Disk Will Eat Itself: Flash Price Crash Just Around the Over-Supplied Block

ccityinstaller said:
Please drop your [H]ard card at the door...There is zero reason to not have at least a 128~512GB SSD in the latter half of 2018 if you are a member of this site. You cannot begin to argue a use case that prohibits you from using a small, super fast SSD for OS/critical applications and a larger spinning drive for bulk storage. Hell modern platforms like the Ryzen AM4 offerings have their wonderful caching options that would make a 2TB HDD feel super fast with a small 128GB SSD in cache mode.
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I can.

1st, your machine generally doesn't get turned off, boot times are immaterial, the OS is ESXi
2nd, All your user systems are VMs and your datastore is a separate larger SSD
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I always boot small and keep large slow storage.

In fact, since I now have a 120TB NAS.
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Wow! 120TB!!!
10Gbit NICs?

If I had that, I would only have tiny SSDs for my desktops and mount a VHDX to store on the NAS lol!
How do you use that space? iSCSI? mounting VHDXs? Mapped drives? Symlinks? Regular shares?
 
lcpiper said:
I can.

1st, your machine generally doesn't get turned off, boot times are immaterial, the OS is ESXi
2nd, All your user systems are VMs and your datastore is a separate larger SSD
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Ok bro, we're talking user desktops lol!

(I've been playing with a 12 spinning drive array over 10Gbit with ESXi this week with 10 win10 VMs, pretty dang fast for spinners! But I still wonder how fast it would be with SSDs lol)
 
I recently decided I'm not going to buy SSDs smaller than 1TB from now on. Worth it in the long run not to be limited.
 
Rockenrooster said:
Ok bro, we're talking user desktops lol!

(I've been playing with a 12 spinning drive array over 10Gbit with ESXi this week with 10 win10 VMs, pretty dang fast for spinners! But I still wonder how fast it would be with SSDs lol)
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That's what All-flash storage is all about.

Our engineer is talking about recommending a Dell VxRack HCI solution to our customer. I'm not actually sold on it but the reality is that if the customer does buy off on it and decides on the purchase, by the time it is actually bought and arrives, several things will likely have all ready happened;

1st, the equipment will probably be within a year of End Of Support
2nd, another company will have won the contract in bid
3rd, I'll probably be retired and some poor schmuks will have my job and be asking the customer what this equipment is for, and the Government Manager who is the face of the customer ...... won't even know himself.
 
Kardonxt said:
I used to think this too but AAA games are getting big.
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And so continues the never ending cycle. I still remember when I was younger and bought a new game. At the time it required an insanely high amount of hard drive space - 150mb.

But then when we only had a 1gb drive....that's a lot of space.
 
I can't wait for the 2TB SSDs to be affordable.
I'd gladly run several in RAID. yes Steam games too, not just porn.
 
Kardonxt said:
I used to think this too but AAA games are getting big. All of my files live on my server, but I need to stay on top of the games im actively playing and have installed otherwise my 512 ssd fills up pretty fast.

I would love a 1tb nvme upgrade so I don't have to worry about it,
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Yeah GTA 5 is north of 80GB after the latest update.

Still SSDs need to get much larger I could use a 6TB one for my database.
 
Rockenrooster said:
Wow! 120TB!!!
10Gbit NICs?

If I had that, I would only have tiny SSDs for my desktops and mount a VHDX to store on the NAS lol!
How do you use that space? iSCSI? mounting VHDXs? Mapped drives? Symlinks? Regular shares?
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It's a 12x10TB Seagate Enterprise setup, configured with the ZFS equivalent of RAID 60, so two striped RAID6/RAIDz2 groups of six disks each. So, 120TB of disks, not quite 120TB available, but you get what I mean.

It's used for many things. The same server that hosts thesetdrives also has a bunch of VM's on it, who use the storage locally for the stuff they are doing, like my home brew MythTV PVR writes all of its recordings to it, it hosts all my ripped blurays in my media library, and also serves as the house file server.

I have a direct 10TB line from my desktop to it, but everyone else in the house has to deal with gigabit :p
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
It's a 12x10TB Seagate Enterprise setup, configured with the ZFS equivalent of RAID 60, so two striped RAID6/RAIDz2 groups of six disks each. So, 120TB of disks, not quite 120TB available, but you get what I mean.

It's used for many things. The same server that hosts thesetdrives also has a bunch of VM's on it, who use the storage locally for the stuff they are doing, like my home brew MythTV PVR writes all of its recordings to it, it hosts all my ripped blurays in my media library, and also serves as the house file server.

I have a direct 10TB line from my desktop to it, but everyone else in the house has to deal with gigabit :p
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ewwww... Seagate.... lol jk.
Their SAS drives are good
 
CombatChrisNC said:
Too bad the big OEMs will still want outrageous sums for SSD options from the factory in laptops. I'm looking at you, Lenovo!
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Same with Dell.
Even worse, they don't even offer a 1TB SSD as an option on many laptops. (a 1TB ssd is the standard for most the laptops I order as we run a lot of demo VM's)

So, I order laptops with a 500GB spinner (cheapest option) and the buy the SSD's separately.

Even when I only need a 250 or 500 GB drive, Dell is still twice the price.

Added bonus is that I have a stack of extra 500GB drives.
I buy cheap USB 3.0 cases for the drives, so when some needs a spare drive to ship some large files/VM's, I have plenty.
 
Probably a lot of it is a big trickle down effect from increased NVMe PCIE x4 performance/value heating up due to stiffer competition against Samsung in that area. The larger SATA SSD's become much less desirable as faster NVMe PCIE x4 drives become cheaper and take more priority. Especially if they already had a SSD and can re-utilize it for a few select games they currently play routinely. The SATA SSD's prices are going to take a big digger similar to HD's it's inevitable.
 
I have a 512 NVMe for boot etc and a 512 SATA for games
my 512 for games maxes every so often and its getting tough to choose what to gt rid of
I'm all for larger SSD games storage
Bring it on baby
My boot drive definitely doesn't need to be bigger
 
Is this just a shill piece because all the institutions are butthurt that $MU went from $30 to $60 instead of $30 to $15 so they could load up?

If the stock goes down to $25-30 it will have a P/E of like 2....
 
SixFootDuo said:
I guess I am using SSD's different than most people.

I do not use them for mass storage. 2tb is a lot of space.

I am not even remotely interested in a 2tb. Not sure what I would do with that space.

When SSD's get to 8 or 10TB .... then we can talk.
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I would correct this to "affordable 8 to 10TB". They already exist for enterprise in these capacities but cost like a car.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
They have a history of reliability issues, but the current gen of Enterprise drives seems to be doing really well.
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All of their recent spinning disks seem to be doing well. I'm even shucking their 8TB USB drives for the Barracuda's inside (cause the WD Reds weren't on sale when I started), and while the USB drive gets terrible reviews because the adapter inside is absolute trash, the drives rate well!
 
Well, ordinarily I laugh at future price reduction stories like this, but I know this one is true.

An irrepressible market force will, indeed, reduce all memory prices...because in the last two weeks I bought 32GB of RAM, a 500GB NVMe drive, and a 1TB SSD.

So, of course, the prices are about to tumble.
 
Keep in mind that the end result of this will likely be the same as the DRAM market cycle...

Over capacity / prices fall (~couple years ago when 16 GB RAM kits were available at like $80)
Slowly layoff people / trim factory capacity (last couple years as prices rise)
Unforseen demand, capacity constrained, now we are expecting RAM prices to continue to increase.

If SSD prices fall 50%-75%, don't expect it to continue. We're pretty much done with the days where semiconductor stuff got faster / higher capacity AND cheaper over time. Position yourselves to take advantage of the coming low SSD prices, because you can bet that the NAND producers will not respond by continuing to produce at low profit margins. They'll start cutting capacity and delaying capital investment in order to bring their margins back up.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I guess I am using SSD's different than most people.

I do not use them for mass storage. 2tb is a lot of space.

I am not even remotely interested in a 2tb. Not sure what I would do with that space.

When SSD's get to 8 or 10TB .... then we can talk.
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Nah, we're on the same page.

When I got my first SSD in 2009, a 120 GB OCZ Agility, I actually split it half, giving 60GB to Linux, and 60GB to Windows. At that time 60GB was sufficient for Windows XP plus a game or two. At that point I still had a spinner (a 1TB WD Green) in my desktop for files.

After I switched to Windows 7, I needed a little more space, but for the longest time (~2010 to ~2015) I survived on first a 256GB OCZ Vertex3, then a 256GB Vertex4 and finally a 256GB Samsung 850 Pro, again, 60GB for Linux, and the remainder (just under 200GB) for Windows and games. During this ~2010 to 2015 time period I completely eliminated the spinner in my desktop, and instead used a NAS. At first I had network attached 5 bay Drobo, but that only lasted a while until I got tired of the rather lackluster performance of the device, which is when I built a FreeNAS box.

In 2015 I got my 400GB PCIe Intel 750. I upped the Linux partition size to about 100GB, and Windows (now Windows 10) gets the remainder. The only reason Linux needed more space is that I also have a VM disk image on it. Linux itself and all the programs I use (except the VM) installed takes only about 12GB.

This has been fine up until recently. Lately my Windows partition has been feeling a tiny bit tight. Not bad though. I can fit a handful of games on it, and I usually uninstall ones I am not playing, but it would be nice just have a tiny bit more space to fit another game or two.

It's not straight forward to expand it though. I'm happy with my PCIe SSD, and I don't necessarily want to go back to SATA. (I mean, I currently hvae no SATA drives, so I disabled the controller, and I don't want to have to turn it back on). The problem is, I'm on an x79 platform, so there arent too many PCIe SSD's that will allow me to boot. In fact, the Intel 750 is probably the only one. I could get one of the larger Intel 750's, but they are charging more for them now, than they did when I bought one back in 2015... It feels like a ripoff.

I may just move my VM drive image from my local disk on my linux partition, and instead run it remotely off of my NAS, and then shrink the Linux partition a little, and move some of that space over to Windows.
 
ccityinstaller said:
Please drop your [H]ard card at the door...There is zero reason to not have at least a 128~512GB SSD in the latter half of 2018 if you are a member of this site. You cannot begin to argue a use case that prohibits you from using a small, super fast SSD for OS/critical applications and a larger spinning drive for bulk storage. Hell modern platforms like the Ryzen AM4 offerings have their wonderful caching options that would make a 2TB HDD feel super fast with a small 128GB SSD in cache mode.
Click to expand...
The way I see it, if I don't shut down my PC or restart it then why do I care about a SSD? Especially when it's as small as 128GB where it's only good for the OS and applications.
 
DukenukemX said:
The way I see it, if I don't shut down my PC or restart it then why do I care about a SSD? Especially when it's as small as 128GB where it's only good for the OS and applications.
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Seriously, if you gotta ask...
It's only the biggest thing that has happened to storage since the 3 1/4" floppy drive.
No more disk defrag, malware scans take minutes vs hours, programs installed on ssd drives open tremendously faster, they run cooler, use less power and are silent.
But if your system never needs to install a Windows 10 update or creators service pack and you like waiting, hdd's got you covered.
 
Jim Kim said:
Seriously, if you gotta ask...
It's only the biggest thing that has happened to storage since the 3 1/4" floppy drive.
No more disk defrag, malware scans take minutes vs hours, programs installed on ssd drives open tremendously faster, they run cooler, use less power and are silent.
But if your system never needs to install a Windows 10 update or creators service pack and you like waiting, hdd's got you covered.
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You forgot reliability and flexible form factors.
 
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DukenukemX said:
The way I see it, if I don't shut down my PC or restart it then why do I care about a SSD? Especially when it's as small as 128GB where it's only good for the OS and applications.
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That's what it would speed up though, the OS and the applications. I don't understand why you're doing this to yourself.. j/k
 
d8lock said:
That's what it would speed up though, the OS and the applications. I don't understand why you're doing this to yourself.. j/k
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On the other side...

I have work systems, old systems, with single spinning disks that do just fine for what we do. I'd actually say that if I had a choice of an SSD for *just* the OS, or *just* games, I'd use it for games, because the speedup there is very, very real!

[and if I had large-footprint applications on the desktop, those would go on the SSD over the OS too]
 
d8lock said:
That's what it would speed up though, the OS and the applications. I don't understand why you're doing this to yourself.. j/k
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Well, to be fair, if he has a very large amount of RAM and never reboots, windows will do a very good job of caching a traditional hard drive in RAM.

It still won't touch a system with an SSD, but it won't be as bad as what many of us are subconsciously picturing (old laptop with 2 gigs of RAM constantly swapping to its old slow laptop drive)

Even then, I be been exclusively using systems that run OS programs and games off of SSD's now for almost 10 years, I don't think I could go back. I would be so frustrated.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
On the other side...

I have work systems, old systems, with single spinning disks that do just fine for what we do. I'd actually say that if I had a choice of an SSD for *just* the OS, or *just* games, I'd use it for games, because the speedup there is very, very real!

[and if I had large-footprint applications on the desktop, those would go on the SSD over the OS too]
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You'd get better performance using the ssd as OS only vs games only.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Not in the games!
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Only thing it helps with in most titles is level load times. I've played very few games where it makes a MAJOR difference, like it does to system responsiveness on the desktop.

There are games where having a fast drive does give you a major advantage though. I used to play Red Orchestra 2 a lot, and I actually put the entire game on a ramdisk so that I could be the first in on a new level and get to choose the class I wanted to play.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
There are games where having a fast drive does give you a major advantage though. I used to play Red Orchestra 2 a lot, and I actually out the entire game on a ramdisk so that I could be the first in on a new level and get to choose the class I wanted to play.
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And that's what I'm talking about!

[my case is Battlefield games, which are excruciatingly slow on spinners...]
 
The first game that comes to mind that benefits from an SSD is Fallout 4, especially when modded. That's why I put both of them on SSDs.
 
As someone who works on computers everyday, every machine needs a SSD really bad. Updates, Service packs, creators updates take forever to install and are a waste of my time and customer's time. If I had a HDD I would dread the time I need to make a change in my bios..... I could make more money if every pc I worked on had a SSD.

I recently went to a small LAN party and someone brought a nice looking Cyberpower gaming laptop (probably the fastest laptop there as far as cpu and gpu) but the poor soul had a spinning drive and was installing the 1803 update once he turned it on. His laptop was out of commission the WHOLE time of the LAN party get together and we were there for a solid 2 hours. Granted everyone else had HDDs (except for me). I did bring a crappy spare laptop (with a SSD) for him to use though.

It's not like you can only have one freaking drive in a computer. Look at my Sig, I "only" have a 128GB SSD as my boot drive. But yet I can install all the programs and games that I want because I have a *gasp* 2nd Drive that's a HDD with lots of space! All you have to do is tell Steam, orogin, setup.exe, to use the 2nd drive letter upon install or for the game library.

Laptops nowadays have a open drive bay if you get a m.2 SSD. Heck even my laptop from 2014 has a msata SSD slot and a regular 2.5 slot.

Any DIY pc builder\IT guy not using a SSD for client PC's and workstations for at least a boot drive needs to stop now.

I can understand ill informed users, but diy/it people, come on!

For those of you that still insist on using HDDs as boot drives on regular PCs, you don't deserve to be on this forum.
 
Rockenrooster said:
For those of you that still insist on using HDDs as boot drives on regular PCs, you don't deserve to be on this forum.
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Heh, I've been all flash in every laptop, sever, and desktop in my house for the last 5 or 6 years. I've moved up to 10gig networking as well to take full advantage.
 
A welcome development for me as a music producer. Sample libraries require enormous amounts of space and take a long time to load from a hard drive. I currently have two 500GB SSDs which I use solely for library and VST storage, and they're almost full.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
The problem is, I'm on an x79 platform, so there arent too many PCIe SSD's that will allow me to boot. In fact, the Intel 750 is probably the only one.
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Actually... you can mod Asus x79 mobo's to support booting directly from any NVME drive. I modded the BIOS in my P9X79 Pro to add the modules needed for this and now I can directly boot from my 1TB 960 EVO. Do some googling and you can find out how to do it but essentially you need to get the NVME modules from a newer mobo and extract them, or find them already extracted, and then import them into your bios and then re-flash. These mobos support recovering from a 'bad flash' via using a USB stick, so there is little to no risk of bricking the board. I didn't have any issues myself and it worked first time. Start here https://www.overclock.net/forum/6-i...-support-any-ami-uefi-bios-intel-chipset.html
 
acquacow said:
Heh, I've been all flash in every laptop, sever, and desktop in my house for the last 5 or 6 years. I've moved up to 10gig networking as well to take full advantage.
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I have 12x 10TB spinners in my NAS for mass storage, but other than that, everything in my house has been 100% SSD probably since ~2012 or so.

I don't understand how anyone who isn't in a 3rd world country is still booting off of a traditional spinning hard drive in 2018. The only thing hard drives have been any good for for the last several years is slow mass file storage.
 
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