up over 70% for any storage/backup drive and over 60% for the OS even when working with video captures for the obvious reasons like paging file etc. to prevent OS stalls despite running the 64bit OS. The build here was initially planned out to have multiple internal drives always available for one to be the backup of another.

Keeping in mind the possibility of any drive failing one backup drive will be the backup for the first backup drive. If the host drive fails the second drive used for testing takes over as the host where the latest image is restored if not seeing a fresh install once again. When you backup the backup of the backup that will tend to use up some drive space and call for the need to have one item namely "capacity".

And what about non desktop but home server application? capacity as well as several drives may be called for! When you have multiple desktops tied into one network home or business server capacity comes to mind right away. Backing up a server takes up more drive space on more drives!

Now those of you who own laptops having that "big" external drive to back things up on can save the day if something lets go on the portable! So is it worth having a large capacity drive or two? Gee with all those new cell phones with cameras having a usb plugin option to upload personal moments onto your pc and then something bad happens to the one drive system wouldn't you wish you had backed up all those personal things?

I know only too well where Barman58 is coming from having watched others NOT make the right choices of making backups of family photos only to be lost when the drive on a laptop goes belly up! They didn't use that usb enclosure they had laying around when replacing an original 120gb drive for the larger faster 500gb model and UT OOOoooo....

Getting back to the subject of innovation declining I doubt WD thinks that way. WD releases its first 12Gbps SAS SSDs Drive capacities will range from 200gb to 1.6tb not gb as someone made a typo over at Computerworld it seems!

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
You can't really expect ANY mechanical device to have 100% lifetime guarantee -- ever watch things like Aircrash Confidential / Investigation on Nat. Geographic Channel --Modern aircraft are probably the most controlled and reliable pieces of kit ever invented yet parts still sometimes go wrong.

I would suspect though that 95% of people on these forums provided they treat their equipment with a "normal" amount of respect probably in their entire "Computing Lives" will never experience a HDD failure --- it's a lot rarer than you think.

In any case even if the equipment does fail you can (within the warranty period) get a replacement -- but that still shouldn't mean that you don't have to take backups.

If you don't take backups then again I re-iterate it's YOUR OWN FAULT.

What about cases where it's not actually an HDD failure -- but say Nature -- Floods / Earthquakes / Volcanoes / Tsunamis / even simple traffic accidents where a truck crashes through your front wall and destroys your computer -- to say nothing of Burglars or even accidental data erasure.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Night Hawk]

Hard drive fails rare? Not lately it seems! On just one laptop alone two successive drives went belly up in a relatively short amount of time since it was being handled by multiple users no less. Once the owner wanted the original 120gb replaced with a larger faster drive things didn't go well and after two failed the 120gb was just put back in.

On the old desktop built for Vista mainly while still seeing a dual boot until testing lead to the 7 RC the main drive faltered... finally after 6 1/2-7yrs. of use! That was one of two bought back in late 2005 for an older XP Pro case which moved along in just over a year's time while keeping the drives. But that was a 3 1/2" not 2 1/2" drive that lasted through quite a bit while it's new replacement drive(WD Caviar SE replaced by Caviar Blue) failed in just over a month's time! or looks that way.

The first copy of Windows Vista was actually the system image backup of the first drive which restored and ran well until suddenly one day nothing would boot! It just goes to show you can never simply fully assume anything will last indefinitely Bad caps(capacitors) plagued pc main boards for a period of time. Bad batches got out from the one or two cap manufacturers that were used for several brands causing countless headaches back a decade or so.

If it safe to assume just any one particular drive or other hardware is invulnerable? Often the more complex something is like a household appliance using buttons on a control panel over knobs on the more basic version of same leads to the "it could be anything" dilemna when something goes oops! and you have to call in the "name brand" repairman!

Yet no one hardly ever listens to the golden rule of back me up the backup of the backups of the latest backup of the backups for the backups of the backup of this or that!

 

[Britton30]

IT make most drive makers' claims of a Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) of a million hours seem stupid. That's 114 years.