Prediction: within 5 years...

[wixter]

We'll see SSDs becoming the norm for storage, especially for us power users at home because their capacity will be on par with the large sizes from the main 2 mechanical drive manufacturers today and the price point will start to also fall in line.

I'm right there with everyone else watching my favorite drives just evaporate into the giant mess that is Seagate and WDC...I have several HD204UI from Samsung and some Ultrastar's. Now that I'm faced with dealing with 2 companies whose reputation for making a good solid drive has eroded within less than a decade...no that doesn't sit well with me at all. I remember the good old days too when Seagate was the manufacturer to beat. Hell somewhere around in my house I still have an old, old WDC ide drive with 425MB capacity - that thing will STILL fire up and has never had a single problem.

Increased competition will start coming from the SSD side, I just don't know when exactly it's going to happen in terms of mass storage but it can't happen soon enough in my opinion.

 

[drescherjm]

Within 5 years I hope SSDs NAND / flash based SSDs will no longer be produced. Instead replaced with the technology that will replace both flash and hard drives. We shall see.

 

[mwroobel]

With all due respect, I must disagree with you. Some type of non-mechanical storage will be the norm for boot usage on most machines. I hope that some other technology will be utilized, such as Racetrack memory, memristers etc. NAND is a dead end right now, and each process shrink brings new issues which may or may not be insurmountable. That said, mechanical hard drives where high capacity is required and extremely high speed access is not have a great future. Within 5 years, I expect to see HAMR based hard drives in the 8-10TB capacity range (standard entry level) available, common and relatively inexpensive. Bulk storage will continue to use HDDs for a very long time to come.

 

[Aesma]

Well, there is no need to wait 5 years, flash will never be as dense as HDD platters. So your hope is in what will replace flash.

But I think the HDD will still be there in 5 years, with sizes of more than 10TB. Seagate is already predicting a 30 to 60TB HDD within ten years.

 

[NoxTek]

I was actually just thinking about this very topic this morning, and to be honest I don't think it will be anywhere near five years. I believe we are at the 'tipping point' already... or very near it.

Yeah, the spinning platter will still be around for mass storage... at least until something better comes along. But I honestly think that with the advances being made in NAND and other non valitile solid state storage the traditional platter based drive is nearing it's end.

Look at how fast the affordable capacity has increased on SSDs versus how long it took for platter based hard disk drives. Anyone remember paying $300 for a 20MB hard drive in the late 1980s? And it took about six or seven years before a 1GB drive was 'affordable'. To me it seems as if SSDs are developing at quite the accelerated rate in comparison...

 

[odditory]

We'll see SSDs becoming the norm for storage,

Yes and no. If you mean SSD's will replace spinning disks then no, they're not going anywhere for a decade or more based on the investments and maneuvers the storage vendors can be seen making now. However no doubt the consumer segment will be buying less of them overall, since 512GB and 1TB SSD's will handle system/boot/data storage for most users. Proliferation of streaming services versus locally stored also a huge factor going forward.

Progress and scaling are almost never linear when actually charted (except maybe for Moore's Law which is freakish but ultimately compelled by the quadrillions Intel pumps into R&D). Sometimes it accelerates, even exponential (the 21st century) but sometimes plateaus when generational limitations and diminishing returns are exceeded, and tech has to be rethought, changed, adapted, approached from another angle. But market is the really biggest over-arcing factor. Remember kids: with few exceptions, market doesn't follow tech. tech follows market. because being technically superior to the competition doesn't always guarantee success, in some cases it spells death. Case in point Hitachi v WD.

Hitachi had working 4TB prototypes in 2009 already, here we are in 2012 and Hitachi has been consumed whole by a competitor that peddled technically "more average" products better in tune with the mass market. And in this scenario that 4TB prototype from 2009 has been consumed, digested and crapped from store shelves in 2012 as things have regressed back to a 2TB primary product offering from the new defacto market leader in the consumer spinning disk segment (WDC). And that scenario is just tip of the iceberg.

Sadly, you don't have to engineer new tech as fast as your competitors if you can engineer perception faster and for cheaper. Apple built their fortune on this principle.

 

[jwcalla]

With 4K video right around the corner, we're going to need the capacity.

 

[BecauseScience]

NAND flash scaling will come to an end relatively soon. See this section of flash wikipedia article for the reasons as well as alternative technologies that might be able to take its place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAND_flash#Flash_scalability

You might see a $150 1TB ssd five years from now but traditional disks will be a lot bigger by then too.

I think it will be at least 10 years before the flash alternatives start to show up in consumer ssd's. Some of the alternatives are already being commercially produced but they are still very small. A one gigabit memristor memory chip is due out next year. It takes a lot of one gigabit chips to make a 1TB ssd.

 

[Red Falcon]

Look at how fast the affordable capacity has increased on SSDs versus how long it took for platter based hard disk drives. Anyone remember paying $300 for a 20MB hard drive in the late 1980s? And it took about six or seven years before a 1GB drive was 'affordable'. To me it seems as if SSDs are developing at quite the accelerated rate in comparison...

You're old enough to be my dad!
I wasn't even a half-decade old in the late 80's.

But I do remember HDD prices from the early 90's, and you are right, SSDs are developing at an increased pace, much faster than HDDs from 20 years ago.

 

[Fooshnik]

It won't take five years. With the diminished competition in the platter market prices aren't going to fall at the rate we're used to, capacity will likely not increase at the accustomed rate either. For 95% of consumers a 256GB SSD in their new laptop will be more than enough space for all their needs considering most of what they'll be using it for is dicking around on the Internet. What would you rather have, 256 GBs or 2 TBs? Everyone knows more GBs is better.

The only consumer device that will still have a platter drive is their DVR.

 

[FrostBite]

In 5 years, I think the majority of hard drives will start to be some sort of "solid state" drive (i.e., non-mechanical). Eventually, I think enterprise drives will be the main force that will push us into this because an SSD has a few advantages that mechanical hard drives cannot achieve like the thirst for throughput/IOPS (vs. density which 2.5" 15k SAS drives don't have anyways), and the need for considerably lower powered drives (.5 watt vs. 5 watt * 1,000 hard drives). Money will be the biggest factor but it won't be a straight $ density/gb calculation. The exception would be huge datacenters but I don't know about the 50-60TB mechanical hard drives since we are hitting the density wall.

 

[rudy]

It is hard to tell but ask yourself this who needs mass storage?

1 pirates and odd niche markets like HTPC and so on.

2 servers, but servers are learning more and more techniques to get more for less.

What is fighting mass storage? Online content delivery and a huge market trend toward smaller and lighter as well as simple devices in mass over complex devices as a single solution.

The reality is that it is possible and I see we are already moving there that we will see 1 TB SSDs under $200 in the next 5 years. At the same time alot of people are saying it is easier to just go download something or get it from a cloud server than to store it. And that cloud server can store alot of things like music, movies, images, the kinds of things that take up alot of space in just a few copies that service hundreds or thousands of people.

So you have this huge market that is moving away from capactity and being pushed that way by many forces. These people are making it less profitable to build hard drives. Maybe companies like seagate could pull off 60tb drives but they will have nothing left but a niche market to sell them too. And when that time comes will there even be enough money in that niche market for people like us to care? Without the volume I am not sure they will be able to deliver cost effective solutions and even though nand wont hit that density it still may be cheaper to use nand simply because the volume will be so high and the price so cheap.

I bet right now today you could jam 3 TB of nand into a 3.5 inch form if anyone could afford it.

 

[drescherjm]

I see we are already moving there that we will see 1 TB SSDs under $200 in the next 5 years.

Its possible however I highly doubt that will happen. The reason is unless some new technology comes in and fixes the problems with shrinking cells (lower write endurance at each shrink) on NAND flash there are not too many more shrinks that can be done.

 

[mwroobel]

Remember other "future" technology predictions that failed and the heavy-hitters who made them!

1. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.

2. “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates

3. “Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public … has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company …” — a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.

4. “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).

5. “To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth – all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” — Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926

6. “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.

7. “Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” – Simon Newcomb; The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later.

8. “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.

9. “There will never be a bigger plane built.” — A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people

10. “Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.” -– Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.

11. “This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.” — Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy during World War II, advising President Truman on the atomic bomb, 1945.[6] Leahy admitted the error five years later in his memoirs

12. “The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.” — Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time.

13. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932

14. “The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” -– Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916

15. “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” — The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903




16. “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.

17. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” — A memo at Western Union, 1878 (or 1876).

18. “The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most.” — IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959.

19. “I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.” — HG Wells, British novelist, in 1901.

20. “X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883.

21. “The idea that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches is absurd. It is little short of treasonous.” — Comment of Aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Haig, at tank demonstration, 1916.

22. “How, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.” — Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton’s steamboat, 1800s.

23. “Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1889 (Edison often ridiculed the arguments of competitor George Westinghouse for AC power).

24. “Home Taping Is Killing Music” — A 1980s campaign by the BPI, claiming that people recording music off the radio onto cassette would destroy the music industry.

25. “Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan.” — Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948.

26. “[Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.

27. “When the Paris Exhibition [of 1878] closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it.” – Oxford professor Erasmus Wilson

28. “Dear Mr. President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as ‘railroads’ … As you may well know, Mr. President, ‘railroad’ carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by ‘engines’ which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.” — Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, 1830(?).

29. “Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” — Dr Dionysys Larder (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London.

30. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?” — Associates of David Sarnoff responding to the latter’s call for investment in the radio in 1921.

 

[rudy]

Its possible however I highly doubt that will happen. The reason is unless some new technology comes in and fixes the problems with shrinking cells (lower write endurance at each shrink) on NAND flash there are not too many more shrinks that can be done.

Like all technology if you ever hit a brick wall you can just scale up. If NAND flash does not innovate in a new way they will just start producing larger chips with higher yield, stacking, IE they will work on whatever they need to to keep going.

Crucial M4 512 GB dropped below $350 this week. To think that in the next 5 years we wont be able to get 1024 under 200 seems like the more outlandish claim. The price of SSDs has been accelerating down, it has not been leveling off.

Let us also consider the idea of reliability. Is this really an issue? Computers have been pushing toward a disposable model. More and more laptops are integrating everything and soldering stuff onto the mobo. It has already become accepted that you just throw a laptop out after it becomes to old, display and all. And most common people throw out the hard drive too. So while the reliability of NAND is decreasing as long as it does not dip below what an average person would use it for it does not matter. And server / cloud devices pay so much for "speed" and reliability and replace things so much I doubt they would care much either. As long as they have a good plan to detect and replace bad SSDs they will be fine.

 

[Aesma]

To those who argue the mainstream user will not store anymore locally in five years, I hear you. But those datacenters holding our data will have to use hard drives, because data is growing exponentially.

And I don't think SSDs are that quick to grow and get cheaper, if you follow them, it was a long time coming, and in fact it could be argued the first SSD was the compact flash, and that is almost 20 years old !

 

[jwcalla]

OWC is releasing a 960 GB 2.5" SSD for $1300. It's a SandForce drive but is SATA II.

 

[odditory]

OWC is releasing a 960 GB 2.5" SSD for $1300. It's a SandForce drive but is SATA II.

Not sure what that has to do with the thread topic but that 960GB drive is a hackjob just like the OCZ revodrive since multiple boards driven by a cheapo RAID0 controller doesn't count. Sandforce + Silicon Image + 250MB/s R/W + RAID0 for $1200? Buying it means you got four "END FREEWAY" signs and still went off the cliff.

 

[jwcalla]

Not sure what that has to do with the thread topic but that 960GB drive is a hackjob just like the OCZ revodrive since multiple boards driven by a cheapo RAID0 controller doesn't count. Sandforce + Silicon Image + 250MB/s R/W + RAID0 for $1200? Buying it means you got four "END FREEWAY" signs and still went off the cliff.

Clearly it means that we're $1150 away from that $150 1 TB SSD others were talking about. duhhhh

 

[mwroobel]

OWC is releasing a 960 GB 2.5" SSD for $1300. It's a SandForce drive but is SATA II.

That particular drive is looking to be a really low-end drive. Async nand, basically they just raid0'd 2 480gb drives. The thing isn't even SATA3.. according to OWC "there are some architectural limitations which is why the drive uses SATA 3Gb/s instead of 6Gb/s. " The thing tops out at 254/250 STR/W and supposedly has sub-optimal random characteristics as well. They are asking $1270 for this unit.... With 256GB higher-end (or at least sync) SSDs going for under $200 it isn't a bargain either.

 

[odditory]

according to OWC "there are some architectural limitations which is why the drive uses SATA 3Gb/s instead of 6Gb/s. "

Yep that was my point, the "architectural limitations" = that POS SiI3134 controller from 2005 with its "state of the art" freaking PCI-X bridge . SATA/PCIe -> PCI-X -> 4port SATA RAID -> NAND is about as convoluted and stupefying a signal chain you can possibly get, let alone one that has any business driving an SSD in 2012.. again, just like the Revodrive.

OWC is a second-rate OCZ on the spectrum of SSD vendors and in layman's terms all they've done is taped two ipads together and called it an ipad2.