why havent 2.5 hdd's killed the 3.5 hdd market at least for home market?

chrcoluk · 27 Jul 2019 at 13:03

Another one of my questions where it seems a no brainer to me but others will likely see my ideas as silly.

So here is my reasoning.

HDD's for the most part performance no longer matters anywhere near as much, it usually just needs to be fast enough to do things like play multimedia, or for maybe games. SSD's tend to take over i/o performance sensitive tasks.
2.5 inch drives are much quieter.
2.5 inch drives are much lighter.
2.5 inch drivers are much smaller.
2.5 inch drives run cooler.
2.5 inch drives take less storage space in a warehouse or delivery van.
Imagine the space used in a case if 3.5 drive bay was just 2.5 drive bay.
I am not sure if they cheaper to manufacturer, they definitely have a lot less material but they also may be harder to produce.
I am aware there is size/capacity constraints so what would be my solution? Simply taller drives. I have a 2.5inch WD drive that is thicker/taller than a normal 2.5 drive, e.g. it wont fit in a ps4, but you would get it in a PC drive bay.
Transitioning wouldnt be difficult as 3.5 bays typically can house 2.5 drives.

So I would stop manufacturing non enterprise 3.5 drives, and replace those with desktop 2.5 variants where they have extra height to cater for the extra spindles for 3+ tb sizes.

PiKe · 27 Jul 2019 at 13:05

3.5 pro's: Reliability, longevity.

andicole0 · 27 Jul 2019 at 13:07

A quick look shows 3.5 are half the price of 2.5 hdds.
Andi.

chrcoluk · 27 Jul 2019 at 13:10

Well if the price difference is that big, then yeah case closed.

PiKe · 27 Jul 2019 at 13:11

Also density.

Find me a 6tb+ 2.5 inch drive.

chrcoluk · 27 Jul 2019 at 13:12

Yeah there is no density now, but they could easily make a 6tb 2.5 inch drive. It wouldnt fit in a laptop but would easily fit in a PC.

area51 · 27 Jul 2019 at 23:10

WD Velocitraptors was/are 2.5" drives in a caddy

theoneofgod · 1 Aug 2019 at 02:58

Lets just skip forward, forget 2.5" and 3.5" HDD's and move over completely to SSD's. Wishful thinking I know, but it should happen eventually, right?

Hotwired · 1 Aug 2019 at 05:10

theoneofgod said:
Lets just skip forward, forget 2.5" and 3.5" HDD's and move over completely to SSD's. Wishful thinking I know, but it should happen eventually, right?

Tape drives have been meant to be going extinct for decades except no one is kicking them out of the niche of backup storage.

HDD are 1/10 the price of SSD and are not horribly affected by the annual implosion of a memory factory or the memory cartels going at it again.

It's good to have options. Imagine paying SSD prices for bulk storage.

Rroff · 1 Aug 2019 at 05:14

Something I find a bit surprising is that cases haven't evolved to have NAS like slots for mounting HDDs and SSDs instead of the often horrific to work with cages.

theoneofgod · 1 Aug 2019 at 06:36

Hotwired said:
Tape drives have been meant to be going extinct for decades except no one is kicking them out of the niche of backup storage.

HDD are 1/10 the price of SSD and are not horribly affected by the annual implosion of a memory factory or the memory cartels going at it again.

It's good to have options. Imagine paying SSD prices for bulk storage.

Don't try ruin my wishful thinking here. Let me dream at least.

chrcoluk · 1 Aug 2019 at 10:41

theoneofgod said:
Lets just skip forward, forget 2.5" and 3.5" HDD's and move over completely to SSD's. Wishful thinking I know, but it should happen eventually, right?

It will happen if they can ever get the price per gig the same and capacity up. Doesnt seem to be going in that direction tho.

QLC ssd's in some performance metrics are slower than spindles, so if the only way to get the pricing down is adding extra cell depth then its not going to be pretty.