How come the HDD giants didn't get on board with SSD's?
- Thread starter Ayahuasca
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Bit of an odd one, fair enough they might have missed the boat originally, but you would think they would at least buy one of the existing players to break into the market.
Don't see much of a market for mechanical drives in the next few years.
Don't see much of a market for mechanical drives in the next few years.
Western Digital are currently buying SanDisk for $19 billion, and they did purchase a smaller company years back which I guess was used to help with their hybrid drive.
Seagate have also purchased some SSD tech companies, I got a 512GB Seagate SSD for my work PC 2 years ago.
Seagate have also purchased some SSD tech companies, I got a 512GB Seagate SSD for my work PC 2 years ago.
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Not sure in the ins and outs of it but I believe most of the traditional major mechanical storage players lacked their own fabs and/or chip design experience mostly using off the shelf micro controllers, etc. whereas Samsung, Toshiba, etc. either have (or had) their own fabs and/or established in the design and production of semiconductors so could quickly develop products using solid state storage.
For instance OCZ had been designing RAM modules for a long time and had a working relationship with Micron who are one of the primary producers of the NAND used in many SSDs.
EDIT: Seagate quotes 10BN USD just to setup a fab for producing the chips never mind the rest of the infrastructure so no surprise they weren't in a hurry to go into that aspect of it for themselves.
For instance OCZ had been designing RAM modules for a long time and had a working relationship with Micron who are one of the primary producers of the NAND used in many SSDs.
EDIT: Seagate quotes 10BN USD just to setup a fab for producing the chips never mind the rest of the infrastructure so no surprise they weren't in a hurry to go into that aspect of it for themselves.
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Let's be realistic, the HDD is far from dead.
Toshiba own OCZ who make SSDs. They also make their own SSDs.
Seagate make their own SSDs. They also make hybrid drives.
Western Digital owns Sandisk who make SSDs. They also make drives with separate SSD and HDD parts.
HGST are owned by WD. See above.
HDDs aren't going anywhere soon. And there are only 3 companies making them. So it makes sense to keep making them.
Seagate make their own SSDs. They also make hybrid drives.
Western Digital owns Sandisk who make SSDs. They also make drives with separate SSD and HDD parts.
HGST are owned by WD. See above.
HDDs aren't going anywhere soon. And there are only 3 companies making them. So it makes sense to keep making them.
You think? Mechanical hard drive development has pretty much hit a wall the last few years. SSD prices and capacity will likely match and exceed that of mechanical drives within 5 years, if not sooner.
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Longer term reliability could be an issue for a lot of people - are any datacentres running SSDs and posting in-depth reliability figures? I saw the data from Facebook last year, but it wasn't exactly comprehensive...
As long as HDD's keep cost per GB far lower than SSD, then HDD's will continue.
I think Western Digital never got into SSD as SSD's were so unreliable at first.
Western Digital missed a massive market by not introducing Hybrid HDD's years before. Imagine in 2009 a 500GB WD Black with 8GB of nand on it.
HDD's will eventual go the way of steam engines and floppy disks, however they will hold on for some time yet.
Remember TDK, Maxell and Kodak? massive names that failed to go digital, so yes Western Digital could go the same way.
I think Western Digital never got into SSD as SSD's were so unreliable at first.
Western Digital missed a massive market by not introducing Hybrid HDD's years before. Imagine in 2009 a 500GB WD Black with 8GB of nand on it.
HDD's will eventual go the way of steam engines and floppy disks, however they will hold on for some time yet.
Remember TDK, Maxell and Kodak? massive names that failed to go digital, so yes Western Digital could go the same way.
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Google are. They've recently released a report on reliability. Can't find the link now but it's definitely out there to be read!
Mechanical drives already sell in the tens of millions of units worldwide per year. They will continue to do so for a long time IMO - in fact I see demand going up, not down.
Mechanical HDD's still cannot be beaten for price/GB and reliability. Businesses/data centre usage is of course the bulk of sales, though even in home use there are hdd's in almost every home these days, not just in computers.
WD are launching 8TB consumer drives soon (helium filled) - you can't get anything like that SSD wise for consumer use.
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Sales of hard drives are already on the wane and it will only increase in the next few years as SSD prices continue to drop and capacities increase way way quicker than mechanical drives. Power usage also means SSD will become a lot more attractive to datacentre type use quicker than home use purely from a energy and cooling cost.
Soldato
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Cost of the actual SSD vs the HDD outweights the benefits of PUE tbh.
SSDs wont be replacing HDDs in a datacentre for a long time until the price is equal.
SSDs wont be replacing HDDs in a datacentre for a long time until the price is equal.
They already are replacing in a lot of HDD setups in data centres where reliability and speed are concerns. Mass storage however, is a different situation, but it won't be long until SSD takes that market too. Especially since Samsung have now launched a 15TB SAS SSD.
http://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/matthew-wilson/samsung-launches-15tb-v-nand-ssd/
Still won't replace HDD's until they lower in price per GB. This 15TB samsung drive costs $5k-10k+ by most estimates, vs a cheap 10GB HDD that has proven reliability etc.