Demand for HDDs decreasing more than previously estimated...

AlphaQup said:
Regarding the cheap OEM machines, 1TB of "storage" looks way better on the marketing display then 256GB does (roughly comparable-ish by OEM price). Bigger number is always better right?

Every time I see one of these machines, the user has almost 850+GB free too.
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Yep go into a place like best buy and you will see the hard drive is alive and well. I went to help someone pick out a computer and I said to the rep the ssd for the main boot drive is not negotiable it was surprising how many computers they had that were removed from the running.

People who dont know about computers will often just error on the side of caution and go for more space in their budget because they dont ever want to be caught in a situation where they cant do what they need.

However that will all start changing now that 500GB SSDs are solidly under $100 and 1TB drives are going there fast. I noticed a lot of drives are 1TB still today, there just seems to be something about that number that consumers like.
 
rudy said:
... I noticed a lot of drives are 1TB still today, there just seems to be something about that number that consumers like.
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Consumers want to feel they're #1.

Microsoft will dissuade them of that notion soon enough.
 
These days 1TB is a single platter 3.5 inch drive. You have to short stroke it or have only 1 head to get less space.
 
rudy said:
Yep go into a place like best buy and you will see the hard drive is alive and well. I went to help someone pick out a computer and I said to the rep the ssd for the main boot drive is not negotiable it was surprising how many computers they had that were removed from the running.

People who dont know about computers will often just error on the side of caution and go for more space in their budget because they dont ever want to be caught in a situation where they cant do what they need.

However that will all start changing now that 500GB SSDs are solidly under $100 and 1TB drives are going there fast. I noticed a lot of drives are 1TB still today, there just seems to be something about that number that consumers like.
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For laptop's it's even more mundane. They're limited to 2 platters, and the drive makers don't want to do 1.x or 2.x tb drives. That means until a 1.5tb 2.5" platter is available the options are 1 or 2 tb, with most laptops going for the cheaper 1tb option (because if up-spending an SSD is a better idea). Realistically we'll probably need a 2tb 2.5" platter to see larger capacities in laptops because decimals are scary to sheeple and race to the bottom laptops stick with the cheapest option so a more expensive 2x1.5 =3 tb hdd won't get traction. A 2 tb 2.5" platter would correspond to a 4tb 3.5" one; and that's far in the future.

If you remember back we saw something similar with 3.5" desktop drives where 5x200 = 1tb drives were followed by 4x 250 = 1tb and 3x 333 = 1tb drives, with only a small handful of 3x300 = 1.5tb drives before the first 400 mb platters came out and we got ubiquitous 2 tb models.

I think the current situation is ridiculous and would hope consumers aren't as stupid as the "a 1.2tb drive is too confusing" marketing people think; but by locking the amount of spinning rust in cheap computers in place for a number of years it's a lot easier for SSDs to approach, meet, and eventually surpass the capacity of laptop hdds at a reasonable price. I'm pretty sure it's driving the collapse the Nidec is forecasting for this year.

For me the more interesting question becomes at what point does the volume sold get small enough that WD/Seagate decide to end their laptop hdd lines; and push the rest of the race to the bottom laptop market onto eMMC.
 
I fail to see why anyone would want to buy a HDD these days
 
HAL_404 said:
I fail to see why anyone would want to buy a HDD these days
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I dont have any in my main rig, all of my drives are SSD's but in my media server/PLEX box I have spinners...I need capacity more than anything else .......I have 40Tb of storage so it's just not economical to populate it with SSD drives..and I would guess my 40Tb pales in comparison to what some folks on here have
 
Crosshairs said:
I dont have any in my main rig, all of my drives are SSD's but in my media server/PLEX box I have spinners...I need capacity more than anything else .......I have 40Tb of storage so it's just not economical to populate it with SSD drives..and I would guess my 40Tb pales in comparison to what some folks on here have
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That's what I was saying earlier. My 'daily' rig used for general all purpose things is platter free, not even an optical but then there's the kodi box with a 8TB WD red in it. My 4k gaming rig has an old 6TB in it but that's a hold over for some old media files and dimeadozen stuff.
 
Crosshairs said:
I dont have any in my main rig, all of my drives are SSD's but in my media server/PLEX box I have spinners...I need capacity more than anything else .......I have 40Tb of storage so it's just not economical to populate it with SSD drives..and I would guess my 40Tb pales in comparison to what some folks on here have
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Have a 3TB (soon to be 4TB) HDD for my files. An SSD would be great, but even that will cost what, $500? I don't even think there are many 4TB commercial grade SSDs on the market. All programs/games go on my two MX500 1TB drives.

Prices are coming down but we still have a long way to go until the SSD can fully replace the HDD unless you have lots of money and a lot of extra SATA ports on your motherboard.
 
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