Good News for Consumers: SSD Prices are Dropping

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
Messages
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We all knew it was just a matter of time for the prices to begin to fall for SSD’s. The fall was just delayed a bit by those pesky floods in Thailand that pushed standard HDD’s higher, stabilizing the fall of the SSD’s. Solid State Drive prices are falling just as standard hard drive prices remain stable, making the Solid State Drives a viable alternative solution for storage.

As with most technology, SDDs have gotten cheaper as they’ve gotten more commonplace.
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Now the question remains, can we still persuade people to use a SSD? No matter what ¾ of my friends still continue to use mechanical drives even after I tried to convince them otherwise.
 
SolidBladez said:
Now the question remains, can we still persuade people to use a SSD? No matter what ¾ of my friends still continue to use mechanical drives even after I tried to convince them otherwise.
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Use or buy?
 
1 TB SSD < $150, and I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Hell < $200 and I'd still grab it. Otherwise, I'd staying with 256 GB for now. Fast OS drive.
 
Even with the reduced prices, it's still sticker shock. 1TB hard drives on newegg are $100 or less; 512GB SSDs are well over $300. Six times the cost per GB is a hard sell no matter how much faster it is.

I am thinking of getting one later this year. Not surprisingly, reliability is primary in my mind. I found this, which seems to show Intel being in an entirely different category of reliability over Crucial, Corsair and OCZ.
 
Hell I would be happy to buy another couple regular 2TB hdds for storage at old prices. Bought two 2TB Samsung's in Nov 2010 for $130 combined. That same hdd is now $120 for one lol.
 
BeavermanA said:
Hell I would be happy to buy another couple regular 2TB hdds for storage at old prices. Bought two 2TB Samsung's in Nov 2010 for $130 combined. That same hdd is now $120 for one lol.
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Same here. I'd like to RAID my 1.5 TB or grab a few 2 TB drives and RAID them. Costs put that off for a while. Sucks, too. I could use the extra space.
 
SSD drives maybe dropping but not enough to convince me to go out and get one. I wouldn't spend much more then $100 for a drive, and for that price you only get 120 GB. When SSD prices drop to around $100 for 320 GB drives then I'll be all over it. Otherwise I'll stick with mechanical.
 
That's great to hear. I don't see SSD as being a replacement for storage, they wear out, but they make great OS drives and that's where speed really matters and number of writes can be limited to a point where it will last for years. But for mass storage, nothing beats a bunch of spindle drives in raid and not having to worry about how much you write to it.

Any machine I buy or upgrade now gets a SSD as the OS drive. That alone can make a huge difference.
 
I thought SSDs don't wear out...? At least not for reading. Isn't that the case? I haven't really looked at them for a good long time, so maybe I'm out of the loop but that's what i remember reading when SSD really started to come up.
 
Just grabbed a 120GB Vertex 3 for $70 and two 120GB Agility 3 drives for $55. Already have a 240GB Sandisk Extremely drive incoming as well. Definitely at much more affordable prices than 3 months ago.
 
You have to factor a number of things.

While SSD's are dropping in price they are still stupidly expensive compared to HDD's. Not to mention SATA III is still not standard making that extra speed of SSD's kind of pointless. Its like a USB 3 drive in a USB 2 port.

Not to mention the tech is still climbing fast. Only your 'bleeding edge' people are going to buy them. Shelling out $$$ for a SSD that will be slow in comparison to SSD's in as little as a year.

I do have a SSD. Its almost 2-3 years old now. It is only my OS and application drive. Storage is on the RAID0 raptors or on my RAID6 NAS. I do not see myself going full SSD in a computer (even a laptop) for quite a while.
 
It's good to see prices coming down, but I just don't see a future in current memory cell technology. MLC is bad enough with around 3k program/erase cycles. We're going smaller and with more switch positions, yuck!

I love the tolerance to being dropped over normal hard drives and the performance is great, but I'm not sure about the long-term future. We really badly need more durable solid state drives.
 
Actually, one SSD area I would really like to see these price drops is the 1.8 inch market. I've got a HP 2740p tablet I would really love to drop a SSD in but the prices for 128GB+ drives are still too high..
 
Serpent said:
I thought SSDs don't wear out...? At least not for reading. Isn't that the case? I haven't really looked at them for a good long time, so maybe I'm out of the loop but that's what i remember reading when SSD really started to come up.
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This is a great read that delves into some of the issues concerning performance degradation regarding SSDs

In general, they won't just die the way platter drives do (poof!) but rather slowly lose their efficacy.

It's a legitimate concern. There are cheaper versions of drives that should perform fewer read/write cycles. The Kingston HyperX 3K is an easy example

The 3K in this case refers to the number of program/erase cycles the NAND inside the SSD is rated for. As we've discussed on numerous occasions, NAND endurance is a finite thing. The process of programming a NAND cell is physically destructive to the cell itself and over time you'll end up with NAND that can no longer hold a charge (or your data).
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/5734/kingston-hyperx-3k-240gb-ssd-review

The skinny is that if you're doing large block read/writes very often then you're going to accelerate the NAND's degradation, for most people this isn't a problem (and less so if you buy a high grade drive) but unlike platter HDDs, SSDs *will* degrade. For most consumers and enthusiasts the degradation isn't an issue as they buy new computers/laptops regularly and don't do as many read/writes but for enterprise they require SLC (single-layer cell).

Don't worry about it. By the 4th or 5th year of owning it just back up your data (you should have backed it up by now anyway) and buy a new drive for your super-hyper-magic-unicorn powered multi-layer SoC quantum calculator.
 
TB+ SSD is neat and stuff but,, really?
I'm just ecstatic that I will be able to have an ample large OS drive for <$300 here soon.
I've tasted the SSD and it's so, so sweet. lol.
 
Bought a Crucial M4 128GB last August for $218, today it's on Newegg for $124.
 
Just purchased my first ssd. 128gb crucial m4, my god what a difference lol. I know it seems expensive but for the speed boost you get in day to day tasks it seems like the best performance per dollar I've spent in a long time. You feel it as soon as you hit that power button, windows is up and usable in 10 seconds. And everything loads and responds so much better. Never noticed that 1 second delay programs like fire fox and ie had until i got this ssd.
 
I'm hoping to snag a 256GB Crucial or SanDisk here in the next 2 weeks or so (maybe some kinda crazy 4th of july sale)

They've been dropping like a rock - and I figure its time to upgrade my Kingston V100 64GB SSD. Will throw it in my laptop and enjoy tons more space on my desktop rig.

I have about 8TB worth of media - and for HD movies and such mechanical storage is the only way to go. SSD==OS drive or maybe a working drive if you are a database/video/photo editor professional.

I cringe every time I go into work and all our machines are old school 5200RPM spinning disks.
 
oh forgot to add: my magic price point is $160 shipped for a 256GB drive

off topic: why am I not allowed to edit my posts anymore?
 
collegeboy69us said:
oh forgot to add: my magic price point is $160 shipped for a 256GB drive

off topic: why am I not allowed to edit my posts anymore?
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Front Page News topics aren't able to edit. :(

Storage wise: in a few year I'm hoping reliability is much longer and prices are much lower. It's a move from the decades old mechanical HDD's. Saying you don't want that is like saying you want to stay with floppies because USB drives are bad.
 
turbogeek said:
TB+ SSD is neat and stuff but,, really?
I'm just ecstatic that I will be able to have an ample large OS drive for <$300 here soon.
I've tasted the SSD and it's so, so sweet. lol.
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That's the way I feel too. They are great for OS-only drives, I don't need or want 1TB+ SSDs, I'm happy with 100GB-300GB range at the ~$150 mark.

In fact I hope they DON'T come out too soon with 1TB+ SSDs because if they go mainstream for data storage then spindle drives will turn into a "enterprise server" option and will go up in price and people like me who have home servers but don't have the budget of an enterprise will suffer.
 
Ur_Mom said:
Front Page News topics aren't able to edit. :(

Storage wise: in a few year I'm hoping reliability is much longer and prices are much lower. It's a move from the decades old mechanical HDD's. Saying you don't want that is like saying you want to stay with floppies because USB drives are bad.
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I'm on the "not so sure it's worth it side" because I don't see current solid state memory technology holding up to further node shrinks and more individual switch positions without serious performance and endurance losses. We've moved from SLC to MLC and onward to TLC based flash storage without really changing flash switch technology in a significant manner. The physics of the situation aren't looking good and while rotating physical hard drives are a crappy alternative, I don't like where we're heading. We need solid state drives for performance improvements, but we need hard-drive like endurance. Instead of improving the life of individual cells, process shrinks and the transition to MLC & TLC have drastically reduced their expected lifespan.
 
SkribbelKat said:
I'm on the "not so sure it's worth it side" because I don't see current solid state memory technology holding up to further node shrinks and more individual switch positions without serious performance and endurance losses. We've moved from SLC to MLC and onward to TLC based flash storage without really changing flash switch technology in a significant manner. The physics of the situation aren't looking good and while rotating physical hard drives are a crappy alternative, I don't like where we're heading. We need solid state drives for performance improvements, but we need hard-drive like endurance. Instead of improving the life of individual cells, process shrinks and the transition to MLC & TLC have drastically reduced their expected lifespan.
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You've summed up my concerns on SSD life. And it's precisely why I'm willing to take the hit on performance in favor of longevity. I don't throw my desktop down flights of stairs and any data I need to physically move or hand off to someone else goes on a usb drive. If performance really mattered to me I'd have been on raptor drives when they first dropped, and whatever new iteration there is now. RAID'ed of course. But I'm not. I need space more than I need speed. I have almost a full terabyte in games off Steam. Half the games in my account aren't even downloaded yet either.
 
lol. What a coincidence

My Intel SSD today was shown to have 1 re-allocated sector. Apparently there's 1 bad sector... right after I spend a new graphic card :rolleyes:
 
Red Squirrel said:
That's the way I feel too. They are great for OS-only drives, I don't need or want 1TB+ SSDs, I'm happy with 100GB-300GB range at the ~$150 mark.

In fact I hope they DON'T come out too soon with 1TB+ SSDs because if they go mainstream for data storage then spindle drives will turn into a "enterprise server" option and will go up in price and people like me who have home servers but don't have the budget of an enterprise will suffer.
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:D Hear Hear! There is always going to be fast drives and big drives, and I doubt that ever the two shall meet.

This was true when I bought my tiny expensive Raptor system drive and 250 GB data drives, and it's true now with my relatively small M4 system drive and my 1-2TB data drives.

As to the second point: real hard disks becoming enterprise only is a legit fear; especially if this "cloud" nonsense takes off. Not to mention the only two manufacturers left have killed off all the larger reliable consumer models.
 
I frankly, ATM, do not give a fucking shit about these prices

I literally don't. I bought a 128gig SSD vertex 3 when it was released for $140, and now its down to $120 all this time later, big whoop

I want the fucking prices on the 512GB and up SSD's to fucking drop. Nand prices have gone down over 70% in the last year and a half, yet SSD prices won't fucking drop, or only 256gb and lower are the only SSD's affected

256GB is frankly, fucking, dick, all. For a OS drive, yes, for a work drive, or game drive, its not enough. Installing 10 games I play weekly is enough to fill 200Gigs, making a 256GB (They format to around 210GB) fucking worthless. A single 3D project I do after rendering takes up 300GB, again making a 256GB SSD worthless, the storage space required for six of my projects eats up 180GB for all textures, models etc.

I frankly just don't give a fucking shit about 256GB and lower SSD's, as lower then 256GB is not fucking enough space to be a work/game drive. They can fit 4x the amount of space on a nand chip that they could two years ago, yet 256GB is the "Top" end before SSD prices get outragous for bigger drives.

And -MOST- of the 256GB drives are just 512GB drives with -HALF- the amount of chips, meaning that 512GB should only be twice as expensive, not 1.7x as expensive.
 
evilsofa said:
Even with the reduced prices, it's still sticker shock. 1TB hard drives on newegg are $100 or less; 512GB SSDs are well over $300. Six times the cost per GB is a hard sell no matter how much faster it is.

I am thinking of getting one later this year. Not surprisingly, reliability is primary in my mind. I found this, which seems to show Intel being in an entirely different category of reliability over Crucial, Corsair and OCZ.
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Some people are just really hard to please. That 512MB SSD was $1,000 a year ago, and twice that the year before. $300 for a 0.5TB SSD is a relative steal.

And your link shows RETURN rates, not failure rates. Given that Crucial and Intel both use the same flash chips (Micron AKA Crucial) it's pretty unlikely there's THAT much of a difference between the two, especially now that Intel uses generic Sandforce controllers.
 
STR said:
Some people are just really hard to please. That 512MB SSD was $1,000 a year ago, and twice that the year before. $300 for a 0.5TB SSD is a relative steal.

And your link shows RETURN rates, not failure rates. Given that Crucial and Intel both use the same flash chips (Micron AKA Crucial) it's pretty unlikely there's THAT much of a difference between the two, especially now that Intel uses generic Sandforce controllers.
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The only 512GB SSD that's at -ACTUAL- nand flash decrease rates is Crucial M4's, the rest of them are still $1.60+ per GB
 
Now the HDD market is down to people I wouldn't feel good about buying drives from (WD and Seagate) the move to bigger SSDs can't come soon enough. Will have to buy enough of the 2/3/4TB drives from Samsung/Hitachi to tide me over (am down to 3TB free space :eek:).
 
I bought a Intel X25-M 80GB, which was only SATA II in april on 2010 for something like $220 and while I cant imagine paying that today, going from a 1TB WD Caviar black to that, it was an astounding difference. It was enough to made me upgrade from the 80gb to a 256gb samsung 830 SATA 6.0, which cost me about the same price 2 years later. The prices sure are slow to come down, but anyone who has ever went from a standard HDD to an SSD knows what im talking about, even if the price is hard to justify. But we are all enthusiasts here, so it shouldn't really be an issue! :p
 
Personally I'm perplexed by Seagate and Western Digital's refusal to enter the SSD market, instead they're focused on consolidations and their incestuous relationship with one another. It's amazing what a little flooding can do to a HD company's bottom line.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/2184604/seagate-western-digital-wait-click-death

Seagate and Western Digital wait for the click of death

...Seagate's latest financials posted in April show it had shipped more consumer drives in its first, second and third financial quarters of 2012 than the respective quarters a year previously, and some of those drives carried a 20 per cent price hike because Luczo and his boardroom chums thought they should capitalise on the fact that consumers have little choice when it comes to hard drives.

What of Western Digital, the company that was supposedly worst hit by Thailand's floods? Well, the firm's most recent financials for the quarter ending 30 March 2012 showed profit up 230 per cent from a year previously, which should be more than enough to overcome the 35 per cent drop in profits in the fourth quarter of 2011 that immediately followed the floods. All in all, I think we can say Western Digital has come out of the whole ordeal smelling a lot better than the flood waters that submerged its factories.

If Seagate is shipping more drives than ever and Western Digital is reaping the rewards of high hard drive prices, why then did both firms almost in tandem decide to slash hard drive warranties to just a single year?...The truth is that neither company will stand by the majority of their consumer products for more than 12 months, because they have arranged their position so that consumers have little choice, but thankfully not for much longer.

As Western Digital and Seagate make half hearted attempts to get into the SSD business, trying instead to milk the decades-old hard drive for every last penny, SSD vendors are popping up everywhere and competition has meant sharply falling prices...
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It is inevitable that SSDs will eventually replace platter drives in virtually all applications. Only servers that need to be reliable for millions of writes will need platter drives after SSD prices reach parity. I doubt Seagate and WD will be missed.
 
I jumped on the bandwagon a few months ago, got a crucial 128gb m4 for $100 and then a crucial m4 256gb for $240. Missed the $199 deal and waited and waited, then just bought it at $240. Should have waited another week since it dropped down to $199 again.
 
Ragenrok said:
Just purchased my first ssd. 128gb crucial m4, my god what a difference lol. I know it seems expensive but for the speed boost you get in day to day tasks it seems like the best performance per dollar I've spent in a long time. You feel it as soon as you hit that power button, windows is up and usable in 10 seconds. And everything loads and responds so much better. Never noticed that 1 second delay programs like fire fox and ie had until i got this ssd.
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Yup, I've been waiting for price/gb < 1...and I saw a massive price drop for the m4 512Gb on Amazon & got it right away. Everything loads so fast. Love it
 
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