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

DooKey

DooKey

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The Register is reporting that Objective Analysis' Jim Handy believes we are in a NAND over-supply situation and prices are getting ready to crater. He says the crash will be the largest price correction in semiconductor history. He's estimating the price will drop to $0.08/GB next year and that as a result SSDs will drop in price as well. If SSDs become super affordable we can expect companies like Seagate and Western Digital to be hard hit as customers migrate to SSD storage. I don't know about anybody else but I'd love to see SSD prices crater. 2TB NVME drive for under $400 would be excellent. NAND price decreases to go along with DRAM price decreases is a future I look forward to.

If Handy’s chip price correction prediction is accurate, SSD pricing will go down, too. He said he sees a trend for NAND prices to fall to roughly 25 per cent of their current prices. If SSD prices go down in lock-step, then we are looking at a 75 per cent cost reduction in their prices.
 
I was just looking at SSD prices the other day.

A 500GB Samsung 860 can be had for just over a hundred bucks right now.

I'd argue the correction has already started.

I remember only a few years back when everyone was saying "Yeah SSD's look great and all, but I'm going to wait until the price falls below a dollar per GB". How far we've come.

I bought my first SSD in 2009. It was an 120GB OCZ Agility. Cost like $350. It was brilliant compared to a hard drive. It also died in less than two years, and so did it's warranty replacement. Oh OCZ...
 
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.
 
I've got a 2TB 850 EVO that is about ~80% filled. Hoping I can wait until I can afford a 4TB NVME to replace it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I was just looking at SSD prices the other day.

A 500GB Samsung 860 can be had for just over a hundred bucks right now.

I'd argue the correction has already started.

I remember only a few years back when everyone was saying "Yeah SSD's look great and all, but I'm going to wait until the price falls below a dollar per GB". How far we've come.

I bought my first SSD in 2009. It was an 120GB OCZ Agility. Cost like $350. It was brilliant compared to a hard drive. It also died in less than two years, and so did it's warranty replacement. Oh OCZ...
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I think 2009 was the year a lot of people started to afford and buy SSD's. My first SSD was also in 2009, the Intel X25-M G2 that I paid $180 or $190 for. A few months after that purchase, I bought a 2nd X25-M G2 80gb and raided them together. I really really wish I would had spent that $400 dollars on bitcoin back in 2009 instead haha.
 
Montu said:
If SSDs become super affordable we can expect companies like Seagate and Western Digital to be hard hit as customers migrate to SSD storage.
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I'm already using Western Digital SSDs- four, actually!- because they're cheap and they work. Seagate I have not, however, all of the spinning drives I've purchased for my NAS project have been Seagate, again, cause they're cheap and they work. We're still a few years out from flash replacing mass storage across the board, though the QLC flash will probably help with that, and I'd gladly populate a NAS with it.

Biggest problem I have with NVMe is that the performance is mostly wasted on desktop apps- the CPU, and even the code itself is the limitation- and that for consumer stuff, we just don't have enough PCIe lanes to hook it all up.
 
That would make a 1TB drive about $100 for me. Would be nice to add a 2nd nvme to my system, possibly a 1TB 970pro drive for less then $200. Really hoping for another hdd price crash though. Been looking to upgrade all my 4TB drives in my server to maybe 10TB.... but not at $400+ each. I'd even settle for a full $0.01 drop (about $100 savings.)
 
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.
Click to expand...

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,
 
Kardonxt said:
I would love a 1tb nvme upgrade so I don't have to worry about it,
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You don't need NVMe for the OS, and you definitely don't need it for games. You cannot 'feel' the difference.

For games, you can buy the largest, cheapest (but still reliable) drive you can find and be happy.
 
if it gets that low, better buy, and then use a credit card with price protection if it falls further.

we all remember when dram prices crashed years ago, and then they skyrocketed back up.
 
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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Seriously, it is SHAMEFUL that every single laptop doesn't have an SSD in it from the OEM. They are still putting 5400rpm drives in them (7200rpm puts out too much heat/draws too much power). An SSD is the perfect solution to that problem. "Wouldn't you rather have a touchscreen??" says the OEM.
 
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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This. I'm going to guess the price tanking will initially benefit oems and retailers, and probably won't trickle down to the end users for a while after. I'm sure there will be some exceptions especially if you're a system builder yourself. Hot deals wooooO!
 
Man oh man that would be SWEET.
I've lost archived family pictures and home video to brand new spinner HD that suddenly died.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
Man oh man that would be SWEET.
I've lost archived family pictures and home video to brand new spinner HD that suddenly died.
Click to expand...

You didn't use a mirror...

...and then back that up?

:)

[I am superbly guilty of not doing this, and my home NAS project has already rectified it for the most part]
 
SSDs are good for certain situations, but if you need a lot of storage space, we're still a long way away from them being affordable. I just bought two 8TB hard drives for $400 total. I think it will be a very long time before you can get 16TB of SSD for anywhere near that price.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
You don't need NVMe for the OS, and you definitely don't need it for games. You cannot 'feel' the difference.

For games, you can buy the largest, cheapest (but still reliable) drive you can find and be happy.
Click to expand...


I run an ITX build with no power cables to anything other than mobo and GFX, and no sata cables. I do need an m2 ssd, and at that point it might as well be NVME.
 
SSD's are probably the most money I've spend on PC hardware next to video cards. I remember paying like $180x2 for 2 80gb drives and RAIDing them back then. Not a dollar was wasted.
 
Kardonxt said:
I run an ITX build with no power cables to anything other than mobo and GFX, and no sata cables. I do need an m2 ssd, and at that point it might as well be NVME.
Click to expand...

I won't argue with aesthetics, I'm guilty of bending to that myself, but the pricing differential and resulting capacity per dollar differential make the 'excess' performance of NVMe kind of silly. If your ITX board can handle M.2 SATA without compromises, you can get more space for your money.

And you really, really would not be able to tell the difference without CrystalDiskMark or other benchmarking software.

[I have three of WD's Blue SATA M.2 drives, including a 1TB jobber for my desktop, because I yanked the Black NVMe drive out to free up a SATA port on my server... literally no difference in responsiveness]
 
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,
Click to expand...

A lot or people here on Hard Forums don't realize that if you use Steam and other front-ends perhaps that if you install your game to an external drive or another drive other than C:\ ... steam will find the games for you after a re-install of the OS, etc. I keep all my games on a 8TB external. I've never had to reinstall anything. I just don't put massive games on my SSD boot drive. I do have Dead Cells and the new World of Warcraft but that's an exception type situation.
 
I don't know. I'm not so sure that a big drop in NAND prices to mean a big drop in SSDs. If the manufacturers and retailers allow SSDs to drop to really low prices then it will also undercut the prices on standard and hybrid drives. I think you might see a little drop and these companies will just enjoy greater profit.
 
I don't have a SDD in any of my machiens cause anything less than 1TB for the boot drive for me is too small. I'm waiting for SSDs to be around $100 for 1TB, which at that point I'll make the move. I'd like to get a M.2 SSD and those are even more money compared to 2.5" SSDs.
 
DukenukemX said:
I don't have a SDD in any of my machiens cause anything less than 1TB for the boot drive for me is too small. I'm waiting for SSDs to be around $100 for 1TB, which at that point I'll make the move. I'd like to get a M.2 SSD and those are even more money compared to 2.5" SSDs.
Click to expand...


M.2 drives are generally more because they are generally faster if for no other reason then they are sitting on your PCI-E bus and not going through a SATA controller.
 
Montu said:
2TB NVME drive for under $400 would be excellent
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Space_Ranger said:
From your lips to God's ears!
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Intel 660P NVME 2TB is supposed to be released "soon" with an MSRP of $399. It's steady state speed is very slow though.

I'd just like a fast 500GB NVME under $100 (Adata SX8200 has been there but I missed it) and a 1TB M.2 Sata for under $100. That should last me another 3 years or so.
 
lcpiper said:
M.2 drives are generally more because they are generally faster if for no other reason then they are sitting on your PCI-E bus and not going through a SATA controller.
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Being specific, SATA M.2 drives are no different than SATA drives at the end of a cable; you need M.2 NVMe drives in order to attach to the PCIe bus directly.
 
Dermen said:
It's steady state speed is very slow though.
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Be sure to differentiate between 'read' and 'write' speeds. QLC flash drives (like Intel's 660p) will be great for stuff that's written to very little and read quite a bit, including applications, games, and media. While they'll be even slower than spinning disks in terms of worst-case write speeds, they'll still be orders of magnitude faster for reading the written data.
 
At 8 cents per gigabyte. That makes a 2TB drive cost $160

That's where die shrinks really kick ass in the storage space.
 
Meh,...call me when they are $20.00/TB, then I will be interested, unless HD prices fall to $5/TB.
 
DukenukemX said:
I don't have a SDD in any of my machiens cause anything less than 1TB for the boot drive for me is too small. I'm waiting for SSDs to be around $100 for 1TB, which at that point I'll make the move. I'd like to get a M.2 SSD and those are even more money compared to 2.5" SSDs.
Click to expand...


Wow, really?
You're missing out big time!
Just get a small SDD for Windows and a 2nd spinning drive that has the space you need.
If you're OCD about installing everything to the "C" drive, then you can symlink folders on the C drive to different drives.


I have a 128GB boot drive for Windows and a few programs, and 2 spinners, a 500GB 10K rpm WD and a 1TB seagate.
I can have the best of both, fast boot speeds, loading, etc, and space for storage.
128GB drives are like $30 nowadays
 
DukenukemX said:
I don't have a SDD in any of my machiens cause anything less than 1TB for the boot drive for me is too small. I'm waiting for SSDs to be around $100 for 1TB, which at that point I'll make the move. I'd like to get a M.2 SSD and those are even more money compared to 2.5" SSDs.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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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Lol I agree.

I can always tell in like 5 seconds just by looking at someone using a computer, if it has a SSD or not lol.
HDDs as boot drives need to die a very painful death, yesterday.
 
DukenukemX said:
I don't have a SDD in any of my machiens cause anything less than 1TB for the boot drive for me is too small. I'm waiting for SSDs to be around $100 for 1TB, which at that point I'll make the move. I'd like to get a M.2 SSD and those are even more money compared to 2.5" SSDs.
Click to expand...


I always boot small and keep large slow storage.

In fact, since I now have a 120TB NAS, i dont bother with spinners at all in my builds for my house. They boot and run programs / games off of a small, fast local disk and

Currently my desktop has a single 400 GB PCIe Intel 750 SSD which it shared between Linux and windows.

The linux partition gets ~100GB which is totally overkill, with everything I could dream of installed, I have like 85GB free

The remaining ~300GB go to my Windows partition. Windows is less efficient with disk space, but even so, the only reason I have that much space in Windows is for games.

My philosophy when it comes to games is, I only keep the titles I am currently actively playing installed. Multiplayer games and games with replay value (like Sid Meier's Civilization) stay a little longer, but single player games typically get bought, installed, played from start to finish, the immediately uninstalled. I see no point in keeping games installed just in case I may some day want to play them again, especially since it takes between 5 and 20 minutes to download just about any title on steam.

What do you need all that disk space for? Considering how miserably slow and unresponsive of an experience it is to boot or run OS/programs/games off of spinning disks (even the fast ones) I don't understand how you put up with this.

Also, you can get a 1TB Samsung 860 SSD for just North of $200 on sale now ...
 
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Montu said:
... we can expect companies like Seagate and Western Digital to be hard hit...
Click to expand...
Do note, WD now controls about 25% of the world's NAND production... Seagate is outright screwed though, lol!
 
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