What's Going On with HDD Market?

I thought it was ALWAYS cheaper to buy internal drive and matching external enclosure compared to just external drive.

It's completely reversed now- on Newegg. I can get a 500GB external drive for $90, but enclosure and drive combo is $120... WTH?

 

Maybe the enclosed drive operates better. I'm sure you could find a variance in all price levels anyhow. But I do know one thing. The HDD market is about to get blind-sided by SSD's

 

Ehhh IDK about the HDD market taking a hit from SSD's anytime soon. $1:GB ratio still not too great

 

In less than 6 months, we're seeing a quartering of prices by drives on the market. Consider that a few months ago the OCZ/Samsung 64GB was $1K. Now, you can get the OCZ Core 128GB for right on $500.

Break it down:
1000/64 = ~15.63/GB
500/128 = ~3.91/GB

At this pace, you will see the $1/GB ratio early next year.

Unless something dramatic happens, this is the beginning of the end for all but very high capacity mechanical spindles.

 

Well I was thinking about this time next year $1/GB. I was really talking about when they would just completely take over the HDD market. What's a good HDD go for now? ~$.50/GB? or around that. I'm thinking early '10

 

You're off by quite a bit.

Seagate 1TB $180. That's $0.18/GB.

Seagate 500GB $100. That's $0.20/GB.

If we assume compound annual quartering of pricing, we're looking at
$1/GB next year. $0.25 in two years. However, some big players are getting into the game most notably Intel. How fast will SSDS get cost competitive when they're in?

FWIW, I'm willing to pay more for an SSD. Selling it to a typical consumer at a higher price is a harder sell.

 

Another thing about price...you're not always paying for the capacity. You're also paying for speed.

 

In the mechanical world, if you raise capacity you raise speed. It's not a 1:1 relationship but larger drives generally have a higher areal density. So you get more data in the same unit of time on extended reads / writes.

You really want to pay for speed? Price 15K drives.

Cheers,

 

When he says speed I think he means the RPM of the drive. 320GB 7200 RPM cost more than the 320 5400RPM.

I was basing prices of 7200RPM drives...

But we both think next year for $1/GB

 

There are many factors in the speed equation of a mechanical drive, and two of the biggest components are rotational velocity and areal (platter) density.


Cheers,

 

Yes, the more capacty the faster.

I'm just saying when I did my prices I took into account the RPM and not just the size of the HDD

 

This is so odd. SO what do you guys recommend? External drive or enclosure combo?